How to Add, Import, Manage Product Reviews in a BigCommerce store?

Product reviews are feedback made directly on the product page from users or web visitors. You can handle product reviews either directly via the built-in comment system or through a third-party app such as Yotpo Reviews, Judge.me, etc.

This article will demonstrate how to fully manage the review system in a BigCommerce online store to handle feedback and request reviews from customers.

Why are reviews important for your online store?

Customer reviews are one of the most significant developments to emerge from Internet commerce, having supplanted word of mouth as the primary driver of a business’ credibility. Since online reviews are easily available, they can have a significant impact on your company.

You’ve most likely learned that product reviews are important for every online store. That’s why they’re a part of our platform. You may be asking, “But why are they so important?”

Allow me to explain some statistics result:

• According to a TrustRadius survey, the most important aspect in assessing a product is the review material (qualitative feedback). Trust is a critical component of closing a deal, and a review system fosters it by validating your brand and assuring new visitors to your shop.
• According to Reevoo, ratings increase sales by 18 percent on average, and a product with 50 or more reviews will increase conversion by 4.6 percent.
• According to a survey conducted by MarketingSherpa, 58 percent of users enjoy websites that have feedback.
• According to iPerceptions, 63 percent of users are more likely to make a purchase from a website that has user feedback,
• Consumer ratings are almost 12 times more trusted than manufacturer details, according to EXPO Communications.
• According to Bazaarvoice, guests who read feedback have a 6 percent higher average order value than those who do not.

That’s not even taking into account the SEO boost you’ll get by including ratings. Page material that is original and maintained on a daily basis is favored by search engines, and it is ranked higher as a result. Any time a shopper adds a new review to a product website, it counts as a new piece of material.

Add Product Reviews

These are steps for adding product review to your BigCommerce store:

• Be sure the product reviews are enabled first.
• Go to Apps > Comments > Built-in, then choose Product Reviews.

We recommend you to check on the second checkbox down below that says “Only accept product reviews from past customers” as it forces someone who wishes to leave a review to enter an email address. Then it will cross-reference the address with your orders to ensure that the individual has made a transaction from you (the customer’s order status must be Completed or Sent). This was recently implemented to avoid spam review, and it has proven to be very successful.

• Make sure to click on Save if you’ve made any updates.

Shoppers will also have a Reviews feature on product review pages and will be able to make a message. Now you’ll need to cultivate the ratings until they start pouring in.

Managing Product Reviews

1. Authorize reviews

Any new review will be marked as Pending, and you’ll have to authorize it before it’s visible to your store. Any pending feedback will appear in the Events section of your control panel when you open it.

• To get to the approval site, simply click on Product > Review

You may approve, disapprove, and remove reviews in bulk from this page.

• Select the checkbox to the left of the reviews on which you want to take action.
• To have the selected reviews appear on your product page, click Approve Selected

When review has been accepted, it is now able to appear in the Reviews section of the product page. Isn’t it simple?

• To prevent the selected reviews from appearing, click Disapprove Selected
• Click Delete Selected to permanently delete the feedback from the system

2. Edit individual reviews

Additionally, you can edit the content of individual reviews if you wish.

• To modify individual reviews, choose Edit from the action menu. You will be directed to the web page for Edit Review. You can adjust the following from here:
  • Title
  • Review
  • Author
  • Status
  • Rating
• Click on Save to save all your modifications

3. Display settings

The following store settings are located under the Display tab in Store Settings.

• Product Reviews Per Page (Blueprint themes only): The number of reviews that appear on a product’s website. If there are more reviews than this number, Previous and Next buttons will appear.
• Automatic Approval of Reviews?: New feedback will be automatically approved and displayed.
• Show Product Rating?: The rating for the product will be shown on the product tab.

4. Throttling reviews

To restrict the number of reviews that appear on your site within a specified time period, you can enable the review throttler and customize its threshold. This will help and the amount of potentially spammy reviews reduced on your store if you chose not to restrict reviews to confirmed customers in Advanced Settings > Comments.

• Navigate to the Store Settings page and select the Miscellaneous tab.
• Scroll to the bottom of the page to the Throttler section.
• To activate the throttler, check the Allow Throttler box and then enter your desired review throttle settings below.

Import Product Reviews

Yotpo also supports the direct import of reviews from BigCommerce’s native reviews app. Via the BigCommerce API, the export is taken care of, so you don’t have to worry about any data.

The requirements of importing reviews is that you’ll need to first have the BigCommerce native reviews app and the Yotpo app installed on your store. After that, you will have to submit a Support ticket to Yotpo.

To Submit Support ticket, please follow these steps:

• Log in your Yotpo Reviews & Ratings Account
• Click on the question mark icon, and select Contact Support

• Fill the ticket submission form

• Click on Suggested articles to get access to a list of helpful guides according to the topic you need help with.
• Submit your ticket

Due to the fact that the structure of BigCommerce reviews does not exactly match that of Yotpo, certain types of data may be changed or lost. These are known format incompatibilities / limitations between Yotpo and BigCommerce:

• Reviews that contain no content: will not be imported.
• Reviews without a title: will have the first four words of the material imported as the title.
• Reviews that do not have a user display name: will be imported as “Anonymous.”
• By default, reviews will be imported with a “Anonymous” badge. If you are importing Verified Buyer feedback, please make a note of it in your ticket.
• Since BigCommerce does not need an image for products, they can be imported into Yotpo without one. If you wish to associate photos with such reviews, please contact Yotpo via the ticket system.

