Custom review form questions worth asking

Why do star ratings leave shoppers guessing?

A pair of shoes has three stars. Were they too small, badly made, or just not the colour in the photo? The shopper reading the review cannot tell, and neither can you. Most reviewers write a line or two and stop, and the line rarely answers the question the next buyer has.

A custom question asks it for them. When forty reviewers have each picked “Runs small”, “True to size” or “Runs large”, the next shopper sees a size verdict, which helps her more than any one review. You get something too: a count of how many buyers found the shoes small, which is a better reason to change the size chart than one angry email.

Which questions should a review form ask?

Ask about the product as it was used, or about the person who used it, and only where the answer helps someone decide. Product questions cover fit, size, how long something lasted, or how hard it was to assemble. Questions about the reviewer cover the things a shopper wants to match: skin type, height, which machine they brew with.

Leave out questions that only help you. “How did you hear about us?” and “Would you recommend us?” are fair things to ask, but a shopper reading reviews gains nothing from the answers, so they belong in a separate private survey, as our article on the customer satisfaction survey explains.

Should answers be choices, a scale or free text?

Use choices or a scale, and let the review text carry everything else. A fixed answer can be counted and filtered; free text cannot, and it repeats what the review box already asks for. A scale fits answers that run from one end to another, such as small to large, and lets you show an average bar above the reviews. Plain choices fit answers with no order, such as skin types.

The big review apps offer more formats. Judge.me's article on custom forms, updated on 2 July 2026, lists radio buttons, checkboxes, rating scales and open-ended questions. Yotpo's page on custom review forms, last updated on 28 December 2022, offers multiple choice or free text. More formats is not better here: every free-text question is one more box a buyer has to think about.

Should custom questions be required?

No. Keep the stars required and everything else optional. A buyer who does not know how a shoe fits because she bought it as a gift should be able to skip the question, not make up an answer to get past it. A forced answer from someone who does not know is noise in exactly the count you wanted to trust.

Judge.me's article suggests putting important questions first and making them required if necessary. We disagree, for the reason above: the review is the point, and every required field is a reason for someone to close the page without leaving one.

How many questions is too many?

Two or three is plenty for most products, and five is the most we would ask. Count what the form already holds before you add any. Our demo shop Glyna's review page, read on 3 November 2026, already shows 7 controls: the stars, a name, an email address, a box to let shoppers ask the reviewer questions, the review text, photos and a video. Only the stars are required. Five custom questions would make it 12, on a form people open from their phone after a delivery.

Ask different questions for different products only if you sell very different things. A shop that sells both mugs and aprons needs “size compared with the photo” for one and “fit” for the other; a shop that sells only coffee needs one question for everything. For when and how to ask for the review itself, see our guide to getting more customer reviews.

Where should the answers show?

On each review card, next to the stars, and as a summary above the list. The summary is the part shoppers use: a bar showing that most buyers found a shoe true to size answers the question before anyone reads a review. A filter by answer helps the shopper who wants to read only from people with her skin type.

Keep the answers honest in the same way as the reviews. Show every approved answer, not only the flattering ones, and do not word a question so that one answer sounds wrong. Our article on product review examples shows what makes a review useful to the next buyer.

How do custom questions work in Formgong?

Each Formgong review site has a Customer questions tab where you type up to 5 questions and give each 2 to 8 answers, as a choice or as a scale. The questions appear on the hosted review page, on the order page buyers reach from a review email and in the form inside the email. Every answer is optional. Answers show on the review cards, a scale gets an average bar above the list, and shoppers can filter the list by an answer. This is on every plan, Free included; Judge.me's own article says its Custom Forms come with its Awesome plan. The limits are real too. There is no free-text question, no required question, no answer kept private, and one set of questions per site, while Judge.me lets you assign different forms to products by tag, up to ten forms. Private questions go in Formgong's post-purchase surveys instead. No review site on Formgong has set up questions yet: 0 of 12 on 3 November 2026. The questions on reviews docs show the steps.

What do you ask on your review form?

If one question on your review form changed how people shop, or caused fewer returns, we would like to hear which one at support@formgong.com.