Squarespace Feature You Should Be Using: Product Reviews

Anyone else here scroll right on past product descriptions half the time and head straight for the reviews/comments? 🙋‍♀️ There’s just something about getting an outsider’s take on things that feels so much more trustworthy. I mean, sure YOU love your products but what do the real people think? 

Good news: collecting reviews for the physical, digital or service products that you sell on Squarespace could not be easier! But this is a feature that I see people sometimes skip setting up. It’s definitely worth the few minutes to be able to start collecting that valuable feedback from satisfied customers to share with the world. (p.s. Showing reviews on your product pages is a great way to boost sales!) Here’s how to do it. 

How to Turn on the Product Reviews Feature on Squarespace

I told you this was going to be simple! To start sending out review request emails and displaying reviews on your site, from the home menu in Squarespace click COMMERCE > PRODUCT REVIEWS. From there:

• Toggle REQUEST REVIEWS on to send an email request for a review 14 days after every purchase of physical, digital or service products in your shop.

• Toggle EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS on if you’d like to receive an email notification every time someone leaves a review.

That’s the basics! There are a few more settings and options that you’ll want to set up or customize to your liking which I’ll get to in a second but first, what happens when someone leaves a review on your Squarespace site? 

What leaving a review on Squarespace looks like for your customers.

How Squarespace Product Reviews Work

Once you’ve turned reviews on, here’s how things work: 

• 14 days after you fulfill each order, customers will receive an automated email asking them to leave a review. (You can - and should! - customize this email - more on that below!) 

• In addition to (or in lieu of) a written review, people can also rate products between 1 and 5 stars.

How to Customize the Squarespace Product Review Request Email

The stock email that Squarespace is going to send out once you toggle reviews on is pretty boring and generic looking. You’re going to definitely want to jazz it up with your own branding and maybe even customize the copy so it has some of your company’s personality. 

• To edit the Product Reviews email specifically, from your home menu click COMMERCE > CUSTOMER NOTIFICATIONS > CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT > PRODUCT REVIEW REQUEST. From here you can change the text from the default to something more personalized. 

• To change the way emails look in general you’ll head to COMMERCE > CUSTOMER NOTIFICATIONS > GLOBAL EMAIL STYLES. In this section you can change things like fonts and colors in the email, add your logo or social media icons, and other things that will change the way ALL emails sent from your site look. (For more on customizing all of your shop’s email notifications, check out this related post: How to Customize Your Store’s Email Notifications.)

How to Change The Way Reviews Are Shown

Product reviews are shown on product details pages below all other content. You have a few options on how to display reviews on your site:

• Show Product Reviews Only - This option will show only reviews related to each specific product on that product’s details page. So reviews for Product A will only show on Product A’s page, reviews for Product B only on that page, etc. The star rating shown is an average of the rating for just the product in question. I would recommend this option once you have a lot of reviews for each product. 

• Show Store Reviews Only - This option will display ALL the reviews you’ve received regardless of which product page you are on. This means that on any given product page you’ll see a mix of reviews for Product A, Product B, etc. The star rating shown is an average of the ratings for all products in your shop. I would recommend this option if you’re just getting started and don’t want it to look like your products don’t have any reviews. 

• Show Both Product & Store Reviews - This option will allow people to toggle between a tab that shows just reviews related to the product they are looking at and a second tab that shows all reviews received from your shop. This is a good option if you’re wanting to show that customers also really like other products you sell since the product thumbnails shown with each store review are clickable to those specific product pages. 

To select the display option that works best for where you’re at right now, from your home menu click COMMERCE > PRODUCT REVIEWS and in the “Display” section click on the dropdown menu to select from one of the options above. You can change this at any time so select what works for now and update later as you’d like! 

What to Do When You Get a Bad Review

Eek! Ok, I know it seems like the end of the world but bad reviews happen to all of us and you should definitely not live in fear of a bad review. You should also not let the chance of a bad review prevent you from asking for feedback in the first place!

If you’re confident in your products, customer service and the overall experience of shopping with you then you know the occasional bad review probably says more about the reviewer than you. Perhaps they just had a bad day or something happened that was outside of your control like a shipping delay. Assuming you’ve done all you can to make things right, just chalk the occasional bad review up to that person not being your ideal customer and move on with your life. 

How to Manage Reviews

All of the above being said, you’ll probably want to still go in and hide any less than stellar reviews. I would only do this for things that are truly nasty or untrue; objective reviews that are less than 5 stars may have feedback or comments that future customers find helpful such as how to pick the right size or what they could do differently to expect a better outcome. Sometimes the 3 and 4 star reviews are the best ones because they seem real and honest! 

For anything else, from the Product Reviews panel click on VISIBILITY next to the review you’d like to hide and change from PUBLIC > HIDDEN. Click on HIDE to Confirm. 

Squarespace Product Reviews FAQs

• Is there a limit to how long a review can be? 

  Yes - long winded reviewers get cut off at 1500 words.

• Is there a time limit to when a review can be left?

  Yes. Customers can only review a purchase within 120 days of receiving the review request email.

• Can I respond to reviews?

  No - and it’s not recommended to do so, especially if it’s a negative review. You don’t want to seem argumentative. Instead, I would just go in and hide the review and send the customer a personal email to try to resolve the issue. To hide a review, follow the steps in the “How to Manage Reviews” section, above.

• What about orders with multiple products?

  If someone places an order for multiple products from your store, they will only receive one review request email but they can review and rate each item individually.

• Can you send review requests for purchases made through Squarespace POS?

  Not at this time. Review request emails will only go out for purchases made from your online shop.

• Can I send review request emails to people who purchased from me in the past?

  Yes… but only within the last 14 days. For any customers who purchased before that, you could always reach out with a personalized email asking for feedback. One off testimonials can then be incorporated elsewhere on your site which is still a good thing.

• Can I manually add past reviews I have from customers to display on product pages?

  No. Only reviews received directly from customers via the email review request form can be managed and displayed via Squarespace. This helps the credibility of the reviews on your site since they are all verified purchases.

• Can I delete reviews?

  Nope but you can hide them using the steps in the “How to Manage Reviews” section, above.

• Can I resend review requests that people haven’t responded to?

  You cannot resend review request emails and this is probably for the better. I would say that the best reviews come from people who are willing and eager to respond quickly when asked the first time. Resending requests could seem spammy and might actually impact the feedback you receive. If someone doesn’t respond, just let it go and focus on your other, more engaged customers.

• Can I change the timing of when the review request emails are sent out?

  Not at this time. Keep in mind that review request emails are sent out 14 days after you mark an order as fulfilled. If you sell physical products, this gives enough time for shipping and allows the customer to use the product a bit before reviewing. For digital or service products, 14 days is a good window where the experience is still fresh in their minds but it’s not too soon as to be annoying.

• I moved my shop from Etsy. Is there a way to import reviews?

  Yes! I detail everything you need to know about moving from Etsy to Squarespace including how to import reviews in this post.

• Can I display the reviews I’ve received on Facebook, Google or elsewhere?

  You can embed reviews widgets from third-parties onto your Squarespace site but honestly? I think it looks kind of janky and that it's ok if all your reviews aren’t aggregated in one place. Let Facebook reviews live on Facebook and website reviews on your website. You could always do like I recommended above and add some static text to your site quoting a few select really awesome third-party reviews if you really wanted to include that copy on your site. Otherwise, I would focus on building well-rounded reviews across a variety of platforms as this could be good for SEO.