Product Review Email Settings

You should constantly maintain consumer feedback so that they can leave them. The cheapest and simplest way to do this is to send an automated email to consumers after they make a transaction, asking them to leave a comment for the items they purchased.

Product review emails invite consumers to leave feedback on the product(s) they bought from you. This email is sent automatically after a specified number of days have passed since the order was marked as Shipped or Completed, and includes links to the product pages for the products they purchased.

To disable review emails or to modify the time period after an order’s status changes, follow the steps below.

• Navigate to Store Setup and select the Miscellaneous tab.
• Uncheck Product Email Reviews to completely delete product review emails, or adjust the amount of days after an order is completed for which the email should be submitted.

To customize this email, please follow these instructions

• Navigate to Marketing > Transactional Emails and choose Product Review Email.
• Multiple Phrases are included in the email template, and all of them can be modified or omitted.
• Add new phrases by pressing Add New.
• Click Code to edit the underlying HTML and handlebars and customize the Subject line and Content.

Available Apps to manage Product Review

1. Yotpo

Yotpo is a commerce marketing cloud that provides industry-leading solutions for customer feedback, visual marketing, loyalty, and referrals. Yotpo enables you to leverage social proof effectively to boost trust and revenue, build loyal consumer advocates, and make more informed business decisions based on customer input.

By enabling advocacy and optimizing consumer lifetime value, our integrated suite of solutions for user-generated content marketing, loyalty, and referrals enables you to accelerate development.

These are the key features of Yotpo:

• Collect customer reviews, ratings, photographs, and Q&As.
• Conversions can be increased by displaying consumer material on your website.
• Utilize our official collaboration with Google to raise brand awareness and traffic from Google Shopping searches.
• On Facebook and Instagram, share your best customer content.
• Utilize analytics and consumer reviews to make more informed business decisions.
• Create a devoted brand group through the use of customer material.

2. Judge.me

Judge.me is able to automatically collect product feedback, easily manage ratings, display feedback in all locations, and help for simple onboarding/import. Judge.me offers an unrestricted, free-forever plan as well as a reasonable, fixed-price $15/month plan that includes all of the review features you need.

Judge.me collects feedback using our Single Review Email Template (in-email review form), which allows the customers to leave reviews directly from the email. Alternatively, you can choose from one of our three additional email templates: Multi-Review, Picture-First, or Full-HTML. Both templates are completely customizable through our editor or through HTML.

It also can create social proof using the content created by your reviewers: text, images, venue, and custom types. Allow for social sharing and the ability to upvote/downvote feedback. Your guests have not yet converted? Allow them to directly ask questions on your product page!

Judge.me widgets are completely designed for mobile devices and are 100% sensitive. We use the best-in-class CDN to load your review images (via lazy-load) so that your visitors see review content as quickly as possible.

3. Stamped

Stamped.io was designed exclusively for Bigcommerce merchants of all sizes. Stamped.io is a highly regarded consumer marketing platform with over 4,000 app reviews. It has all the resources you need to capture and showcase high-impact customer content during their purchasing journey.

Stamped.io drives user-generated content (UGCs) for the fastest-growing BigCommerce brands, such as HBO, Rhone, Colgate, SodaStream, Purple.com, Hickies, and Linjer, enabling them to maximize revenue through customer content.

These are some of Stamped.io features:

• 1-Click setup
• Truly mobile-responsive and works with any theme
• 100% customizable to fit your brand: logo, colors, fonts, layout
• Moderation: you can decide which reviews get published
• Add customer attributes (e.g. fit, age, waist, more)
• Smart Reminders : add reminders with a different message, subject
• Multi-lingual support: English, French, German, and 15+ languages

4. Trustspot

TrustSpot integrates with BigCommerce seamlessly. And is the ideal complement to your company. It takes just a few minutes to set up. If you have any questions, you can contact Trustspot’s support team via email or live chat.

• Increase your review count by using TrustSpot to submit review requests at the optimal time.
• Increased review conversion rate: Increase the number of reviews collected through in-email review request forms.
• User Generated Content (UGC): Customers can submit images and videos for display on your website.
• Community: Using Q&A, build a community around your brand.

The In-Email Form from TrustSpot enables buyers to write a review directly inside the email they receive. This provides consumers with a frictionless experience when it comes to posting content. This results in increased email conversion rates, which results in more positive reviews for your company.

Trust spot is able to Increase consumer traffic to your store by using both organic and paid traffic. With a feature set that includes Rich Snippets, Inline SEO, and Google Shopping PLAs. It also creates compelling incentives for customers who engage with your brand through Reviews, Photos, Social Media, and Q&A.

