How do I get my first customer reviews?
Reviews follow orders. Nothing else produces them honestly, so the work is in asking well, and asking every time.
- Ask after delivery, not at checkout. A request that lands a few days after the parcel reaches someone who has opened the box and used what was in it.
- Ask everyone. The FTC’s guide for businesses is plain about it: don’t ask only the customers you expect to be positive.
- Keep it short. A star rating, a sentence and an optional photo. Each extra field is another reason to stop.
- Follow up once. One reminder for people who didn’t answer, then leave them be.
- Reply to reviews, critical ones included. A calm, specific answer to a fair complaint shows the next shopper how you treat customers.
A review app sends the requests for you and shows the reviews on your product pages. Judge.me is one, and on Growth, TrueView AI can draw on the reviews it collects.
Can I offer a discount for a review?
Only for an honest review, and only in the open. In the US, the FTC’s 2024 rule bans offering anything in exchange for a review that says something in particular, positive or negative, and that condition counts whether you state it or only imply it. The FTC’s guide for businesses goes further: even an offer for any honest review should be disclosed in the review, because it can change how readers weigh it. In the UK, a review that hides the fact it was incentivised is a banned practice.
So if you offer anything, offer it for any honest review, say so in the request, and label the reviews that came from the offer.
What am I not allowed to do?
Three sets of rules cover most of the shoppers a Shopify store sells to. They differ in detail and agree on the basics.
In the US: the FTC’s rule on consumer reviews
In force since 21 October 2024, the rule (16 CFR Part 465) bans a business from writing, buying or selling reviews that misrepresent that the reviewer exists, that they used the product, or what their experience was. The FTC names AI-generated fake reviews as one example. It also bans:
- offering anything for a review on condition that it is positive, or negative;
- reviews written by the company’s own officers or managers, or asked of its staff, that don’t clearly disclose the connection;
- presenting a review website you control as independent;
- using unfounded legal threats, intimidation or false accusations to stop a review or get one removed, and implying that the reviews you show are all or most of them while you hold back the negative ones.
In the UK: the DMCC Act
Since 6 April 2025, Schedule 20 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act lists as banned: submitting or commissioning fake reviews, and reviews that conceal an incentive; publishing reviews in a misleading way; and publishing reviews without reasonable and proportionate steps to keep fake, concealed incentive and misleading reviews off your pages, and to take them down.
In the EU: the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive
Since 28 May 2022, under the changes made by Directive (EU) 2019/2161, a store that shows reviews must be able to tell shoppers whether and how it checks that they come from people who used or bought the product. Claiming they do, without reasonable and proportionate steps to check, is banned outright. So are fake reviews, and misrepresenting real ones, for example by showing only the positive ones.
What can I show before the first reviews arrive?
The answers a review would give: clear photos from more than one angle, sizes and materials, delivery times, and how returns work. None of it needs a review, and all of it is what a careful shopper looks for first.
If people already discuss the product in public, on review sites, forums and communities, a summary of that discussion can help too, as long as it says what it is. That is what TrueView AI does: it is a Shopify app that adds a clearly labelled AI review summary to product pages, written from public discussion of the product. Every card opens with an AI disclosure and closes with a note that it is not a verified customer review. When there isn't enough public discussion, it says so and publishes nothing for that product.
It is not a replacement for your own reviews, and it never pretends to be one. Keep asking your customers; their reviews are the ones the rules above protect.
Is there a faster way?
Not one the rules allow. A review from someone who never used the product is fake under all three sets of rules above, however it was produced, whether by staff, a friend, a paid service or an AI. Reviews of the same product bought from another seller raise their own problems; they are covered in reviews for dropshipping products.
What the app shows, and the checks behind it, are on How it works.
This guide summarises public rules for merchants. It isn’t legal advice: for a decision about your store, read the documents below or ask a lawyer.
Sources
Read on 5 November 2026.
- Soliciting and Paying for Online Reviews: A Guide for Marketers, Federal Trade Commission, January 2022.
- Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, Federal Trade Commission (eCFR), published 22 August 2024 (89 FR 68077), in force 21 October 2024.
- Federal Trade Commission Announces Final Rule Banning Fake Reviews and Testimonials, Federal Trade Commission, 14 August 2024.
- Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Schedule 20 (banned practices), paragraph 13, legislation.gov.uk, in force 6 April 2025.
- Directive (EU) 2019/2161, amending the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, EUR-Lex, applies from 28 May 2022.
- Guidance on the interpretation and application of Directive 2005/29/EC (2021/C 526/01), European Commission (EUR-Lex), 29 December 2021.
More in Guides; how the app itself works is in How it works.