How to Get the First Reviews for a New Shopify Store, Honestly

The first reviews for a new Shopify store come from the customers you already have: switch on an automatic review request before the first order ships, write personally to anyone who has bought from you before, and import reviews you legitimately own from wherever you sold previously. Do not fill the gap with friends, invented reviews or paid ones. This guide covers each honest route to the first ten reviews, how long it realistically takes, and the shortcuts that cost more than they save.

Why are the first ten reviews the hardest?

Because reviews are a share of orders, and a new store has few orders. Only some customers answer a request, so the aim in the early weeks is to waste none of the orders you get, and to bring in every genuine opinion that already exists.

It helps to concentrate. Ten reviews spread across ten products leave each page looking thin. Ten reviews on your two main products make those pages credible. How far to go per product is covered in how many reviews a product needs.

Route 1: switch on the request flow before the first order

Set up the review request on the day you launch, not once you have 'enough' orders to bother. Every order that ships without a request attached is a review you will not get back.

The setup is small:

1. Install a reviews app and choose how many days after fulfilment the request goes out. Our guide on when to send a review request email covers the delay by product type.
2. Add the review widget to the product page, even while it is empty, so the first review appears as soon as you approve it.
3. Place a test order and check that the email arrives and the form works on a phone.

Cost should not hold this up. The free plan of Marka Reviews includes unlimited reviews and 100 review request emails a month, enough to ask every customer while you ship fewer than 100 orders a month.

Route 2: write to the customers you already have

If you sold anything before the reviews app was installed, those buyers are your quickest source. This includes orders from a soft launch, a market stall or wholesale samples.

Write to them personally. With a short list, a plain email from the founder is a better choice than a designed campaign, because it is obviously not automated:

• Say who you are and what they bought.
• Say the store is new and that their honest opinion will help other customers.
• Link straight to the review form for that product.
• Do not ask for a positive review, and do not offer a reward that depends on one.

Be accurate about how these reviews are labelled. A verified badge should only appear when the review can be matched to a real order in your store. A review from someone who bought at a market stall is genuine, but your store cannot vouch for the purchase, so it should appear without the badge.

Route 3: put a card in the parcel

A printed insert reaches the customer at the moment they open the box, which the email cannot do. Keep it to one message:

• One sentence asking for a review, with a short link or QR code to the review page.
• A line saying that critical reviews are published too.
• No discount that depends on what the review says.

The insert works alongside the email and does not replace it. The card is seen on day one, and the email arrives once the product has been used.

Route 4: import reviews you legitimately own

If the same products collected reviews somewhere else under your control, bring them across. Typical cases:

• You are moving from another reviews app and have its CSV export.
• You ran a previous store on another platform and kept the review data.
• Customers sent written feedback by email and have agreed to you publishing it.

Two rules apply. Import the text as written, including the unflattering ones, and do not mark imported reviews as verified. Check the terms of any marketplace before copying reviews from it, because reviews written on someone else's platform may not be yours to reuse.

What should you not do?

Each of these shortcuts produces reviews quickly and each one is a liability.

• Friends and family. A review from someone connected to the business is an insider review. US rules require that connection to be disclosed, and a product page whose first five reviews come from the founder's relatives is not telling shoppers anything true.
• Writing them yourself. A fake review is banned outright in the US and UK.
• Buying reviews. Paid review services sell exactly what the rules prohibit, and reviews bought in bulk leave a pattern.
• Reviews from a supplier's listing presented as your own. They describe someone else's sale.

The legal background is summarised in our guide to collecting verified reviews on Shopify, with more detail in fake review rules every Shopify merchant should know. Check the rules for the markets you sell in.

How long will it take?

It depends on your order volume, and there is no honest way round that. Here is an illustration with made-up round figures: say a store ships 40 orders in its first month and one customer in ten answers the request. That is four reviews from the email flow. Add three from a personal note to fifteen earlier buyers, and three imported from a previous store, and the store reaches ten.

Your numbers will differ. The point of the sum is that no single route gets a new store there alone.

A short checklist

1. Install the reviews app and set the request delay before launch.
2. Add the review widget to product pages while it is still empty.
3. Email earlier buyers personally with a direct link to the form.
4. Put a one-message card in every parcel.
5. Import reviews you own, unedited and without a verified badge.
6. Turn down friends, fakes and paid reviews.

Ten real reviews take longer than ten invented ones, and they are the only kind that still help you a year from now. Marka Reviews covers the request flow, the import and the widget, so each early order has a chance of becoming a review.