How to Add Customer Reviews on Shopify

Introduction

Customer reviews are the closest thing you can get to free sales copy that actually converts. Shoppers trust real opinions: product pages with reviews typically see higher conversion rates, richer search results, and stronger long-term value. At the same time, merchants face "platform fatigue" from juggling multiple tools, which makes adding reviews feel like one more headache instead of a growth opportunity.

Short answer: Adding customer reviews on Shopify is straightforward. You can add built-in review functionality, integrate a retention-focused solution like Growave to collect and showcase verified reviews and visual UGC, or customize your theme to display testimonials. The most effective approach pairs automated review collection with strategic placement and incentives to maximize conversion and SEO impact.

This article explains every practical way to add reviews on Shopify, from step-by-step setup to advanced SEO, collection tactics, moderation workflows, and using reviews as a retention engine. We’ll prioritize solutions that give you more growth with less tech overhead—so you can stop stitching together five to seven tools and instead use a single retention platform that handles reviews, loyalty, referrals, wishlists, and shoppable UGC.

Our main message: customer reviews should be automated, visible, and tied into retention incentives. We’re merchant-first—trusted by 15,000+ brands with a 4.8-star rating on Shopify—and we build to reduce stack complexity while increasing LTV. If you want to skip to installing a single solution that handles reviews and rewards, you can explore our plans and start a 14-day free trial to see the benefits firsthand (explore plans and pricing).

Why Customer Reviews Matter On Shopify

Customer reviews are both social proof and useful content. They influence buying decisions, inform SEO, and provide material you can re-use across marketing channels.

Customer reviews are not just a display element; they belong at the center of a retention strategy that converts first-timers and brings them back.

Options For Adding Customer Reviews On Shopify

You have several routes to add reviews, each with trade-offs between control, features, and maintenance burden.

We recommend a retention-first solution that combines automated review request flows with rewards and UGC capture—this maximizes review volume, captures photos/videos, and keeps everything manageable with fewer integrations. Learn how reviews fit into a broader retention strategy and how to reward customers for leaving feedback using integrated loyalty features (reward customers for leaving feedback).

Foundations: Decide What You Need Before You Start

Before adding anything to your store, answer these questions to guide your setup and placement choices.

A clear plan reduces rework. If you want both review collection and incentives handled in one solution, consider adding a retention platform that combines reviews with loyalty and UGC features (collect photo and video testimonials and display social proof).

Step-By-Step: How To Add Customer Reviews On Shopify

Below we cover multiple practical methods so you can choose the one that fits your resources and goals. We’ll walk through a simple built-in setup, then a retention-platform setup and theme-level approaches.

Using Shopify’s Built-In Reviews (Quickest Option)

Shopify’s native reviews offering is simple and free. It covers basic review collecting and display.

Where to place review elements in the theme editor:

Limitations of the built-in approach:

For merchants who want more functionality without increasing tool count, a retention platform that includes review collection, incentive management, and UGC display is a better long-term option.

Adding Reviews With a Retention Platform (Recommended for Growth)

A retention platform replaces multiple tools by handling reviews, loyalty, referrals, wishlists, and shoppable social content in one place. This reduces complexity and provides synergies—for example, rewarding customers for leaving a review and then using that review in referral or social campaigns.

How to add reviews using a retention platform:

Benefits of using a single retention platform:

When onboarding, the marketplace listing will guide you through adding the platform to Shopify and the steps for installing review widgets. If you prefer exploring options first, you can review pricing and features before adding the platform (explore plans and pricing). Once added, most merchants get the core review flows running within the first few days.

Manually Adding Reviews via Theme Code (When You Need Total Control)

For full control over layout or if your theme doesn’t support widget insertion, you can add review display elements by editing theme files. This requires comfort with Liquid and possibly JSON-LD structured data.

Typical steps to add review markup manually:

Manual insertion provides ultimate control but increases maintenance. When your goal is to run a lean stack, you’ll want a solution that lets you drop in widgets without custom code.

Structured Data & Rich Snippets: Make Reviews Work for SEO

To get stars showing in Google search results, search engines require structured data that exposes aggregateRating and individual reviews in schema.org format.

Example of JSON-LD for aggregateRating (place in the product template within a script type="application/ld+json"):

{
 "@context": "https://schema.org/",
 "@type": "Product",
 "name": "REPLACE_WITH_PRODUCT_TITLE",
 "sku": "REPLACE_WITH_SKU",
 "image": ["REPLACE_WITH_IMAGE_URL"],
 "description": "REPLACE_WITH_PRODUCT_DESCRIPTION",
 "aggregateRating": {
   "@type": "AggregateRating",
   "ratingValue": "REPLACE_WITH_AVERAGE_RATING",
   "reviewCount": "REPLACE_WITH_TOTAL_REVIEWS"
 }
}

Important notes when implementing structured data:

Most retention platforms handle structured data automatically so you don’t have to manage JSON-LD manually. This is another reason we recommend a single solution that integrates review widgets and schema management.

