Judge.me review

Export all existing product and store reviews, ratings, media, replies, verification labels, incentives and source metadata. Map each review to stable Shopify product and variant identifiers and record products that have been replaced, duplicated, bundled or regionalised. Inventory existing review widgets, theme snippets, structured data, Google or marketplace feeds, CRM requests, coupons and referral programmes. Capture review coverage, request volume, submission rate, media rate, rating distribution, product-page conversion, page performance and current moderation practices before installing Judge.me.

Start with Forever Free unless the business genuinely requires Awesome features such as advanced widgets, AI summaries, reminders, coupons, referrals, integrations, Google Shopping, Meta or TikTok syndication, deeper branding or product-level controls. Record the $15 USD every-30-day charge, 15-day trial, first billing date and immediate loss of Awesome features on downgrade. Note the limited refund exceptions. Decide whether an agency-partner application and paid implementation, migration, CRO or review-operations services are relevant; no public referral commission rate should be assumed.

Choose fulfilment, delivery or another approved order trigger and set wait times based on realistic product arrival and usage. Judge.me defaults to approximately 14 days after fulfilment, but delivery integrations should be used where fulfilment timing is a poor proxy. Configure eligible orders, past-order requests, multi-product logic, reminders, languages, sender domain and email, SMS, push, QR or review-link channels. Respect marketing opt-outs and local communications law. Where coupons or referral rewards are used, define eligible reviewers, product and media tiers, one-per-order or customer limits and clear incentivised-review disclosure.

Use the appropriate migration guide or import wizard and test a small sample before full import. Validate product handles or IDs, review body, rating, dates, reviewer details, images, source and status. Judge.me imports require review text, do not import videos and have a 100 MB single-file limit plus an operational daily limit that is not published. Imported reviews are generally unverified unless the source supplies evidence meeting Judge.me standards. Do not relabel imported reviews as verified or duplicate reviews through export and re-import. Reconcile imported, failed and unmapped records against the archive.

Choose transparent automatic publication or a documented manual or criteria-based moderation policy. Judge.me publishes all new reviews automatically by default. If reviews are held as Pending, resolve them within 14 days before automatic publication under Shopify requirements. Define valid reasons for hiding or archiving, personal-data and profanity handling, verified-review rules, replies, escalation to customer service and requests for reviewers to update feedback after resolution. Never edit review content without author approval or suppress valid negative feedback merely to improve ratings.

Install the Review Widget and Star Rating Badge first, then add only the carousel, all-reviews page, snippets, media gallery, Q&A, customer-account or checkout surfaces that serve a defined customer decision. Configure product and variant context and use product groups only where products are genuinely equivalent. Match branding and accessibility. Audit theme, Judge.me and SEO-app JSON-LD to avoid duplicate or disconnected Product and AggregateRating markup. Validate widget rendering, lazy loading, mobile layout, cumulative layout shift and page speed before broad rollout.

Connect Shop, Google Shopping, Meta, TikTok Shop, Google Business Profile and CRM or support integrations only where each destination is commercially useful and eligible. For Google Shopping, validate GTIN and product matching, eligible review sources and the fact that Judge.me's centralised feed is not visible in the merchant's own Merchant Center. Understand that external feeds can include reviews whose storefront status differs and that cross-store syndicated reviews may be excluded. Define Klaviyo, Gorgias, AfterShip, Shopify Flow and other integration ownership and prevent duplicate review requests or conflicting structured data.

Place controlled orders across simple products, variants, subscriptions where relevant, refunds, edited orders and multiple languages. Verify request scheduling, opt-out handling, sender authentication, form completion, media upload, coupon or referral fulfilment, verified badge, moderation, replies and update requests. Test every widget on mobile and desktop, structured data in Google's testing tools, and selected Shop, Google, Meta or TikTok destinations. Reconcile Judge.me requests, submissions and published reviews with Shopify orders and the migration baseline.

Publish daily launch checks, weekly moderation and service-recovery review and monthly commercial analysis. Track request delivery, submission and media rates, verified-review share, review coverage, rating distribution, pending-review age, response time, incentive use, widget engagement, product-page conversion, structured-data health, channel syndication and support cases. Keep Judge.me as the default value platform while the review programme remains product-review focused. Move to Loox when visual customer photos, videos and reviews presentation and referral-led DTC merchandising are materially more important, or to Okendo when customer attributes, surveys, loyalty and enterprise customer-profile data justify the cost.