Most brands understand that reviews sell products. Far fewer have a plan for getting them. The result is a familiar situation: a launch campaign driving traffic to a product page with an empty review tab, and a conversion rate that never recovers.
This article covers what ratings and reviews actually do for a brand, why the supply of them is structurally short, what the rules are in Europe, and how to build coverage without breaking them.
What Ratings and Reviews Are
Ratings and reviews are user-generated content through which customers evaluate a product, service or experience based on their own use of it. A rating is a numerical or star score summarising overall satisfaction. A review is the written feedback behind it.
They are not interchangeable, and each format does a different job:
Star Ratings
A fast read on satisfaction, and the element most likely to appear in search results and category listings. This is what filters a product in or out before anyone reads a word.
Written Reviews
Where the specifics live: fit, durability, taste, whether it worked for a particular use case. This is what converts a shopper who has already shortlisted you.
Photo and Video Reviews
Show the product in a real setting rather than a studio. Particularly valuable in categories where the packaging photography and the reality can diverge.
What Reviews Actually Do
They Remove the Last Hesitation Before Purchase
A shopper deciding between comparable products is looking for a reason to commit. Marketing copy cannot supply it, because everyone's marketing copy says the same thing. Another buyer's account of using the product can.
They Decide Close Calls
Where two options look equivalent on specification and price, the review profile is frequently the only differentiator left. That matters more every year as the number of comparable listings grows, and it matters most in compressed decision moments — seasonal peaks, promotional events — where shoppers have minutes rather than days.
They Improve Findability
Marketplaces and search engines favour products with substantive review content. Reviews also carry the vocabulary real customers use, which broadens the range of queries a product page can answer — often including phrasings your own copywriters would never have chosen.
They Tell You What to Fix
Read one at a time, reviews are anecdote. Read in aggregate, recurring themes emerge — and a pattern of complaints about one specific attribute is worth more to a product team than a page of five-star ratings with nothing written underneath.
Why Reviews Are Hard to Get
The demand side is not in question. The supply side is where brands run aground, and the reason is structural rather than fixable by asking harder.
Writing a review benefits everyone except the person writing it. It takes effort, it arrives after the transaction is complete, and the reviewer captures none of the value. Satisfied customers in particular have very little reason to bother — which is why unprompted reviews skew negative.
The consequence is a large share of products carrying no reviews at all, concentrated among newer listings and smaller brands — precisely the products that most need the reassurance.
There is also a demographic problem. Younger buyers are among the most active online shoppers and among the least likely to leave feedback afterwards. The audience a brand most wants to reach is the one least likely to supply the social proof that reaches them.
The Rules in Europe
Accurate as of: August 2026. Reviewed regularly, but consumer-protection rules and platform policies can change — check for updates before relying on this section for compliance decisions.
Any conversation about generating reviews has to start here, because the regulatory position has tightened significantly and a lot of published advice predates it.
The Omnibus Directive (EU 2019/2161), applicable across the EU since May 2022, amended consumer protection law on this point specifically. Two obligations matter:
- Disclosure. A trader displaying consumer reviews must state whether and how it ensures those reviews come from people who actually bought or used the product.
- Prohibited practices. Submitting or commissioning false reviews, and misrepresenting reviews to promote a product, are banned outright — including selectively publishing only the positive ones.
What this does not say is that reviews from testers are prohibited. A programme in which real consumers receive a product, use it, and write an honest opinion is legitimate. What is required is that the arrangement is transparent and that the opinion is genuinely the reviewer's own.
Separately from the law, each platform sets its own policy, and these are frequently stricter than the legal minimum. Some marketplaces prohibit incentivised reviews entirely outside their own programmes; others permit them with a disclosure label. Any review programme has to be designed against the specific platforms in scope, not against the regulation alone.
The practical test: would a shopper reading this review, if told exactly how it came about, still consider it useful? If yes, the programme is on solid ground. If not, no amount of disclosure will fix it.
Four Ways to Build Review Coverage
1. Post-Purchase Requests
The cheapest option, and the least effective on its own. Response rates are low, and the method only reaches customers you can already contact — which excludes anyone who bought through a retailer rather than direct.
2. Platform Review Programmes
Several marketplaces run their own sampling schemes. Compliant by construction, but limited to that platform, often capped in volume, and outside your control on timing.
3. Product Sampling With Your Own Database
Works if you have a large, engaged first-party database and the logistics to ship products. Most FMCG brands have neither at the scale required, and the audience skews towards people who already like you.
4. A Managed Testing Community
Recruits reviewers matched to a defined target profile, handles the logistics, and places reviews within a set timeframe. The advantage is control over who tests, on which platforms, and by when — which is what makes it usable for a launch.
How We Approach It
Roamler works with a community of thousands of consumers across Europe, connected through our mobile app. For a review programme, that means we can profile a specific target audience for your product rather than sending it to whoever volunteers.
Reviewers use the product and write their own opinion. We do not direct the content of a review, and we do not filter out the critical ones — both because it would be unlawful and because a uniformly positive profile is less persuasive than an honest one.
Our project managers handle the process end to end: defining the target profile, logistics, placement on the relevant platforms, and reporting on what came back.
For seasonal peaks, timing is the constraint that matters most. Review coverage needs to be in place before traffic arrives, which in practice means starting well ahead of the campaign — the subject of our article on preparing for Black Friday.
Build Review Coverage Before You Need It
Tell us which products and which platforms, and we'll scope what a compliant review programme would look like.
Discover Ratings & ReviewsFrequently Asked Questions
Are incentivised reviews legal in Europe?
Reviews written by consumers who received a product to test are not prohibited. What is prohibited is presenting them as spontaneous, fabricating them, or publishing only the favourable ones. The Omnibus Directive requires traders to disclose whether and how they verify that reviews come from actual users. Platform policies are separate and often stricter, so a programme has to satisfy both.
How many reviews does a product need?
There is no universal threshold, and it varies by category and price point. What is consistent is that the first reviews matter disproportionately: the gap between zero and a handful changes shopper behaviour far more than the gap between fifty and a hundred. A product with no reviews is not being compared unfavourably — it is being skipped.
Do negative reviews hurt sales?
Not in the way most brands fear. A profile of uniformly enthusiastic ratings reads as manufactured and shoppers discount it. Critical reviews establish that the positive ones are real, and specific criticism helps a shopper judge whether an issue affects their own use case. The reviews that genuinely cost sales are the ones describing a real, repeated product problem — which is information you want, not information to suppress.
What is the difference between ratings and reviews?
A rating is a score, usually out of five stars. A review is the written explanation behind it. Ratings drive whether a product gets considered at all, because the star average appears in listings and search results. Reviews drive whether a shortlisted product gets bought. A strong average with no written content underneath converts less well than a slightly lower average with substantive reviews.
How long does it take to build review coverage for a launch?
Long enough that it needs planning into the launch timeline rather than added afterwards. Reviewers have to receive the product, use it long enough to form a genuine opinion, and write it up — and for some categories meaningful use takes weeks. Working backwards from the on-shelf date is the only way it lands in time.