How to get video reviews for a new product on Shopify

You just launched a new product. The page looks good, the price is right, the description is tight. And then a shopper scrolls down, sees zero reviews, and decides to leave.

This is the cold-start problem, and it doesn't matter whether you're a brand-new store or an established one adding a product to a catalog that already sells well. A new product starts at zero reviews, and that zero does the same damage either way. Online, reviews are the closest thing a shopper has to picking the product up and trying it. When there are none, people don't read that as neutral. They read it as unknown, and unknown is where carts get abandoned.

The good news is that you don't need hundreds of reviews to fix this. You need the first handful, in a format that actually convinces people. This guide walks through how to get there and why video reviews are the fastest way to do it for a new product.

Why an empty review section costs you sales

Start with how shoppers actually behave. Around 95% of shoppers read online reviews before making a purchase. If reviews are the first thing most people look for and you have none, you're losing the sale before the product description gets a chance.

The conversion math backs this up. Products with five reviews are 270% more likely to be purchased than products with no reviews. That is the single biggest jump you will see from reviews.

Here's the part that should change how you think about this: most of that lift comes from the first five reviews. After that, each new review adds less. So the goal for a new product isn't a wall of social proof. It's getting over the line from zero to a credible handful.

What a review needs to actually move a shopper

Not all reviews pull the same weight. A new product gets more out of a few strong reviews than a pile of one-line ratings. Four things make the difference.

• Visuals. Photos and video do the heavy lifting. A 2023 Journal of Retailing study of more than 97,000 Amazon reviews found that review images make a review more helpful when they show the product in use, especially on positive reviews and products people buy for the experience. A video review is that signal in motion, answering the question text can't: what this actually looks like in someone's hands.
• Recency. A review from last week signals the product is current and the store is active. Old reviews age the page.
• Specificity. "Great product" does little. "I have fine hair, and this didn't weigh it down" tells the next shopper whether the product fits them.
• Volume, in context. Review count matters most when the brand is unfamiliar.  55% of consumers say they would rather buy a product with a lot of reviews and an average rating than one with few reviews and an excellent rating. For a new product, that means a small, credible base beats a lone five-star review.

One more thing worth knowing, because it takes the pressure off chasing a perfect score. Purchase likelihood tends to peak when ratings sit in the 4.0 to 4.7 range, then dips as they approach a flawless 5.0. A few critical reviews make the rest look real. You don't need every review to glow.

This is why video reviews matter so much at the cold-start stage. They are specific and visual at the same time, and they are hard to fake, so they carry trust that a row of stars can't. For a new product, a few honest videos do more to answer "will this work for me?" than dozens of one-line text reviews.

The cold-start playbook: getting a new product its first video reviews

You can't wait for organic sales to slowly produce reviews, because the missing reviews are part of why the new product is slow to convert. You have to seed and collect at the same time. Here's the order that works.

Seed video reviews first

The fastest way past an empty review section is to stop waiting for it to fill on its own. You can't review your way out of zero with customers the new product doesn't have yet, so you put it in the hands of real people who will use it and review it on video.

For a new product, seeding is where the fastest and most reliable results come from, and the cleanest way to do it on Shopify is a platform built for exactly this. Reviewers.com connects your brand with a community of vetted Reviewers who try your product for free and share honest video reviews in return. It is currently available for US-based Shopify stores. 

Once you install the Shopify app, it automatically syncs with your store and product catalog, so you can launch a campaign in a few clicks. Here's how a campaign works:

• Pick your product: Select your product and how many items you’d like to gift 
• Set your target audience and brief: You set the target audience, add custom screening questions, and write a quick brief.
• Reviewers do the rest: The Reviewers try your product and share their honest take on video.
• Videos land in your admin: They roll in ready to download and plug into whatever reviews app you use. If you use Loox, your video reviews will automatically sync with your widgets. 
• Full usage rights: Every video is quality-checked and FTC-compliant, and you can use each one anywhere, on the product page, in ads, across social, or in email.
  
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That combination is what makes it the right first move for a new product. You get specific, relatable video from real people, quickly, instead of waiting on organic orders that are slow precisely because the reviews aren't there yet.

You can layer other sources on top of that:

• Reach out to people who already used the product, like beta testers, sample recipients, or early waitlist signups, and ask them to share their experience.
• Post a generalized request to your email list or social following asking customers to review what they bought.

Turn your earliest buyers into reviewers

Seeding gets you over the cold start. Post-purchase requests are what keep the reviews coming after that. Once the product is selling, set up an automated request so every order triggers a review ask once the buyer has had time to use the product.

Timing matters and it depends on the product. Send the request a few days after delivery for consumables, and a couple of weeks out for things people need to live with before forming an opinion, like apparel or skincare. A Shopify reviews app such as Loox is built for exactly this. It optimizes review requests to send at the perfect time, so the ask lands when the product is fresh in the customer's hands, and it is designed to pull in more photo and video reviews than any other app. 

Make leaving a review effortless

Every extra click costs you reviews. The request should open straight to a star rating, with a short comment field and an obvious option to add a photo or video. It needs to work on a phone, since that's where most people will open it.

Ask for visual content directly. People rarely add a photo unless prompted, and that photo or video is the asset that converts the next shopper.

Ask at the right moment, then respond

Once reviews start coming in, keep the loop healthy. Respond to them, including the critical ones. Thoughtful replies to reviews often do more for trust than another five-star rating, because they show there's a real business behind the page that stands by its product.

Compare your options for collecting reviews

Different methods suit different stages of a product's life. Here's how the main ones stack up for a product that's just launched.