Would you like product reviews that build trust the way Amazon’s do? The Advanced Reviews module in Merchant Pro replaces WooCommerce’s basic reviews with richer ones, including a review popup, a rating summary, customer photos, image carousels, and sorting.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to configure and enable the Advanced Reviews module in Merchant Pro.
Before you get started, make sure you’ve installed and activated the Merchant plugin on your WordPress site. If you’re using premium modules, ensure you have Merchant Pro installed and active. This feature requires Merchant Pro.
The module adds a user-friendly review popup, an eye-catching review summary, customer photo uploads, a review images carousel, sorting, and more. Here’s an Advanced Reviews section on a WooCommerce product page:
When a customer clicks the Write a Review button, a stylish review modal opens where they can leave their review:
For comparison, here’s the standard WooCommerce review section without Merchant Pro. It has no sorting, no review popup with the product image and description, no rating summary, no photo uploads, no image carousel, and a much plainer design:
1. Open the Advanced Reviews module
First, open your Merchant dashboard by clicking the Merchant menu in the left sidebar of your WordPress admin area. Find the Build Trust section, and click the Advanced Reviews module to open its settings page:
2. Configure content settings
In the Content section, configure how your reviews look and behave:
- Review options: Choose from three review types: Image and text, Image only, or Text only.
- Photos upload limit: Set how many images a customer can add to a review (default value: 6).
- Default reviews sorting: Set the default sort order: Newest, Oldest, Top rated, Low rated, or Photo first. Customers can also change the sorting from a dropdown in the reviews section.
- Pagination type: Choose Default (page numbers) or Load more button.
- Title: The title of the reviews section on your product pages (default value: “What our customers are saying”).
- Title HTML tag: The HTML tag for the section title: H1 through H6, or div (default value: H2).
- Hide title: Hide the section title.
- Description: A description shown below the title (blank by default).
- Title and description alignment: Left, Center, or Right.
- Review images carousel: Show a carousel of the first image from each review. When on, you also get:
- Total images: The number of images in the carousel (default value: 12).
- Columns: The number of images per slide (default value: 3).
- Carousel Title: The title of the review images carousel (default value: “Customer Images”).
- Hook order: The position of the reviews section on product pages. Lower values place it higher; higher values place it lower (default value: 10).
3. Configure review collection settings
- Send automated emails for review requests: Turn on to email customers automatically asking for reviews.
- After the order is completed, send the review request after the following number of days: How many days after order completion the request email goes out.
- Discount for reviews: Turn on to offer a discount in exchange for a review:
- Offer a discount specifically for leaving a photo review: When on, only customers who upload an image with their review qualify for a discount. Text-only reviews receive no code.
- Discount expire after: How long before the discount code expires.
4. Configure email settings
If you turned on Send automated emails for review requests, review the email templates in this section, customize them, and set them to Active. If you didn’t enable automatic review request emails, you can skip this section.
Understanding the review email logic
The Collect Reviews feature automatically requests reviews from customers and, if you choose, rewards them with a discount code. Here’s how it works behind the scenes:
- Review check after order completion: When an order is marked Completed, the system checks which products the customer has already reviewed and marks the rest as pending review.
- Pending reviews on the order page: Pending products appear on the order details page, ready for a review.
- Review request email: Scheduled to send after a set number of days. The system checks again first and skips the email if all reviews are already in.
- Review reminder email: Scheduled if the customer hasn’t reviewed yet, with the same check before sending.
- Discount code email: Once all reviews for the order are complete, a follow-up email sends a coupon code as a reward.
- Discount reminder email: Scheduled if the coupon goes unused, with a check for whether it was used before sending.
- Image requirement check: If enabled, reviews must include an image to count as complete and trigger the coupon reward.
Additional notes
- All email types (review request, reminder, coupon reward, coupon reminder) are editable and previewable from the admin dashboard.
- Save your settings before previewing changes to email content.
- If an email type is turned off, scheduled emails of that type won’t send.
- Email content supports dynamic tags such as
{first_name},{last_name},{order_id},{order_url_open},{order_url_close}, and{discount_code}for personalized messages. - Emails send based on real-time data: if the needed action already happened, the scheduled email won’t send.
