Why does “customer review” mean different things?
Ask five people what counts as a customer review and you get five answers: stars on a product page, a Google review, a quote on the homepage, a TikTok video, a post from a brand ambassador. When everything counts, it becomes hard to tell which of your reviews a buyer will believe.
Vendor guides add to the blur. Trustindex's “11 Types of Customer Reviews and How to Get Them”, from 2021, lists social media posts, blog posts and brand ambassadors alongside ordinary reviews, and says whether reviews are positive or negative is “less critical than the number of reviews you collect”. A clear definition helps more than a longer list.
What is a customer review?
The clearest definition comes from US law. The FTC's rule on consumer reviews, in force since October 2024 (16 CFR 465.1), defines a consumer review as a consumer's evaluation of a product, service or business that is published on a website or platform dedicated, in whole or in part, to receiving and displaying such evaluations. It adds that ratings count “regardless of whether they include any text or narrative”, so five stars with no words is still a review.
The same rule defines a consumer testimonial separately: an advertising or promotional message that people are likely to read as a customer's opinion. The difference is who chooses. A review is published where any customer can post one, good or bad. A testimonial is picked by the business and placed in its marketing. Both are allowed, but a shopper reads them differently, and our guide on asking for a testimonial covers the second kind.
What kinds of customer reviews are there?
Most reviews can be sorted two ways: by what they are about and by how they were collected. The table puts both together.
| Kind | What it is | What it tells a shopper |
|---|---|---|
| Product review | A rating, often with text, about one product | Whether this item is any good |
| Store or business review | A rating of the shop or company as a whole | Whether it is safe to buy from you |
| Third-party profile review | A review on Google, Yelp, Trustpilot or similar | The same, judged by a site you do not control |
| Marketplace review | A review on Etsy, Amazon or another marketplace | How you do as a seller there |
| Verified buyer review | Any of the above, tied to a real order | That the writer actually bought it |
| Incentivized review | Written after a coupon or free product | Still an opinion, but a reader should be told |
| Imported or syndicated review | Collected on one site, shown on another | Real reviews, if the origin is labelled |
| Testimonial (not a review) | A quote you chose and placed in your marketing | What you want to show, which is why it persuades less |
The first four rows say what the review is about and where it lives. Our article on store reviews and product reviews covers the difference between the first two in detail. The next three rows describe how it was collected, and they can apply to any of the first four: a product review can also be verified, incentivized and imported. If you show reviews collected elsewhere, the article on review syndication explains how to label them honestly.
Why does the kind of review matter to a buyer?
Buyers seem to weigh a review by how hard it would be to fake, and the data on verified labels points that way. The Medill Spiegel Research Center at Northwestern University found, in data from PowerReviews published in 2017, that marking reviews with a verified buyer badge improved the odds of purchase by 15%. In Judge.me's own survey of 564 shoppers, published in May 2026, more than 80% rated a review with a verified purchase label 4 or 5 out of 5 for how much more trustworthy it felt.
The same logic explains why a testimonial persuades less than a review list. A shopper knows the business chose it. A list that includes a three-star review with a fair complaint reads as a real record, which is why negative reviews can help.
Why do customer reviews matter at all?
Because most buyers read them before deciding. In a survey of 4,787 US adults that the Pew Research Center ran in late 2015 and published in 2016, 82% said they at least sometimes read online ratings or reviews before buying something for the first time, and 40% said they always or almost always did. What that reading does to sales is a separate question with its own studies, and our article on whether reviews increase sales goes through them.
What does a real mix of reviews look like?
Here is ours, counted in our production database on 3 November 2026 without changing anything. Formgong sites held 158 reviews in every status. Of those, 103 had been imported from another platform and 55 were written on Formgong, and 147 named a product rather than the store as a whole. Most of these sit on our own test and demo sites; only 3 of the 158 are on sites run by outside accounts, so treat the split as an example, not a benchmark.
Our demo shop Glyna shows the kinds side by side. Of its 5 approved reviews, 3 carry the verified buyer mark because they came through an order email, and 3 have stars but no text. Each of those counts as a review under the FTC's definition, and each tells a shopper a little less than a written one would.
How does Formgong show which kind each review is?
The review widget labels each review by how it was collected: “Verified buyer” when it came through an order link, “Email confirmed” when the writer confirmed their address, and “Received a store coupon for reviewing” when you rewarded it. Reviews imported from Etsy appear in their own block, marked as written by buyers on Etsy and not counted in the rating above. Labels like these are not unique to us. Judge.me's pricing page, read on 3 November 2026, lists review source tags on its free plan. What we can say is that the coupon label goes out with every rewarded review and there is no setting to hide it, so an incentivized review is never passed off as an ordinary one.
Which kinds of reviews do you collect?
If your shop relies on a kind of review this page does not cover, or you sort them differently, tell us at support@formgong.com.
Frequently asked questions
Is a star rating without text a customer review?
Yes. The FTC's rule on consumer reviews counts ratings as reviews whether or not they include any text.
What is the difference between a review and a testimonial?
A review is posted by the customer where reviews are collected, good or bad. A testimonial is a quote the business picks and uses in its marketing.
What is a verified customer review?
A review tied to a real order or purchase, usually because the link to write it came from the order itself.
Are imported reviews real reviews?
Yes, if they were written by real customers elsewhere and the page says where they came from.
Sources and documentation
Official references for this guide: Formgong: Store reviews vs product reviews. The reviews widget, where data is stored.