Reviews and ratings

Reviews build trust. Buyers are more willing to deal with a seller who has a row of good ratings, and sellers have a reason to behave well. With reviews switched on, members can give each listing one to five stars and a short text, and every seller gets an average rating across all their listings.

Switch reviews on

Reviews are an add-on:

1. In the admin panel, click Addons in the sidebar.
2. Click Reviews.
3. If only buyers who paid through your site should be able to review, tick Only for paid transactions (see below).
4. Click Enable.

To change Only for paid transactions later, click Disable, tick or untick the box, then click Enable again. Afterwards, check that the button reads Disable, which means reviews are on.

Once reviews are on, a Reviews item appears in the sidebar, and Rating becomes one of the sort orders you can choose in Publishing options.

How members leave a review

1. On a listing, the member clicks Leave a Review (or the star rating, if the listing already has reviews).
2. On the reviews page they click Add New Review, choose a Rating, write their Review and solve the captcha.
3. They click Post Review.

The rules:

Rule	Detail
Signed in	Only signed-in members can review.
Not your own	Sellers can’t review their own listings (You can not review yourself.).
One per listing	A member can review each listing once (You already added a review).
Length	The text must be between 5 and 1,000 characters.
Paid only (optional)	With Only for paid transactions on, only members who bought the listing through your site can review it (You can only add a review if you bought this product).

The review is published straight away, and the seller gets the ad-review email with the rating and the text.

Where ratings show

• On the listing, as stars with the number of reviews, linking to its reviews page.
• On the seller: their average across all their listings, shown with the seller’s details on listings (Nova) and on their public profile.
• In search, if you or a buyer sort by Rating.

Reviews only from buyers

Only for paid transactions makes reviews much harder to fake: a review needs a paid order for that listing. That only works if members can actually buy through your site, with the Buy Now button. Set that up first: Let members sell with Buy Now. Without it, nobody will be able to leave a review.

Moderate reviews

Click Reviews in the sidebar to see every review, with its rating, listing, author, date and status. You can filter by member, rating and status. Click a review to edit it; set its status to inactive to hide an unfair or abusive review. Hidden reviews no longer appear in the list of reviews. The star averages of the listing and the seller are recalculated the next time someone reviews that listing.

Hiding a review doesn’t email anyone. If you remove a review because it broke your rules, it’s good practice to tell the author why.

Related guides

• Let members sell with Buy Now — needed for reviews from buyers only.
• Verified members — another way to show who can be trusted.
• Addons — the other add-ons you can switch on.