How do I get more reviews on Etsy?

You get more reviews by asking at the moment your customer is genuinely delighted, and that moment is when the parcel opens, not a few days later when Etsy's automated reminder lands in her inbox. Most of the advice out there is about wording, and wording matters far less than timing, because nobody is persuaded into a review. She either feels like saying something lovely right now or the feeling has already been used up.

I know this because of how I behave as a buyer, which is to say, badly. I buy things constantly and I review almost none of them, not out of meanness, the parcel arrives, I love the thing, life carries on, and by the time anyone asks me to say so publicly the moment has quietly gone. I once bought the same template twice from the same Etsy seller without realising it was the same shop, so I liked her work enough to pay for it twice, and I never left her a review either time. I sold on Etsy for years myself, and even knowing exactly what a review means to the person on the other end, I am still that customer.

Why do reviews matter so much on Etsy?

Two reasons, and they pull in the same direction.

The first is the next stranger. When someone lands on your listing she is weighing you against a page full of shops selling something similar, and your reviews are the only voice on that page that isn't yours. Your photos say what you hope the product is, her reviews, especially the ones with photos in them, say what actually turned up.

The second is Etsy itself. Etsy's search pays attention to how happy a shop keeps its customers, and reviews feed into that, so a shop quietly collecting 5-star reviews gets a small steady tailwind in search. It's a smaller lever than your titles, tags and first photo, but it's real, and unlike those it compounds, because every review keeps working on every future stranger.

So yes, worth caring about. Just not worth the anxious refreshing most of us do about it, and here's why.

How many of my orders will actually turn into reviews?

Fewer than feels fair. Somewhere around 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 orders leaving a review is a perfectly healthy shop, and plenty of lovely shops run lower. The rest of your customers are not unhappy, they are me with that template, delighted and silent, and Etsy gives them 100 days after delivery to get round to it, which mostly means 100 days to forget.

That's worth knowing before you try to fix it, because the obvious fixes are against the rules. You cannot offer a discount, a freebie or a giveaway entry in exchange for a review, Etsy treats that as review manipulation and it can cost you the shop. And even if you could, a bought review reads bought, and the stranger it was supposed to persuade can usually smell it.

The realistic aim is gentler than any of that. You are nudging a few more of the delighted-and-silent people over the line, at the one moment they're actually delighted.

When should I ask for a review?

When the parcel opens, because that is the peak of the whole relationship. Etsy will email her days later, once the mug is in the cupboard and the candle is half burnt, and that email reads as admin. Your ask needs to already be inside the box, waiting for the exact moment she's holding the thing and smiling at it.

Which means the unboxing deserves more of your attention than the wording does. The tissue paper, the ribbon, the way it's wrapped... the parcel is the last thing you make for her, and it's what she's holding when she decides whether you get a review. A plain jiffy bag isn't a moment. A parcel that feels like a little gift is, and reviews come from moments.

A handwritten note works where a printed card doesn't, and I think it's because a printed card is packaging while a handwritten line is a person. A couple of lines in your own handwriting, her name at the top, a thank you, and one graceful ask... if this made you smile, a review would mean the world, it's how small shops like mine get found. Then leave it there. A follow-up message chasing the review turns a happy customer into a pestered one, and pestered customers write 3-star reviews.

And when something goes wrong, speed is the whole strategy. A replacement posted the same day with an apology stops more bad reviews than any clever wording ever has, because what she remembers, and what she writes about, is how quickly you sorted it. I had orders go wrong in my own shops, wrong fabric, squashed boxes, post that vanished, and the fast fixes turned into some of the warmest reviews I ever got.

Is a review the most valuable thing a happy customer can give me?

I do want to push on something here, because for years I treated reviews as the whole prize, and I don't think they are.

Look at what a review actually is. Your customer, at her most delighted, writes something glowing, and it goes onto a page Etsy controls, under a search box Etsy controls, where the stranger reading it is shown 10 other shops before she's finished scrolling. Every review you earn is proof you hand to Etsy, on ground Etsy owns, dressing a shop window that was never really yours.

But have you considered what that same delighted customer could do for you if you could reach her directly? A review talks to strangers, once, on borrowed ground. The woman who wrote it liked your work enough to say so in public, and she would very likely buy the next thing you make, if she ever hears it exists. The person who left the review is worth more than the review

So the note in your parcel gets a second job. It still asks for the review, that's real and it helps. And it also offers her a way to keep hearing from you, first look at new collections, a little list of people who asked, which is the one route back to you that doesn't run through Etsy's search box. The review helps the next stranger find you. The list means you're not living on strangers at all.

If you want help building that side of it, The Handmade Launch List is free and it includes the card that goes in the parcel, so the note you're already writing does two jobs instead of one.

The next parcel you wrap will land in the hands of someone who already loves your work, and the note inside can ask for more than 5 stars