5. Fera

Fera Product Feedback and Social Proof enables you to display customer reviews in order to maximize conversions and sales! If you want to maximize the value of your current traffic, increase conversions, and earn more money with the same amount of effort, you must have product reviews, photo and video reviews, testimonials, and social evidence on your website.

Fera offers customers a 14-day risk-free trial period. It is also compatible with Judge.me, Loox, Shopper Approved, Yotpo, Stamped.io, Smile.io, and PushOwl.

With the following features of Fera, you can leverage your current customer base to turn more shoppers into buyers:

• Features of a Product Review: Product Evaluations, Reviews & Testimonials, Reviews of Photographs and Videos, Badges with an Average Rating, Snippets for Reviews in SEO/Google, Email Campaigns with Review Requests (Content), Capacity to provide rewards (discounts, cashback, loyalty points)
• Social Proof Characteristics: Pop-ups with Social Evidence, Top Bars with Free Shipping & Countdown Promos, Counters for Low Stock, Current Viewer, and Recent Orders, Timers for the Cart and Checkout
• Additional Features: Template & Appearance Are Fully Customizable, Integrated A/B Testing, Personalization in Real Time

Advices on managing Product Review

1. Be balanced

Opening the brand up to direct public criticism is not without risk: several of these unfavorable feedback has the potential to have a detrimental effect on sales. However, if handled properly, negative reviews can actually help your company. Well-balanced set of reviews will help you sell more products. It can seem counterintuitive, but it is right.

Increase customer trust

On the surface, a product page sparkling with just four and five star ratings appears to be a positive thing, but Internet users know better. Savvy buyers would conclude that all-positive reviews have been purchased or fabricated, while negative reviews have been censored.

They have reason to be concerned: the practice of fabricating feedback has become widespread in the eCommerce industry. Though enticing, this immoral activity is fraught with risk. The negative publicity and financial consequences of being caught faking reviews can bankrupt an eCommerce shop, further eroding customer confidence.

It’s important to be open with the customers. If anyone leaves a review of valid questions or recommendations, you should make it public. You should still respectfully answer with any counter-arguments you might have. Of course, if anyone publishes an absolutely fake review, you have the option of either deleting it or approving it and responding.

Improve conversion

Not only do negative reviews have no adverse effect on your overall revenue - they actually increase conversions from informed customers. In fact, consumers who check out negative feedback convert 67 percent more than regular shoppers, according to Reevoo data.

Before making a purchase, comparison shoppers want to see all the disadvantages and flaws of a product: whether they discover that the most serious flaws are mild, exaggerated, or simply do not relate to them, this will help increase their trust in the purchase. Nothing is impervious to criticism, and shoppers understand not to blindly discount a product based on a few dissatisfied customers.

Raise customer engagement

Consider negative feedback as an opportunity to show your contribution to customer loyalty, rather than a liability. If a customer shows dissatisfaction in a review, react to their feedback and determine what you can do to improve their perception of the transaction.

This shows that you value your customers and that, even in the event of a problem, consumers will be handled fairly. Also shoppers understand that everybody makes mistakes; if you are to blame, do not be afraid to apologize and compensate the customer. Allowing such less-than-positive reviews is well worth the time. Especially if you can respond to them and have excellent customer service.

Not only is the dissatisfied customer more likely to return, but he or she might also leave a second, more favorable review. Responding to negative reviews demonstrates to potential customers that errors are uncommon and that if anything does go wrong, it will be resolved.

If a review criticizes a particular aspect of a product, you can include any details necessary to rectify or explain the situation. Occasionally, consumers can point out genuine shortcomings, and by openly addressing them, you will engage them and demonstrate that you are constantly trying to improve your products.

2. Ask your customers

After a purchase, integrated email automation makes it simple to encourage customers to leave a review. Leave a note in a customer’s inbox to encourage them to return to your site for a review. Don’t forget to remind them how much you appreciate their feedback.

3. Show your reviews

Make reviews a popular feature on your website by creating dedicated review pages that are easily accessible from all areas of your site. Incorporating feedback across all of your social media pages increases customer engagement and shows your continued trust in the product.

Additionally, an automated review framework may have a beneficial effect on SEO. Your feedback can be shown on search engine results pages via schema markup, increasing click-through and making your brands stand out in organic search. Additionally, links to your reviews boost your site’s overall and “review”-specific SEO.

FAQ

When a review is approved, are reviewers automatically notified?

No, but you may wish to manually notify them by email to express your gratitude for their input. Email addresses for reviewers can be found under Products / Product Reviews.

I’m seeing several comment choices in the control panel.

If you’re using a legacy Blueprint theme, you’ll be able to choose from a variety of comment systems. To allow built-in comments, on the General Settings tab, click Built-in and then Save.

Conclusion

It is undeniable that product reviews have an important role in the development of your eCommerce store. If you sell products that you believe in and want to establish a reputation that consumers will trust, accepting product reviews, even when they are negative or positive, can eventually benefit you.

We hope that after this article, you will now understand more about how to fully manage Product Reviews in your BigCommerce store. Now that you’ve learned, go out and apply them! And take pleasure in the increase in SEO and revenue.

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