Reviews & Reputation Management

1. Review data model

A structured model for trustworthy feedback:

• Rating (e.g., 1–5 stars) stored as a numeric score.
  
  
• Text review/comment with optional length limits.
  
  
• Links to the seller being reviewed (and optionally product/listing if enabled).
  
  
• Links to the customer and order that triggered the review (to prevent fake/anonymous spam).
  
  
• Timestamps for creation and updates.
  
  
• Status fields for moderation (pending, published, hidden, flagged).
  
  
• Optional metadata (e.g., reason codes, internal tags, review source).
  
  

This structure gives you all you need to build both public views and internal analytics.

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2. Buyer review flows

Let real customers leave real feedback, safely:

• Option to ask for a review only after an order is fulfilled or completed, so reviews are tied to real purchases.
  
  
• Simple rating + comment flow exposed via your storefront or post-purchase emails.
  
  
• Validation to prevent duplicate reviews for the same order/seller pair (or configurable rules, e.g., one review per order).
  
  
• Support for editing or updating reviews by the buyer (optional, depending on your policy).
  
  
• Integration hooks for Notifications so you can send “please rate your order” emails after fulfillment.
  
  

Buyers get a straightforward way to share their experience; your marketplace gets structured feedback tied to actual transactions.

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3. Seller review management (vendor dashboard)

Empower sellers to actively manage their reputation.

From their dashboard, sellers can:

• View all reviews
  
  • Access a list of all reviews related to their seller account.
    
    
  • Filter by rating, date, and status (new, replied, flagged).
    
    
  • See review details: rating, comment, buyer (or anonymized label), related order, and date.
    
    
• Reply to reviews
  
  • Post public responses to customer reviews directly from the seller dashboard.
    
    
  • Address complaints, clarify context, or simply thank customers for positive feedback.
    
    
  • Use replies to show professionalism, reduce churn, and increase trust.
    
    
• Report inappropriate reviews
  
  • Flag reviews they consider unfair, abusive, or spammy.
    
    
  • Provide a reason for the report (e.g., offensive language, not related to actual transaction, competitor attack).
    
    
  • Send flags to the admin moderation queue, where operators can review and decide to keep, hide, or edit the status.

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This combination keeps sellers involved and accountable, without giving them full control to censor feedback.

4. Admin moderation & governance

Keep the review system healthy and trustworthy:

• Moderation queue
  
  • Admins see newly created reviews and reviews flagged by sellers or automated rules.
    
    
  • Filter by rating, status, date, or flag reason.
    
    
• Moderation actions
  
  • Approve and publish reviews.
    
    
  • Hide or remove reviews that violate policy (while keeping internal records).
    
    
  • Add internal notes for edge cases.
    
    
• Policy & enforcement hooks
  
  • Define rules for what’s acceptable (e.g., profanity, personal data, hate speech).
    
    
  • Optionally wire in automatic checks or external tools (e.g., content moderation APIs).
    
    

Admins maintain the balance between openness and protection against abuse.

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5. Display & aggregation

Turn raw reviews into meaningful signals:

• Average rating per seller (and optionally product), calculated from published reviews.
  
  
• Review count to show how much feedback a seller has gathered.
  
  
• Ready-to-use data for displaying ratings on:
  
  • Seller profile pages,
    
    
  • Product or listing pages (if product reviews are enabled),
    
    
  • Search and category pages,
    
    
  • Internal admin and seller dashboards.
    
    

You decide where to surface reputation: Mercur provides the data, your frontends decide the UX.

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6. Marketplace integration & ranking signals

Make reviews part of how your marketplace behaves:

• Use ratings and review counts as ranking signals in search and discovery (e.g., boosting high-rated sellers).
  
  
• Combine review data with order volume and fulfillment performance to build internal quality scores.
  
  
• Highlight well-rated sellers with visual badges or labels (e.g. “Top-rated seller”, “Trusted partner”).
  
  
• Identify low-rated sellers early for proactive support or intervention.
  
  

This turns reviews from a passive feature into an active lever for marketplace quality.

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7. Notifications & event integration

Ensure the right people know when reviews happen:

• Trigger notifications to sellers when new reviews are created or when existing ones are updated.
  
  
• Notify admins when reviews are flagged, or when certain thresholds are crossed (e.g., multiple 1-star reviews in a short time).
  
  
• Use buyer notifications (optional) to confirm that their review was received and published.
  
  

By connecting Reviews to Mercur’s Notifications module, you make feedback loops automatic instead of manual.