How to Get More Reviews on Etsy (11 Ways)

Etsy buyers read reviews before they buy anything, and a shop with four of them looks risky beside one with four hundred. The trouble is that most happy customers never leave one.

Etsy also has firm rules about what you can and cannot do to get them, and breaking those rules costs more than the reviews are worth.

Below are eleven ways to bring more of them in, how they feed your search placement, what to do when you are starting from none, and where the line sits on asking.

How to Get More Reviews on Etsy

Eleven ways, roughly in order of what they return. If you are still working out why any of this matters, why product reviews matter covers the case.

1. The order has to be right first

Nothing below will save a late parcel or an item that looks nothing like the photo. Most one-star reviews are about delivery and expectations, not the product itself.

• Give the real dimensions. “Small” means nothing. A number next to a coin or a hand means something.
• Photograph the actual colour. Screens vary, so describe it in daylight and warn if the shade shifts.
• Pad the dispatch date. Say five days and post in three. The reverse is where one-star reviews come from.
• List the limits too. Not waterproof, not dishwasher safe, hand wash only. Put it in the listing rather than the FAQ.

A buyer who got more than they expected is the one who writes something.

2. Set up your shipping message

Etsy lets you set an automatic message that goes out when an order ships. Most sellers leave it blank or paste in something that reads like a receipt.

Write it as one person to another. Three things belong in it:

• A thank you that names what they bought. “Your ceramic mug is on its way” beats “your order has shipped”.
• When it should land, so nobody sits refreshing tracking on day two.
• An invitation to message you if anything is wrong. That one turns a complaint into a conversation instead of a review.

Leave the review request out of this one. It goes out before the parcel has arrived, so it is too early to ask. There is more in our roundup of thank you page examples that convert.

3. Ask once, and ask properly

Get the timing wrong and nobody answers. Too soon and they have not opened the box. Leave it a month and they have moved on.

Three to five days after it lands is about right. Give a candle or a skincare item a fortnight, since those get judged over time.

Ask for honest feedback rather than five stars, because Etsy does not allow you to request a rating and it reads badly anyway. Say why it matters to you, in one line, and leave it there. “It helps a small shop like mine more than you would think” does the job.

Related: How to Get More Reviews on eBay (Seller’s Guide)

4. Photo reviews do the most work

Every Etsy shopper wants to know whether the thing looks like that in a normal room, and only a customer’s own photo settles it.

So say that when you ask. “If you have a moment, a photo helps other buyers see the size” gets more pictures than saying nothing. They also sit at the top of the review list, where shoppers look first.

If somebody sends a good one, ask before reusing it in your listing or on social, and credit them. Most people say yes and several go on to buy again. Our guide to collecting photo reviews from customers covers the wording, and the UGC statistics show how far a customer picture travels.

5. Turn a message into a review

Buyers often send a lovely note and never think to put it somewhere other shoppers will see. Those are the easiest reviews you will ever get.

Reply, thank them, and mention that leaving it as a review would help other buyers find you. Do not push twice. One mention is a nudge, two is pestering.

Never copy their words in yourself, either. That counts as writing your own reviews, and the fake review stats show how many shoppers reckon they can spot one.

6. Put a note in the parcel

Handwriting gets mentioned in Etsy reviews more than anything else you can put in a box, because it is why people came to Etsy instead of a marketplace.

Keep it short and specific to the order. Naming the item, or the fact they chose the blue one, takes ten seconds and reads as a person rather than a template. If somebody said at checkout that it was a gift, mention that.

Do not promise anything in return for a review on the card. Etsy treats that as buying feedback, and it can cost you the shop.

7. Packaging that people photograph

A parcel worth opening slowly gets opened in front of a phone. That is a photo review nobody had to ask for.

• Something to unwrap. Tissue paper and a ribbon cost pennies and add a second to the opening.
• One branded thing. A stamp, a sticker, a printed slip. Enough that the shop name is in the picture.
• Protection that does not look like landfill. Nobody photographs a jiffy bag full of plastic.
• A card that survives the bin. Care instructions get kept. A leaflet does not.

It does not need to be expensive, only considered. The unboxing is the only part of the online shopping experience the buyer meets in the real world.

8. Use Etsy’s review request

Etsy prompts buyers once an order is marked delivered, whether you do anything or not. It is free and it reaches people you would never message yourself.

Ship on time and keep the delivery details right, because a late order pushes that prompt back to a point where the buyer has lost interest. Mark orders as dispatched the day they go, not in a weekly catch-up.

Telling buyers it is coming helps too, since it arrives from Etsy rather than from you and some people trust that more. The customer experience statistics put numbers on what that delivery window is worth.

