How to Moderate Reviews

Overview

Honest reviews and merchant comments help customers feel confident when purchasing from your store. Spam or dishonest reviews can hurt your brand's reputation, so Sendlane Reviews gives you plenty of moderation tools to ensure that honest high quality reviews are front and center in your store.

Read on to learn how to configure your default moderation settings, publish, reject, or unpublish reviews, and add labels to organize reviews!

In This Guide

• Review Settings
  • Moderation Settings
  • Notification Settings
• Publish, Reject, or Unpublish Reviews
• Reply to Reviews
• Add a Label to Reviews
• Share Reviews

Review Settings

Click the Reviews icon > Content to access Review content and settings tabs:

• General - Review autopublish and merchant notifications settings
• Store Profile - Merchant avatar name and icon settings (see our guide to replying to reviews for more details on this tab)
• Thank You - Set the thank you message Contacts see after submitting a review (see our guide to setting a thank you message for more details on this tab)
• Import & Export - Import existing reviews from other platforms and export reviews from Sendlane Reviews (see our guide to importing and exporting for more details on this tab)

General Settings Tab

Moderation Settings

Automatically publishing reviews above a certain star rating threshold allows you to reach out to unhappy customers and attempt to address their concerns before negative reviews are published.

The FTC sets explicit rules for review moderation and publication. You are responsible for reviewing, understanding, and complying with these rules or risk facing fines. If you explicitly or implicitly describe the reviews on your website as independent or impartial, you must publish negative reviews that do not fall under the appropriate reasons for rejection.

Reviews that are not automatically published will be Pending for 14 days. If a Pending review is not manually published or rejected during this window, it will be automatically published.

To set your autopublish star rating minimum, check the Publish checkbox and select a minimum star rating option from the Approve dropdown. Click Save Changes to save your preferences.

Notification Settings

Sendlane Reviews can automatically alert you via email when reviews with a specified star rating are submitted.

To turn on notifications, check the Notify checkbox and select a star threshold to receive an email notification when reviews under the star threshold you select are submitted. Click Save Changes to save your preferences.

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Publish, Reject, or Unpublish Reviews

Manage reviews by clicking the Moderation tab.

Filter Reviews

Use the filter icon to filter reviews by the following parameters:

• Date range
• Product
• With or without replies
• Verified (review was submitted from a link in a review request Automation and is associated with a confirmed purchase) or unverified reviewer
• With or without replies
• With or without media
• Review status
• Star rating

Publish or Reject a Review

Publish or reject a single review by clicking the Review then clicking the Publish or Reject button on the top right. To unpublish a published review, select the review and click Reject.

Reviewers are not notified when their reviews are published, rejected, or unpublished.

Select multiple reviews to publish or reject more than one review at once.

The FTC sets explicit rules for review moderation and publication. You are responsible for reviewing, understanding, and complying with these rules or risk facing fines. If you explicitly or implicitly describe the reviews on your website as independent or impartial, you must publish negative reviews that do not fall under the appropriate reasons for rejection. You cannot disseminate (publish) reviews from your brand's leadership team or skip special requirements for reviews from employees and their friends and families.

To reject a review you’ll need to select a reason for the review’s rejection. Reviews that do not contain the following characteristics should generally remain published to maintain authenticity in your store’s reviews.

• Offensive or Inappropriate - Review contains inappropriate or offensive content. This includes content that is harassing, libelous, abusive, profane, obscene, sexually explicit, or discriminatory.
• Unrelated to the product or service - Review is not primarily concerned with the specified product or store.
• Contains personal information - Review contains confidential or private information.
• Foreign language - Review is written in a language other than the language the store operates in.
• Legal transgression - Review content contains information that cannot legally be published, such as an individual’s medical, financial, or other protected information; a company’s trade secrets; or any other unlawful information.
• Spam or contains advertising - Review advertises another product or service
• False or misleading - Review contains information or claims that are demonstrably false or misleading.
• Fake - Review was not written by an actual customer.

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Reply to a Review

Reply to reviews by clicking the Reviews tab, selecting a Review, and clicking Add Comment. Only one comment can be added per Review.

The FTC sets explicit rules for review moderation and publication. You are responsible for reviewing, understanding, and complying with these rules or risk facing fines. You cannot use threats, intimidation, or other "certain false public accusations" to prevent customers from leaving a negative review or convince them to remove a negative review.

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Add a Label to a Review

Add a label to a review to organize reviews into categories like "marketing" to note reviews that should be used in marketing content, or create labels for different properties of your products such as "color" or "packaging" to note what specifically stood out to the reviewer for further analysis.

Labels are only visible on the review moderation page. There is no limit to the number of labels you can create to organize your reviews; create as many labels as you need!

To create a label and add it to a review:

1. Click the review you want to add a label to
2. Click the Select Labels dropdown
3. Enter a name for your label
4. Click + Create

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Share a Review

Share a specific review to social media to show prospective customers how happy and satisfied your purchasers are. Reviews can be shared one at a time.

To share a review:

1. Click the review you want to share
2. Click the Share icon
3. Select a social media platform
4. Click Share on the pop-up window that opens with your review

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Troubleshooting

How do I edit a Review?

Reviews cannot be edited, they can only be published, rejected, unpublished, or replied to.

How do I add or take away Likes?

Likes cannot be edited by store owners. Users can click Like once per review, or click the same review twice to remove their Like.

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