Playbook: reviews are not being collected

What this playbook covers

This guide helps you resolve a situation where new reviews are not arriving despite customers completing purchases, or where your review count has stalled. You will learn how to diagnose the problem, apply fixes in the correct order, and put monitoring in place to prevent recurrence.

The symptom

You notice that no new reviews have been collected in recent days or weeks, even though orders continue to be placed. Either you see zero new reviews appearing in your review widget or dashboard, or the review count has stopped growing when it previously was active.

This symptom can mask several different underlying causes. The following diagnosis checklist will help you identify which one applies to your situation.

Diagnosis checklist

Work through these checks in order. Tick each one off as you verify the status.

Review invitations are not being sent

• Navigate to your Trust profile invitation settings.
• Confirm that review invitations are enabled (not switched off).
• Check the timing trigger: invitations should be scheduled to send at a specific point after purchase (for example, 3 days, 7 days, or 14 days). Verify this timing is set to a value that makes sense for your business.
• Look for the email sending configuration. Confirm that an active email provider or SMTP setting is connected and not paused or disabled.
• If you have recently changed these settings, note the exact date of the change. Check whether review collection stopped before or after that date.

Review invitations are queued but not progressing

• Open your invitation lifecycle dashboard or queue status page.
• Look for recent orders (from the past 3 to 7 days).
• Check the status column for these orders. If invitations show a status of 'queued' or 'pending' but have not moved to 'sent' within the expected timeframe, they are stuck.
• Note how many orders have invitations in queued state. If the number is growing, the queue is not being processed.

The review widget is not embedded on your storefront

• Go to any live product page on your storefront.
• Right-click and select 'View Page Source' (or use your browser's developer tools).
• Search for the widget embed snippet. This is typically a <script> tag containing a reference to your Trust profile or review widget ID.
• If the snippet is not present, the widget code has not been added to your storefront pages.
• Check your storefront theme or template settings to see whether the widget embed was ever added, or whether it was removed in a recent update.

Your Trust profile is not set to public

• Log into your Trust profile settings.
• Look for the visibility or privacy setting.
• Confirm the profile is set to 'public' rather than 'private' or 'draft'.
• If the profile is not public, review invitations and the widget itself will not be visible to external customers, even if everything else is configured correctly.

How to fix the problem

Follow these steps in order. Do not skip ahead.

Step 1: Confirm your Trust profile is public

1. Log into your account and navigate to Trust profile settings.
2. Find the visibility or privacy control.
3. Set the status to 'public'.
4. Save the change and wait 2 to 5 minutes for the change to propagate.

Step 2: Check and activate invitation settings

1. Go to invitation settings within your Trust profile.
2. Confirm that invitations are enabled (toggle switched on).
3. Set the timing trigger to a reasonable value (for example, 5 days after order completion).
4. Verify that an email provider is connected and active. If no email configuration exists, add one now.
5. Save all changes.

Step 3: Send a manual test invitation

1. In your invitation dashboard, find the option to send a test or manual invitation.
2. Enter the email address of a test customer or your own email address.
3. Send the test invitation.
4. Check your email inbox (and spam folder) within 5 minutes to confirm the invitation arrived.
5. If the test invitation does not arrive, contact your email provider to check for delivery issues or blocks.

Step 4: Verify the widget embed is present on your storefront

1. Visit a live product page on your storefront.
2. Open your browser's developer tools (F12 or right-click > Inspect).
3. Press Ctrl+F (or Cmd+F on Mac) and search for your widget ID or the word 'review' in the page source.
4. Confirm the widget embed snippet is present. It should look similar to: <script src="https://[platform]/widget.js" data-profile-id="..."></script>.
5. If the snippet is missing, go to your storefront theme or template settings and add the widget embed code to the product page template.
6. After adding the code, clear your browser cache and reload the product page to verify the widget now appears.

Step 5: Check the widget's allowed origins

1. Go to your Trust profile widget settings.
2. Find the 'allowed origins' or 'trusted domains' list.
3. Verify that your storefront's domain (for example, www.yourstore.com) is listed.
4. If your domain is missing, add it now.
5. Save the change.

Step 6: Monitor the invitation lifecycle

1. Open your invitation lifecycle dashboard.
2. Filter for orders from the past 7 days.
3. Check the status column for these orders.
4. Confirm that invitations are now progressing from 'queued' to 'sent' within your configured timing window.
5. If invitations are still stuck in queued state after 24 hours, contact support with a screenshot of the dashboard.

Prevention: keeping reviews flowing

Once you have fixed the immediate problem, put these practices in place to prevent future collection failures.

Monitor invitation completion rate

Check your invitation lifecycle dashboard once per week. Look at orders from 7 to 14 days ago and confirm that at least 90% of them have invitations in 'sent' status. A sudden drop in this percentage is an early warning sign of a configuration problem or queue issue. Set a calendar reminder to do this check every Monday.

Re-verify the widget after storefront changes

Whenever your storefront undergoes a theme update, redesign, or template change, manually verify that the widget embed snippet is still present in the page source. Theme updates can silently remove custom code. Check the page source within 24 hours of any storefront change to catch this immediately.

Keep invitation settings documented

Create a simple document listing your current invitation settings: the timing trigger (for example, '5 days after purchase'), the email provider in use, and the names of any team members who have access to these settings. This makes it easier to spot unexpected changes and to onboard new team members correctly.

Test invitations quarterly

Every three months, send a manual test invitation to yourself and confirm it arrives within the expected timeframe. This catches email delivery issues before they affect real customers.

Summary

Review collection failures usually stem from one of four causes: disabled invitations, queued invitations that are not progressing, a missing widget embed, or a private Trust profile. Use the diagnosis checklist to identify which applies to you, then follow the fix steps in order. Finally, implement the prevention practices so you catch future problems early. Monitor your invitation completion rate weekly and re-verify your widget embed after any storefront change.