9. Follow up once, then stop

One polite message after it arrives is fine. A second is where sellers get reported, and Etsy comes down hard on repeated requests.

Keep it to a single line and make it easy to say no. Somebody who has not replied has decided, and chasing them turns a neutral customer into a negative one.

If the same people buy from you often, one ask a year each is plenty. Repeat buyers who feel chased stop being repeat buyers, and customer retention analytics covers what those are worth to you.

10. Send buyers to the review link

Most buyers do not know where reviews live. They sit under Purchases in the account, which is not somewhere people stumble across.

Tell them where to go in one line, or point them at the order page. On a phone it is three taps from the confirmation email, and saying so removes the guesswork.

A QR code on the packing slip does the same job for anyone who has already binned the email. Take out a step and you get more reviews, which is the same thinking behind increasing checkout conversion.

11. Reply to every review you get

Sellers who answer reviews get more of them, because buyers can see somebody is reading. A shop that never replies looks closed.

A sentence is enough on the good ones, and it is worth naming the detail they mentioned so it does not read as copy-paste. Our collection of positive review examples you can copy and paste shows what a good one looks like. The bad ones matter more, and there is a way to handle those further down.

How Reviews Affect Your Etsy Ranking

Trust is only half of it. Etsy decides which listings to show, and what buyers have said about you goes into that.

• Etsy favours listings with reviews. Two similar items and one has forty, the other has none. You already know which one gets shown.
• Recent counts more than total. A shop that got thirty two years ago and nothing since looks like it has closed.
• Reviews are written in buyer language. People describe the item the way other shoppers search for it, so words end up on your listing that you would never have chosen.
• They stack per shop, not per listing. A good record means a new product goes out into a shop people already trust.
• The rating affects the click, not just the rank. Page one with three stars gets fewer visits than page two with five.

Which is why the cheapest thing in your shop is worth having. A lower-priced item sells more often, so the reviews come in faster, and everything else you sell benefits. Our roundup of social proof statistics covers how far a rating moves a decision.

Getting Your First Reviews

Everything above assumes orders are arriving. A new shop has the harder problem, because buyers avoid the listing with nothing under it and the only way past that is through it.

• Sell to people you already know. Friends and family buying properly through Etsy is allowed. Telling them what to write is not.
• Price the first batch to move. You are paying for reviews in margin instead of cash, and that is the version Etsy permits.
• Start with one product, not twenty. Ten reviews on a single listing does more than two on five.
• Take the craft-fair orders through Etsy. Somebody who has held the thing in their hand is the most likely to write about it.
• Ten is where it changes. Around there a shop stops looking new and buyers stop hesitating.

The first ones are slow and the rest come easier, because every review makes the next order more likely. There are formats worth borrowing in these social proof examples that seal the deal.

What Etsy’s Review Rules Allow

Most of the trouble sellers get into comes from tactics that sound reasonable and are against the rules.

• You cannot buy reviews. Etsy removes them, and a shop caught doing it can be closed. The sellers offering them know this.
• Nothing can be offered in exchange. No discount, no free gift, no entry to a draw.
• You cannot ask for five stars. Asking for a review is fine. Asking for a rating is not.
• You cannot pressure somebody to change one. You may reply and offer to fix the problem. Repeatedly asking them to edit it gets you reported.
• Buyers can go back and change a review, which is why sorting a problem out quickly beats arguing about it.

The honest version works better anyway. Ten real reviews with photographs sell more than fifty that all sound alike.

How to Respond to Etsy Reviews

Your reply is not for the person who wrote it. Everybody who reads that listing next will see it, and they are working out how you handle a complaint.

• Answer within a day or two. A reply weeks later looks like you only noticed once it hurt.
• Do not argue, even when you are right. Everybody reading takes the buyer’s side by default.
• Offer the fix. A refund, a replacement, or an explanation of what went wrong.
• Keep it short. The longer the reply, the more defensive it sounds.
• Take the detail to messages. Sort it privately, then leave the public reply calm and brief.

The online review stats show what one star is worth before you decide it is not worth answering, and these Google review response examples give you wording to start from.

Using Your Etsy Reviews Elsewhere

Reviews you have earned on Etsy only work on Etsy. Sellers who also run their own site start again from zero there, and it shows.

WiserReview collects reviews on your own store and displays them, so the shop you own is not the one that looks new. There is more in our guides to visual reviews and how to collect them and showing reviews on your website.

Wrap Up

Get the order right, write a shipping message that sounds human, and ask once the parcel has landed. Those three do more than any tool.

Mention photographs while you are at it, because on Etsy one picture beats a paragraph.

Related Guides

• How to Get More Reviews for a Beauty Salon
• How to Collect and Manage Google Reviews
• Product Description Examples Worth Copying
• Ecommerce Statistics and Trends