Best Practices For Collecting More and Better Reviews

Collecting reviews isn’t passive. A short, repeatable process will increase volume and quality.

Sample review request email snippet you can adapt:

Hi [First Name],

Thanks for buying [Product Name]. We hope you’re enjoying it. Would you take 60 seconds to share your thoughts and a photo? You’ll earn [X] loyalty points and help other customers decide.

[Leave A Review]

Thanks,
[Brand Name] Team

Make sure the CTA button links directly to a review form pre-filled with order or product details for a smooth experience.

Incentives, Loyalty, And Review Volume

Incentives work when they’re transparent and tied to community-building, not transactional bribery. Rewarding customers with loyalty points for leaving honest feedback is a high-impact tactic.

If you want review collection and incentive management in one place, use an integrated retention platform that links loyalty programs to review actions and automates point grants (reward customers and automate review incentives).

Managing Reviews: Moderation, Display Rules, And Response Templates

Moderation and response workflows protect your brand and help convert skeptical shoppers.

Moderation best practices:

How to respond to reviews:

Sample response templates:

Moderation and response flows are easier when your review platform centralizes messages and flags. A retention suite that includes review moderation gives you a single place to handle incoming feedback, assign follow-ups, and report on sentiment.

Display Strategies: Where Reviews Drive The Most Impact

Reviews should appear where they reduce doubt and increase conversions.

High-impact locations:

A retention platform that supports UGC galleries and shoppable social content simplifies reusing reviews across channels and turning UGC into shoppable experiences.

Advanced: Importing, Migrating, And Consolidating Reviews

If you’re switching solutions or consolidating multiple review sources, follow this migration checklist.

Migration checklist:

Consolidating reviews into a single retention platform helps you avoid fragmentation and eases cross-feature use (for example seeing which reviewers are also top loyalty members).

Troubleshooting Common Issues

If reviews don’t appear or ratings aren’t showing in search results, check these common problems.

When you use a retention platform that handles widget installation and schema, many of these issues are addressed during onboarding or via support.

Measuring Success: Metrics To Track

Track both quantity and quality to measure impact.

Key metrics to watch:

A unified retention platform makes it simple to correlate reviews with downstream metrics like repeat purchases and revenue per customer.

Integrations And Cross-Channel Use

Reviews are more powerful when they feed other channels.

Growave integrates reviews with loyalty, referrals, and shoppable social UGC so you can turn review content into ongoing retention tactics (collect photo and video testimonials and display social proof).

Common Mistakes Merchants Make And How To Avoid Them

Avoid these pitfalls to make review collection efficient and impactful.

A single retention platform reduces the risk of fragmentation by consolidating these functions and automating workflows.

How To Test And Optimize Your Reviews Experience

Testing will show what placement and messaging convert better.

Testing ideas to try:

Document each test and iterate over small time windows to collect statistically useful data. A retention platform with built-in analytics helps run and measure these experiments without pulling data from multiple places.

Migrating From Another Review Solution

If you’re switching from a different system, prioritize a clean migration with minimal downtime.

Migration steps:

Consolidating under a single retention platform simplifies future migrations and ensures your review data is connected to loyalty and referral programs for added value.

Security, Privacy, And Authenticity

Protecting customer data and ensuring authenticity is critical.

A merchant-first retention platform will provide clear consent and moderation tools to handle privacy and authenticity concerns while staying compliant.

Conclusion

Adding customer reviews on Shopify is a powerful lever for conversion, SEO, and long-term retention—but the real gains come from making reviews easy to collect, visible across the buying journey, and integrated with your retention strategy. Rather than piecing together multiple tools, choose a solution that centralizes reviews, loyalty, and UGC so you get more growth with less stack complexity. For a platform that does this and helps you automate review collection, reward customers, and showcase UGC—all while reducing tool sprawl—explore Growave’s plans and start your 14-day free trial today to begin collecting verified customer reviews and boosting retention (explore plans and pricing).

Explore Growave through the Shopify marketplace to add the platform to your store and speed up setup (add Growave via the Shopify marketplace).

FAQ

What is the fastest way to start collecting reviews on Shopify?  

Can I show photo and video reviews on product pages?  

How do I get review stars to show in Google search results?  

Can I reward customers for leaving honest reviews?