Collecting Reviews You Own: A Review Page at Your Own Address
How to collect ratings from customers, publish the ones you choose, and show them on a page at your own address — and why the average on that page should be the average of what is published.
A review page is a public page of your published customer reviews, at an address you control, with a form on it so the next customer can add one.
The important word is "own". Reviews you collect this way sit at your address, on your page, in your colours — not on a site that also sells your competitors an advert above them.
What is digital feedback?
Digital feedback is asking a customer for a rating and a comment through a link or a QR code, instead of a paper card or a verbal "how was everything?".
The mechanics are unremarkable — a short form, a star rating, a few questions. What matters is what happens to the answers, and that is where most tools quietly make a choice on your behalf.
How is this different from review sites?
Three ways, and the third is the one that matters over time.
The address is yours. The page lives at your own address rather than on a directory. Nobody sells a competitor a slot above your reviews, because there is no slot.
You choose what is published. Every review arrives in an inbox. You publish them one at a time. Nothing appears on a public page because it was submitted.
The reviews stay yours. They are rows in your account, not entries in somebody else's database that you are permitted to display on their terms.
That third one sounds abstract until a platform changes its terms, its layout, or its mind about whether your category still exists.
Does choosing what to publish make the page dishonest?
It would, if the number at the top were the average of everything you received. It is not.
The rating printed on the page is the average of the reviews that are published on that page. If eleven reviews are shown, the average is the average of those eleven, and anybody can check it by reading them.
An average drawn from the private pile is a claim a visitor cannot check, and a page that prints one is asking to be trusted about the thing it is being trusted about. So it does not.
Two smaller rules follow from the same idea:
- when nobody has rated, no rating is drawn at all. "0.0 out of 5" is a false claim and an empty five-star row is a worse one;
- a review with a rating but no words counts toward the average and is not printed as a quote, because there is nothing to quote.
Who is a review attributed to?
Whoever the reviewer said, and nothing else.
The person leaving a review chooses how they are credited — their name, or anonymously. That choice is what is stored, and it is what appears. There is no setting anywhere that reveals a name somebody asked to withhold, because the promise was made at the moment they typed it and it is not the business's to revoke afterwards.
Dates are shown as a month and a year rather than a day. "14 March" invites the arithmetic of "so nothing since March?", which is a question about how often you get round to publishing rather than about your business.
Can I collect reviews without having a public page?
Yes, and the two are separate switches on purpose.
A restaurant with QR codes on the tables may want to collect steadily and show nothing publicly. A business going quiet for a fortnight wants to close the form and leave its testimonials up. One switch could not do both without being wrong in one direction.
So: collecting is one switch, and the page is another. Closing the form does not take the page down. Putting the page up does not reopen a form you deliberately closed.
What does the page look like?
It is a single screen — your mark in the middle, your rating, one button — with the reviews moving around it. There are seven ways they move:
- Wall — the reviews running diagonally
- Glass — rising in columns
- Orbit — turning in rings around your logo
- Ticker — running sideways, for a screen behind a counter
- Quote — fading in and out where they stand
- Spotlight — a dark room, a lamp overhead, the cards breathing
- Ledger — columns gliding up and settling back
On top of that you choose a colour ground, an accent and a typeface, so the page carries your brand rather than ours. Every combination is checked to stay readable: a colour picker that lets you put pale grey text on a pale grey background is a picker that will eventually be used to do exactly that.
What address does it live at?
Yours — and you can change it.
By default it uses your card's address. If your card is at your own name and the page is for a business, that reads oddly on a table tent, so the address is editable: name the page and the address follows, or type one yourself.
The old address goes on working after you change it, so a link you have already handed out does not die because you tidied it up.
What is under the button?
One line, pointing wherever you want somebody to go next — your bio card, one of your menus, or any address you type. A restaurant sends people to the menu; a tradesman sends them to a booking page.
Is it part of Pro?
Yes. Collecting reviews and the review page are part of Lonecto Pro, along with digital menus, all card templates, bookings, and full analytics.
A page that is already published keeps working, and a form that is already open goes on accepting reviews — somebody halfway through writing one is not part of a billing decision.
Common questions
Can I delete a review I do not like? You choose which reviews are published, and you can unpublish one. What you cannot do is edit somebody's words, because then they would not be their words.
Do reviewers need an account? No. They open a link or scan a code, answer a few questions and send it.
Can I ask my own questions? Yes. There is a standard set to start from, and you can change them.
Will the reviews show on my bio card too? Yes, and there is a link from the card to the full page.
Does the page work if my bio card is not published? Yes. It has its own address and its own switch.