Overview
The Leave review earning rule allows you to reward customers for submitting both product and shop reviews, boosting customer engagement, social proof, and store sales.
📘 Note: The Leave review rule natively rewards only reviews submitted through Growave Reviews. If you use another reviews app, you can still reward customers with Growave using Custom actions and Shopify Flow. Check our guides for Judge.me, Loox, and Klaviyo Reviews.
Benefits
Generate authentic social proof: Positive customer reviews build trust with new shoppers and directly increase conversion rates across product pages.
Incentivize rich media uploads: Rewarding extra points for photo and video submissions encourages shoppers to share high-quality visual user-generated content (UGC).
Plan availability
The Leave review earning rule is available on all plans (including Free).
Rewarding with Points or Discounts (Amount, Percentage) is available on all plans.
Rewarding with Free Shipping and Free Product is available starting from the Entry plan and higher.
Rewarding with Fixed store credit or a Gift Card is available starting from the Growth plan and higher.
Video review uploads are available starting from the Growth plan. On lower plans, customers can earn extra points for media by uploading photos.
Step-by-step configuration
To enable and configure the Leave review rule, follow these steps in your Growave admin:
Navigate to Rewards → Points → Ways to earn.
Click Add ways to earn and select Leave review (or click Edit if the rule is already added).
Set the Status to Enabled or Disabled using the radio buttons in the right sidebar.
Configure the main settings described below.
Configure the following fields:
Title: The public name of the action displayed to customers (e.g., Leave a review).
Description: A short explanation showing customers how to earn the reward (e.g., Leave a review to earn points!).
Language: Select the language version of your storefront and translate the title and description. Learn more about multi-language translation.
Action icon: Upload a custom .jpg or .png file (under 10 MB) to change the icon shown in the storefront. If left blank, it defaults to the standard review start icon.
Review the How it will work summary box in the right sidebar to verify your settings before clicking Save.
How it will work summary
The How it will work box in the right sidebar summarizes your configuration. For example, if you set a base reward of 100 points and 50 extra points for media, it shows:
Customers leave a review via Growave Reviews
Get 100 points
Get extra 50 point(s) for uploading media
In the storefront Ways to earn list, the rule displays the reward as a range (e.g., 100–150 points). The first number represents the base reward, and the second represents the maximum points possible when media is included.
Main settings of the Leave review action
Reward type
You can configure the Leave review rule to issue one of multiple reward types:
Points
Amount discount
Percentage discount
Free shipping
Free product
Gift card
Fixed store credit
✅ Tip: For a detailed breakdown of all reward types and their advanced settings, see our How to set up rewardable actions guide.
Reward value
Depending on your selected Reward type, define the value of the reward.
Give extra points for leaving a review with media
You can give bonus points for reviews that include a photo or video to encourage more detailed, visual feedback.
This setting is available only when the reward type is set to Points.
Any uploaded photo or video qualifies for the bonus.
Limit how many times a customer can get a reward
Set how often a customer can earn rewards for leaving reviews within a specific timeframe:
1 day
7 days
30 days
365 days
Lifetime
Delay the reward
Optionally delay issuing the reward for a set number of days after the review is published. If a delay is set, the reward is distributed only after the review is published and the specified delay duration has passed.
Available exclusively for customers with listed tags
Restricts this rule to specific customer segments using Shopify customer tags.
⚠️ Important: If a customer does not have the required tag, the related storefront widgets and checkout extensions are hidden to avoid confusing ineligible users.
Review moderation and legal compliance
Incentivized reviews disclosure
When a customer receives any reward for posting a review, many platforms, including Google Merchant Center, classify such reviews as incentivized. In some jurisdictions, you may be legally required to disclose incentivized reviews for transparency.
To display an incentivized review indicator on your storefront:
In the Growave admin, navigate to Reviews → Settings → Moderation and display.
Scroll to the Review source indicators section and enable the indicator.
Automatic publishing and the mandatory 14-day rule
If "Automatically publish reviews" is disabled: Rewards are issued only after you manually publish the review (+ reward delay period, if set).
If "Automatically publish reviews" is enabled: Reviews meeting your auto-publish rating threshold publish immediately. Under Shopify regulations (effective July 8, 2024), all new reviews below your auto-publishing rating threshold are also automatically published after up to 14 days, even if they don’t meet your threshold. This setting is mandatory and cannot be disabled.
You can manually publish or unpublish reviews during the 14-day window. If you unpublish a review before the 14-day period ends, it will not be auto-published again.
Deleting reviews does not revoke rewards
If a customer receives a reward for submitting a review, deleting that review in your admin panel does not automatically revoke the issued reward.
If you need to revoke rewards for a deleted or illegitimate review, you must deduct the points manually from the customer's profile under Rewards → Customers.
Prevent reward abuse: Collect only verified reviews
To prevent shoppers from posting spam reviews to farm loyalty rewards, you can restrict review submissions to actual buyers:
Navigate to Reviews → Settings → General → Review request rules.
Enable the Allow reviews only from verified buyers setting. When enabled, the review form is restricted exclusively to customers with confirmed purchases, and orders that are refunded or partially refunded are disqualified from submitting reviews.
Global settings and exclusions impact
Product eligibility exclusions: Rewards will not be issued for reviews on products that are excluded from the Rewards program. Learn more about how to exclude customers or products.
VIP Tier multipliers: If your store uses VIP Tiers with a points multiplier, the multiplier applies to the base points/store credit issued for leaving a review (when the reward is set to Points or Store credit).
Customer experience
Depending on your Growave plan and theme setup, customers interact with the Leave review rule across several storefront touchpoints:
Rewards pop-up widget: Displays in the Ways to earn section with a dedicated card showing the reward title and value (or range, e.g.,
100–150 points).Logged-in customers: Clicking the card expands it to show the Leave review button and description. Clicking the button opens a modal with the list of all purchased products the customer has not yet reviewed.
When reviewing a product, Step 3 displays a reward badge: "Earn extra points [value] by sharing a photo or video!" if media bonus points are enabled.
Once the review is submitted, a confirmation screen appears stating: "Thank you! We hope you thoroughly enjoy your reward," displaying the reward earned (e.g., Points: 150 points) alongside a Rewards button and a Done button.
Clicking Done closes the modal. To continue reviewing remaining purchased items, the customer simply re-opens the Leave review action from the widget or page.
Guest visitors: Prompts the visitor to Sign up or Log in before they can review products.
Rewards page: Displays in the Ways to earn points grid with a card showing the title and reward range. On hover, customers see a Leave a review button that opens the modal with Leave a review button and rule description. Clicking the Leave a review button starts the review flow.
Rewards page extension for Shopify new customer accounts: Displays in the Ways to earn points grid as an interactive card with rule title, reward value and Leave review link. Clicking the link opens the modal showing rule description and the Leave review button. Clicking the button opens the review flow.
📘 Notes:
For a detailed, step-by-step walkthrough of the review submission modal (including star ratings, review attributes, and media upload steps), see our guide on Customer experience: Leave a review flow.
The customer experience for reviews submitted through automated review request emails differs from direct on-site submissions via storefront widgets or product pages. When following an email link, customers enter a continuous multi-product review loop that prompts them to review all items from their order in a single session. To learn more about these notifications, see our guide on Set up automated review request emails in Growave.
If you have any questions or need assistance, contact our support team at [email protected] or use the chat icon in the bottom-right corner of your Growave admin panel. We're here to help! 🤗