How can I send my own Review Invites?

As soon as you have integrated the Trustbadge®, Trusted Shops automatically sends Review Invites to your customers. This means you don’t have to do anything else yourself, so you can sit back and look forward to receiving regular reviews. Our Review Invites are optimised for the best possible conversion, and are immediately associated with the trust brand Trusted Shops, thanks to our corporate design.

In addition to automatic sending via the Trustbadge, you have the option to manually send Review Invites using the Review Collector. This form of mailing is particularly suitable if you want to send invites in one fell swoop to many different customers who have not yet received an invite.

However, there are also a few use cases that cannot be completely covered by either the automatic sending of Review Invites or the Review Collector. This may be the case, for example, in the following situations:

• You would like to send individual Review Invites in addition to the automatic sending – for example, because a customer has not received an Automated Invite, but would still like to reward your shop with a positive review.
• You would like to design your Review Invite differently from our automatic Review Invite – e.g. using an e-mail that you design and send yourself.

So that you can prepare for such situations, you have the option of inviting your customers to submit a review via your individual review link. In order to be able to use the review link for sending your invites, two of the following steps are essential. Steps 3 and 4 depend on your use case and your personal requirements.

Step 1: Creating your review link

Your individual review link is based on the following URL:

https://www.trustedshops.com/reviews/evaluate?shop_id=TS-ID

However, before you can use this URL to send Review Invites, you will need to make one adjustment. Please copy your individual Trusted Shops ID into the bold area and replace the URL component "TS-ID" used as an example.

Step 2: Integrating the review link into an e-mail

Once you have customised the URL above, you can paste it into the email you want to send to your customers. Which email you use to integrate the review link is up to you and depends on the use case you want to cover. For example, you can include the link in your order confirmation email or in a single response to a customer enquiry. Of course, you can also integrate the link in the form of a button in your e-mails. To do this, simply create a button graphic, integrate it into the email of your choice and link it to your review link.

The review link takes your customers directly to a review form where they can leave their opinion on the goods, delivery and customer service.

As a closed review system, Trusted Shops only accepts reviews that are based on an actual order in your online shop. For this reason, your customers must enter their e-mail address and the appropriate order number within the review form. Both pieces of information are only used to identify the order and will not be published in your review profile.

In addition, your customers will receive an e-mail from Trusted Shops after submitting their review. Within this e-mail, customers confirm that they have submitted the review themselves with the click of a button.

Optional Step 3: Parameter transfer and coding of the review link

Once you have followed the previous two steps, the review link can be sent to your customers. In addition, you have the option of attaching parameters and coding the review link. In this way, you can provide your customers with a form in which the e-mail address and order number are already stored. This makes the review even more convenient for your customers.

To pass your customer's email address and order number to the review form in advance, you must append the two parameters buyerEmail and shopOrderID to the URL of the review link.

• buyerEmail: This parameter is mandatory. It submits the customer's e-mail address to the form. Please note that Base64 and URL encoding is required.
• shopOrderID: This parameter is also mandatory. It is used to transmit the order number to the form. Please note that Base64 and URL encoding is also required for this.

Please take note the following when coding. On the one hand, the parameters are appended to the URL with "&" instead of "?", deviating from the standard. On the other hand, dynamic data is to be transferred using the parameters. This is why you should use variables within the review link in the programming language used by your shop system.

When using the programming language PHP, the transfer of the e-mail address could look like this, for example:

https://www.trustedshops.com/reviews/evaluate?shop_id=XFD9974BBC558C007CD46431D056DF230&buyerEmail=<?php echo urlencode(base64_encode($buyerEmail));?>&shopOrderID=<?php echo urlencode(base64_encode($shopOrderID));?>

The exact definition of the variable to be used should be taken from the documentation of your shop system as it is different from one system to the next. If you have any queries about coding, you can contact our second-level support directly via the e-mail address productintegration@trustedshops.com.

Optional Step 4: Deactivating the automatic sending of review requests

Would you like to send your own personally-designed Review Invites, with integrated review link, to all your customers? If so, it’s a good idea to deactivate the automatic sending of Review Invites triggered by the Trustbadge. By doing this, you can prevent your customers from receiving several different Review Invites and possibly becoming confused.

You can switch off the automatic sending of review requests via the Trustbadge in your eTrusted Control Centre. 

1. Log in to the eTrusted Control Centre.
   
2. Click on the gear symbol ("Settings")() in the main navigation area. Then, click "Channel Settings" ().
3. Select the channel () that you want to deactivate the automated invite dispatch for.
4. Open the "Optimise review collection" tab (). Then, open the "Service Reviews" tab ().
5. Deactivate the activation switch in the upper right corner ().
6. Click on "Save" ().

This deactivates the automated review invite dispatch for your Service Reviews.

Do you also collect product reviews? Then, please also follow the following three steps.

1. Open the "Product Reviews" tab ().
2. Deactivate the activation switch in the upper right corner ().
3. Click on "Save" ().

You have now deactivated the automated review invite dispatch for your Product Reviews.