Here’s a truth most business owners already know but rarely act on: reviews sell your business. Google reviews influence local search rankings, decision-making, and buyer trust more than almost any other marketing signal. A restaurant with 200 reviews and a 4.6 average will out-sell one with 12 reviews and a 4.8 average almost every time. Volume matters as much as quality.
And yet, most small businesses have this problem:
You do brilliant work. Your customers are happy. You’ve been in business five years. You have… seventeen Google reviews. Meanwhile the competitor down the road has 340, and they’re getting the enquiries.
The reason is boring and universal: happy customers don’t leave reviews on their own. They mean to. They forget. You mean to ask. You feel awkward asking. So nobody does anything. The reviews you’ve earned in real life never make it online.
After building websites for more than 300 businesses since 2009, we’ve watched this pattern kill client growth over and over. So we started recommending — and now install as standard — a plugin our sister company Rixden built specifically for this problem. It’s called Rixden Reviews.
Why the usual “review solutions” don’t work
Most business owners have tried at least one of these:
Manually asking every customer works for the first month and then falls off a cliff. Nobody has time to email 40 customers a week individually asking for a review.
A “leave us a review” link in the email footer converts at somewhere between 0.5% and 2%. It’s better than nothing, but it’s not going to move the needle.
Enterprise review platforms like Trustpilot, Yotpo, or BirdEye actually work well — but they cost R3,000 – R15,000 per month, take weeks to configure, and are massively overbuilt for a business trying to get to 100 Google reviews.
Most WordPress review plugins are display-only. They show off reviews you already have. They don’t help you get more. That’s the wrong end of the problem.
Starfish Reviews is one of the few that tries to solve the collection side — but its interface feels dated, its funnel structure is confusing, and its “gating” flow (only sending 5-star reviewers to Google) technically violates Google’s own review policies.
None of these solve what small businesses actually need: an easy, ethical, done-for-you way to ask every customer for a review, follow up if they forget, and display the results on your website.
Enter Rixden Reviews
Rixden Reviews is the plugin Rixden built to fix this — with a focused, non-gimmicky approach designed for real small businesses. It handles the whole cycle: ask → collect → moderate → display.
Here’s how it works:
1. You send a request. After a job is finished, an order is delivered, or a customer walks out happy — you send a review request from your WordPress admin. Just a name, email, and one click. The customer gets a beautifully designed email with a unique link that takes them to a review form on your site.
2. They leave a review. Right on your website, no third-party redirects. They rate you, write their feedback, and submit. The review lands in your moderation queue.
3. You approve it. One click. It publishes to your website with proper Google Schema markup — meaning it shows up in Google’s search results as those coveted star ratings under your business name.
4. Google gets asked too. Every reviewer — regardless of rating — sees a call-to-action to also leave a Google review. That’s the compliant, ethical approach. No gating. Google’s own policies actually require this, and it protects your business profile from being penalised.
Here’s what makes it different:
It gets you reviews, doesn’t just display them. The collection engine is the core feature, not an afterthought.
It’s Google-policy compliant. Every reviewer sees the Google CTA. This isn’t a legal gray area — it’s how Google says review generation must work.
It’s not tied to a third party. Reviews live on your website. If you ever leave WordPress, you keep every review you’ve earned.
Full translation support. Send review requests in any language. Every customer-facing string can be translated with Loco Translate.
It’s a proper WordPress plugin, not a bloated SaaS platform. Under 100KB. No phoning home in the free version. Doesn’t slow your site down.
Pro adds the scale and automation
Once you’re sending more than a few requests a week, you’ll want the Pro features:
- Bulk requests + CSV import — upload 500 customers at once and send review requests to all of them from a single screen
- WhatsApp one-tap sharing — send review requests via WhatsApp instead of email (a huge advantage in South Africa where WhatsApp is the default communication channel)
- Automated follow-up reminders — if a customer hasn’t responded in 3 days (or whatever you set), Rixden Reviews sends one gentle reminder. That alone typically doubles conversion.
- Custom email templates — write your own subject lines and body copy with merge tags like
{customer_name}that auto-populate - Photo uploads — let reviewers attach photos to their reviews (photos + text convert much better than text alone)
- Public replies — respond to reviews on your site with an inline editor. Shows future prospects you’re engaged and responsive.
- Slider and masonry display layouts — beyond the standard grid, choose Pinterest-style masonry or a rotating slider
- Branded QR codes — generate printable QR codes to put on receipts, business cards, or in-store signage
- Analytics with click-conversion tracking — see how many requests were sent, opened, and converted into reviews
- Auto-approve by star rating — automatically publish 4- and 5-star reviews, hold anything below for manual moderation
The Pro workflow is what turns Rixden Reviews from “a review widget” into an actual review generation engine.
Real businesses using it
For our own web design clients, we’ve installed Rixden Reviews on:
- A local Cape Town restaurant that went from 43 Google reviews to 380 in six months
- A photographer who now sends a WhatsApp review request to every wedding client the day after the event
- A service provider that automated review requests through Zapier and their existing CRM — reviews now trigger automatically after each completed job
The pattern is consistent: businesses that were getting 1-2 reviews a month organically are now getting 15-30 per month with almost no additional effort.
Pricing
The free version is live on the WordPress.org plugin directory — install in two clicks, no signup needed. Unlimited review requests, moderation, grid display, Schema markup, Google CTA, translation support — enough to make a real dent in your review count without spending anything.
The Pro version is priced for small businesses:
- $49/year (roughly R900) for a single site, or $179 (roughly R3,300) once-off for lifetime
- $99/year (roughly R1,800) for up to 3 sites, or $349 (roughly R6,400) lifetime
- $199/year (roughly R3,650) for unlimited sites
Compare that to R3,000+/month for a Trustpilot subscription and it’s a no-brainer.
Should you use it?
If your business relies at all on reviews — and if you’re a local, service, or product business, it does — install the free version this week. Send five requests to recent customers. See how many convert. If it works (and it will), consider Pro to scale it.
If you’re a web designer building sites for clients, this is a plugin that pays for itself in client retention. Businesses that see their Google reviews jump from 40 to 300 don’t leave you. They send you referrals.
You can grab it here:
- Free version on WordPress.org: wordpress.org/plugins/rixden-reviews
- Pro version + full feature list: rixden.com/reviews-wordpress-plugin
- More about Rixden: rixden.com
Questions or want to see it in action on a client site? Get in touch and we’ll walk you through it.