What your customers see in the widget

Last updated: April 17, 2026

The review widget is a structured browsing experience designed to help shoppers decide whether your product is right for them — quickly. This page walks through every piece, top to bottom.

The metrics row

Screenshot of the widget metrics row — manual capture, drop in here.

Four tiles at the very top:

  • Reviews — total count
  • Positive — percentage that are 4–5 star
  • Photos — number of photos attached across reviews
  • Verified — count of verified-buyer reviews

All four tiles always render (they show 0 when empty, not hidden). The tiles themselves are static — they don’t scroll the page on click.

Rating distribution

Screenshot of the rating distribution bars — manual capture, drop in here.

When enabled in the widget editor, a 1–5 star distribution bar chart sits beside the rating score inside the summary panel — score and stars on the left, the bars on the right, vertically aligned. Each bar is clickable and filters the review list below to that rating.

Customer pulse

Screenshot of the Customer Pulse section — manual capture, drop in here.

A section titled Mentioned most (inside what we call “Customer Pulse” internally) showing the top tags customers use in their reviews — phrases like “quality materials”, “fast shipping”, “easy setup”. Up to five tags, ordered by frequency. Each renders as a pill that filters the review list below.

Pulse refreshes in the background when new reviews land. New products without enough reviews simply don’t show it.

Screenshot of the widget photo gallery row — manual capture, drop in here.

A 6-thumbnail grid showing photos from reviews. If more exist, the last tile shows “+N” to indicate how many additional photos are available. Clicking any thumbnail opens a lightbox with prev/next navigation and a counter. The backing query caps at 12 photos total.

If a product has no photo reviews yet, the gallery slot is replaced by a “Write a Review” prompt — see the Write a Review button section below.

Filter and sort toolbar

Screenshot of the widget filter + sort toolbar — manual capture, drop in here.

Under the pulse section is a toolbar with:

  • Rating filter pills — exact-match: 5★, 4★, 3★, 2★, 1★ (tap a pill to filter). We don’t do ranges like “4+ stars.”
  • Photos only toggle
  • Search — type to filter across review title, body, and tags. Matched terms are highlighted, and the body clamp drops on matching cards so the matched word is always visible. Clicking the X clears the search.
  • Clear — resets filters (rating, photos, tags). Search has its own clear button next to the input.
  • Sort dropdown — the default enabled list is: Most Relevant (default), Most Helpful, Newest, Highest Rated, Most Detailed, Best Media. You can enable additional sorts (Lowest Rated, Critical First, Featured) in the widget editor.

Customers researching a specific concern find their answer fast, which we’ve found keeps them on the page longer and improves conversion.

Review cards

Screenshot of individual review cards — manual capture, drop in here.

Each review shows:

  • Star rating
  • Review title — if the customer set one
  • Review body — with a “Read more” toggle if it’s long
  • Reviewer name — as the customer typed it into the form, or “Anonymous” if they chose not to provide one
  • Verified buyer badge — if the customer came through a review request email
  • Date posted — relative (“3 weeks ago”)
  • Photos — attached images, click to open in the lightbox
  • Helpful / Not helpful vote buttons — customers can vote
  • Merchant reply — if a reply exists for the review, it renders below in a muted block

Merchant replies

Replies you publish from the admin appear right below the relevant review. They render in a muted background block with a subtle border — labelled as a reply from your store. Great for thanking customers publicly or addressing concerns in a negative review.

Write a Review button

Screenshot of the Write a Review CTA — manual capture, drop in here.

A button that lets a shopper kick off a new review chat. Clicking it navigates to /apps/betterreviews/review/chat?... — our Shopify App Proxy redirect URL — which opens the BetterReviews chat scoped to this product. (No modal variant today.)

The button has two render positions depending on whether the product has photo reviews:

  • With photos: the CTA renders below the rating distribution as a wide button on the left side of the Pulse section, alongside the photo grid on the right.
  • Without photos: the CTA replaces the photo grid on the right side of the Pulse section, paired with a small “Leave a review for [product]” header and a one-line copy. On mobile, the header and copy are hidden — only the button shows.

The link is rendered with rel="nofollow noopener" — it’s a transactional CTA, not an SEO target, so we tell search engines and AI crawlers (Googlebot, GPTBot, ClaudeBot, etc.) not to follow it. Your widget’s actual SEO value comes from the rendered review content above this button — see the Review widget overview for how that flows into rich snippets.

What your customers don’t see

  • Pending and rejected reviews — only approved reviews show on the widget.
  • Internal quality scores or sentiment analysis — admin-only signals.
  • Photos hidden by the marketing-ready filter — if you’ve turned on Settings → Branding → Widget photos → Only feature marketing-ready photos, customer photos that BetterReviews flagged as not marketing-grade (too dark, blurry, product not visible, etc.) are hidden from the widget. Imported reviews from Loox/Judge.me/Okendo always show their photos regardless. See Customizing the widget for how to toggle this.