When to Send a Review Request Email on Shopify, by Product Type

Send a review request once the product has been delivered and used, and count the days from fulfilment rather than from the order date. As a starting point, wait about a week to ten days after fulfilment for consumables and clothing, and two to four weeks for furniture, skincare, electronics and anything else a customer needs time to judge. This guide shows how to work out the delay for your own catalogue, and what to change for pre-orders, international parcels and reminders.

Why count from fulfilment and not from the order date?

Because the order date tells you nothing about when the parcel lands. An order placed on a Friday evening may not leave the warehouse until Tuesday. A made-to-order item may not leave for three weeks. If the request is timed from the order, some customers are asked to rate a product they have not received, and the only honest thing they can write about is the wait.

Fulfilment is the first event that reliably means the product is on its way. From there, the delay you set has two parts:

• Transit time: how long your usual carrier takes to deliver.
• Use time: how long a customer needs with the product before they have something to say.

Add the two together and you have your delay. A request that arrives too early gets you a review of the courier. One that arrives at the right moment gets you a review of the product.

How long should the delay be for each kind of product?

Use time is what varies, so set the delay by how quickly the product can be judged.

• Consumables such as coffee, snacks, candles and supplements: a few days of use is enough. The customer knows on the first cup whether they like it. Ask about a week to ten days after fulfilment, and before the pack runs out, so the request arrives while the product is still on the shelf.
• Apparel and footwear: fit is known at the first try-on, comfort and washing take a little longer. Seven to ten days after fulfilment is a sensible default.
• Furniture and anything assembled: the customer has to build it, place it and live with it. Two to four weeks is reasonable, and longer if delivery is by appointment.
• Slow-to-judge products such as skincare routines, mattresses, fitness equipment and tools used occasionally: the honest answer takes weeks. Wait three to four weeks so the review describes results and not first impressions.

If your catalogue mixes these, set the delay for the bulk of your orders and accept that the outliers will be slightly early or late. Late is the safer error.

A worked example

Say a store sells skincare and ships orders within one working day. Its domestic carrier takes three days, and a customer needs roughly two weeks of daily use before they can tell whether a serum is doing anything.

Transit of three days plus use of fourteen days gives a delay of seventeen days after fulfilment. If the same store set the request at seven days, the customer would have used the product four times. They would either ignore the email or review the packaging.

These figures are made up. Use your own carrier times.

What should you do about pre-orders?

Trigger on fulfilment and pre-orders mostly look after themselves, because the clock does not start until the item ships. The cases to check are these:

1. Mixed orders. If an order contains an in-stock item and a pre-order item, it will be fulfilled in two parts. Check how your reviews app treats partial fulfilment, so the customer is not asked about the item still waiting to ship.
2. Orders marked fulfilled early. Some stores mark pre-orders as fulfilled when the label is printed, days before the carrier collects. If that is your process, lengthen the delay to cover the gap.
3. Delayed launches. If a pre-order ran late, the first email after delivery should not be a request for a favour. Leave a longer gap for that batch.

How should you time requests for international delivery?

Set the delay for your slowest regular shipping lane, not your fastest. A delay tuned for domestic delivery will reach an overseas customer while the parcel is still in customs.

You have two workable options:

• One longer delay for everyone. Domestic customers get the email a few days later than ideal. That costs you very little, because a late request can still be answered.
• Separate delays by destination, if your tools allow it. This is tidier, and only worth the effort once international orders are a meaningful share of the total.

What you should not do is set the delay for the home market and hope. An early request to an international customer is worse than no request, because it reminds them that the parcel has not arrived.

Should you send a reminder, and when?

Send one reminder about a week after the first request, only to people who have not responded. Some customers who meant to leave a review simply missed the first email. Our guide on how many review reminder emails to send covers the case for stopping at one.

Timing gets the email in front of the customer at the right moment. What the email says decides whether they act on it, and that is covered in review request subject lines and wording. Stores that sell a handful of expensive items a month have a different problem, addressed in getting reviews when you sell few, expensive products.

In Marka Reviews, the request goes out after an order is fulfilled, on the number of days you choose, and reminder emails are part of the paid plans.

A short checklist

1. Time the request from fulfilment, never from the order date.
2. Work out transit time plus use time for your main product type.
3. Lengthen the delay for furniture, skincare and other slow-to-judge products.
4. Check what happens with split and pre-order fulfilments.
5. Set the delay to cover your slowest regular shipping lane.
6. Send one reminder about a week later to non-responders.

The broader picture, including what a verified review is and how stars reach Google, is in our guide to collecting verified product reviews on Shopify. If you want the schedule running without theme work, Marka Reviews lets you set the delay in days after fulfilment and change it as you learn what your customers answer.