Reviews

Sharetribe marketplaces use reviews to create social proof and transparency for the marketplace. Reviews are important for all kinds of marketplaces. Provider reviews encourage customers to order well-rated listings, and customer reviews encourage providers to accept business from well-rated customers.

In Sharetribe, reviews can have a rating between 1-5, as well as text content. By default, reviews are given at the end of a transaction.

The customer reviews the transaction's listing. Since providers can have several different listings, this way the review targets the actual product or service received. Listing reviews give important information about the quality of the experience and the end result that the customer received during the transaction.

The provider reviews the customer directly. Customer reviews are crucial in booking related marketplaces, especially ones where customers interact with the provider directly or use a valuable resource such as an apartment or a car.

Reviews in a transaction process

The default Sharetribe transaction processes use a blind review process. In other words, reviews are only published after both parties have given their review, or after the review period has ended. This increases the odds that the reviews are honest.

Review related transaction process actions and transitions

Reviews are managed as a part of the transaction process using transaction process actions.

• :action/post-review-by-customer creates a pending review of the listing and provider.
• :action/post-review-by-provider creates a pending review of the customer.
• :action/publish-reviews publishes any reviews that have been added to the transaction by the time the action is executed.

The Sharetribe default transaction processes structure these actions into different paths, depending on who posts the first review. In all paths, the process publishes the reviews once both parties have reviewed each other. Alternatively, any existing reviews get published after 7 days of the transaction completing, after which reviews can no longer be added through the transaction process. This means that even if one of the parties does not submit a review, the other review does get published.

Frequently asked questions

Can reviews be removed?

Once published, reviews cannot be removed. They can, however, be modified by the operator in Sharetribe Console > Manage > Reviews.

Can I add a review after the review period has expired?

Sometimes, transaction participants want to add missing reviews after the review period has expired. If the marketplace operators decide that the review is relevant and honest, you can reach out to us at Sharetribe Support with the issue and we can look into it.

How can I add an average rating attribute to my listings?

Listing average ratings are not available in Sharetribe out of the box. However, you can create a feature that listens to review events. Whenever there's a new review event, you can then call Sharetribe Integration API to update the public metadata of the reviewed listing.

You can create a logic that stores the number of reviews and their previous average in the listing's metadata, and updates these when a new review is added. That way, you can, for instance, display the average rating on the listing page, or use it to sort listings.