- For discount code emails, if an order contains multiple products, the customer must review all of them to qualify.
- Customers receive one review request email per order, not one per product. The email links to the order page where they can review each product.
- If a customer already reviewed some products from a previous order, they don’t need to review them again. As long as each product in the current order has at least one review from them, they qualify for the discount.
Summary flow
- The order is completed.
- Products without reviews are identified.
- A review request email is scheduled.
- If no review comes in, a reminder is sent.
- After all reviews are complete, a coupon is sent.
- If the coupon goes unused, a reminder to use it is sent.
5. Configure review carousels
To display selected reviews as a carousel, turn on the Use reviews carousel option, then configure:
- Display featured reviews: Turn the carousel on or off.
- Testimonial title: The carousel title.
- Description: Shown under the carousel title, or left blank to show the title alone.
- Select Reviews: Pick the reviews to include, up to three.
- Number of reviews at once: How many reviews show at the same time, with arrows to scroll through the rest.
- Centered review alignment: When on, the review text is centered; when off, it’s left aligned.
- Show as boxed: When on, each review shows in a box, with extra settings for the border.
- Show product image: When on, the related product image shows above the review.
- Show on: Shop page displays the carousel on the shop archive, before or after the main content. Shortcode lets you insert a shortcode to display the carousel on any page.
6. Configure the look and feel
The Look and Feel section lets you customize the colors of your reviews and the review modal:
- Title color: The color of the reviews section title (default value: #212121).
- Description color: The color of the description below the title (default value: #777).
- Stars color: The main color of the rating stars (default value: #FFA441).
- Stars background color: The background color of the rating stars (default value: #757575).
- Progress bar color: The main color of the progress bars in the rating summary (default value: #212121).
- Progress bar background color: The background color of the progress bars (default value: #F5F5F5).
- Dividers color: The color of the dividers between reviews (default value: #e9e9e9).
- Button color: The text color of the Write a Review button (default value: #FFF).
- Button color (hover): The text color of the button on hover (default value: #FFF).
- Button background color: The background color of the button (default value: #212121).
- Button background color (hover): The background color of the button on hover (default value: #757575).
- Modal close icon color: The color of the close icon in the review modal (default value: #757575).
- Modal close icon color (hover): The color of the close icon on hover (default value: #212121).
- Modal title color: The title color in the review modal (default value: #212121).
- Modal description color: The description color in the review modal (default value: #777).
- Modal textarea color: The text color inside the “Your review” box (default value: #777).
- Modal textarea background color: The background color of the “Your review” box (default value: #FFF).
- Modal background color: The background color of the review modal (default value: #F5F5F5).
If you made any changes, click the Save button at the top of the page.
7. Activate the Advanced Reviews shortcode (for developers)
The Advanced Reviews module is also available as a shortcode. Activating it automatically deactivates the Hook order option, so the reviews section won’t appear on the frontend until you add the shortcode to your product pages manually. This prevents duplicate content when the shortcode is used. The shortcode is:
[merchant_module_advanced_reviews]To use it, toggle the Use shortcode option on and save the settings:
8. Enable the Advanced Reviews module
To activate the module, click the Enable button at the top of the page:
Troubleshooting
The Advanced Reviews module only appears on a product page when WooCommerce’s Enable reviews option is on for that product. This option is on by default, but it’s worth checking if the reviews section doesn’t appear after you activate the module.
To find it, open the product from the Products » All Products menu, scroll down to the Product data section, and click the Advanced tab:
Frequently asked questions
Below, we’ve answered some of the most common questions about the Advanced Reviews module.
Why isn’t the Advanced Reviews section showing on a product?
The module only appears when WooCommerce’s Enable reviews option is on for that product. Check it under Products » All Products, in the Advanced tab of the Product data section.
Can I reward customers for leaving a review?
Yes. Turn on Discount for reviews to send a coupon code after a customer reviews their order. You can also require a photo review to qualify for the discount.
That’s it! You’ve successfully set up the Advanced Reviews module in Merchant Pro to add Amazon-style social proof to your product pages.
Next, would you like another way to build trust with shoppers? Check out our guide on the Product Brand Image module to learn more.
