Access to syndication and customization features within the Review Manager varies based on your subscription. To request access to additional features, contact your Customer Success partner.
Overview
When experts leave product reviews on ExpertVoice, brands can choose to syndicate specific expert reviews to the ExpertVoice Recommendation Display on their website.
The display lives on a brand's website. It can feature up to 25 total recommendations per product – we recommend at least three – and they can be a combination of manually approved reviews or auto-approved reviews.
In the Review Manager, brands with the ExpertVoice Recommendation Display have the flexibility to turn on Automation to instantly approve expert reviews that meet specific criteria for their display as they are published. In addition, brands can manually approve expert reviews when it’s most convenient for them.
Before implementing the display, customize the display theme and colors to match your website. If you already have another ratings and review display, the Expert Recommendation Display will complement it and provide shoppers with more authentic product insights from credentialed industry professionals.
Manually approve reviews for syndication
Follow these steps if you want to review and approve each expert review before it is syndicated to the ExpertVoice Recommendation Display.
- Visit Reviews and click the All tab
- On the top right of each expert review, three icons allow you to either approve it for syndication, flag it for further review, or decline it:
- Click the star icon to approve the review for syndication. The review will instantly be syndicated to your display if the display is already installed.
- Click the flag icon to come back and look at the expert review later. In the All tab, you can filter the Status by “Needs Review” to view the flagged reviews queue.
- Click the minus icon to decline a review. If you come back later to review any flagged reviews, selecting this option reminds you that this review does not meet your criteria for syndication. These reviews still show up on ExpertVoice, but NOT on your website.
After completing one of the above actions, one of four status icons will appear on the right-hand side of the review in the All tab.
To help you find the expert reviews most important to you during your manual review:
- Use the filters in the left-hand menu to refine your search results by product, sentiment, status, or other "show only" options, such as if the expert(s) included a photo in their review.
- Use the search bar in the middle of the page to search for reviews with specific keywords, expert names, or phrases
- Sort the reviews by quality score, most recent, and highest or lowest-rated on the top right side of the page.
Auto-approve reviews for syndication
To save time and effort, enabling Automation is the quickest way to get trusted expert reviews on your ExpertVoice Recommendation Display. Doing so will instantly approve and syndicate new and existing expert reviews that meet specific criteria for your display (up to 25 reviews per product).
- Visit Reviews and click the Automation tab
- Click Setup Automation
- Define the criteria for what reviews get automatically approved for your display
- As you define your criteria, the total number of expert recommendations that meet the requirements will update and display on the page
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Click Save.
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Once you embed the display code on your website, reviews that meet these criteria will automatically appear.
Once you turn on Automation, the blue On button will appear on the Automation tab, and the total number of auto-approved reviews will populate your Automation Dashboard.
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TIP: If you already manually approved or declined reviews, the settings you make on the Automation tab will not affect these reviews; any already declined reviews will not be syndicated, and any manually approved reviews will still be syndicated. |
Automation Criteria
| Review criteria: | Description: | What reviews would be syndicated: | The default setting: |
| Recommendation Quality | We rate each expert’s review on a scale from 0 to 5, with five being the highest quality. Select the type of review you want to be approved. |
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The default quality score threshold is set to only syndicate high-quality reviews |
| Sentiment (Likelihood to recommend) | After an expert experiences your product, they can rate it on a scale from 1 to 10, with ten being the highest. Drag your cursor to select the minimum score you want to be approved. |
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The default likelihood to recommend threshold is set to only syndicate reviews with a 7 to 10 rating |
| Required attributes | Select what qualities and characteristics you’d like approved reviews to look like on your website. |
You can choose to show:
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The default attributes are all unchecked |
| Order by |
Define what order you’d like automatically approved expert reviews to appear. It only applies to recommendations chosen by automation. Manually approved reviews will appear first. |
You can choose to sort by:
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The default is Quality (highest to lowest) |
View a summary of your product reviews
The By Products tab in the Review Manager allows you to see a summary of the total number of approved, under review, and declined reviews for each product. You can sort each column from high to low or low to high.
Change the order of reviews on your display
The most efficient way to reorder specific expert reviews on your display is by using the information below. However, you can also change their order in the Display tab, by clicking "View Queue."
- Visit Reviews and click the By Products tab
- Select any product to see the status of the reviews you automatically and/or manually approved for that product.
- If you manually approved the review, click the six dots on the left of the review to drag and drop it to its preferred location. If you want to move any auto-approved review into a higher, more recent rank, click the Star Icon to manually approve it. This will change its status and now show up in the top section.
Your reviews can be a combination of:
- Approved Recommendations (Manually-approved): Any expert recommendation you manually approved. These will appear before any are automatically approved in your display.
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Auto Approved Recommendations: Any expert recommendation that meets your criteria in the Automation tab if you enable Automated Approvals. These will appear by “Sort Order” and appear after any manually approved in your display.
| TIP: In the Flagged for Approval section, you can approve the expert review and bump it up to the Approved Recommendations section, keep it flagged, or decline it. Reviews that appear here are any that a brand user previously flagged for review. |
How to customize your display
The Display tab allows you to adjust how the ExpertVoice Recommendation Display looks on your website.
First, visit the Display Settings Menu. Here you can select three display color themes, control image visibility (expert-generated content), and how many reviews to feature.
After you embed the display on your website, any product page with the code embedded will reflect these settings to maintain a consistent look and feel.
Display Color Themes
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Theme #: |
Who it's for: |
Specifics: |
Notes: |
#1: Default |
We recommend using the default theme with the pre-selected colors and options below for brands who want a shortcut to great design. |
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You can customize any color until you get the exact look you need. Click the square color picker for custom HTML colors, or click the dropdown arrow for predefined colors. The theme will read Default (Customized) if you change any color. If you want to go back to the original theme colors, click Reset. |
#2: Light |
We recommend using the light theme with the pre-selected colors and options below for brands with a light-colored website background. |
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You can customize the Header Text and/or Header Logo colors until you get the exact look you need. Click the square color picker for custom HTML colors, or click the dropdown arrow for predefined colors. The theme will read Light (Customized) if you change any color. If you want to go back to the original theme colors, click Reset. |
#3: Dark |
We recommend using the dark theme with the pre-selected colors and options below for brands with a dark-colored website background. |
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You can customize the Header Text and/or Header Logo colors until you get the exact look you need. Click the square color picker for custom HTML colors, or click the dropdown arrow for predefined colors. The theme will read Dark (Customized) if you change any color. If you want to go back to the original theme colors, click Reset. |
Additional Color Customization
If you choose to customize your display beyond the provided theme colors, we recommend selecting colors that complement your existing website and align with your brand guidelines.
Searching for the perfect color is simple by using our color picker tool:
- Input a HEX value in the empty text field using this format: #000000
- Or click the square color tile to search for a color and automatically populate the HEX value.
| TIP: An alert in red text may pop up if the color does not compliment the theme colors. Your Customer Success team member may reach out to ensure the colors contrast nicely for the reader to ensure the design and typography are visually pleasing. |
Previewing the display before implementation
The desktop preview dynamically refreshes with any changes you make on the Display tab.
Click See Mobile Preview or See Desktop Preview for a different view.
Embed the display code on your website
You can access the code in the Display tab to add the ExpertVoice Recommendation Display with approved expert reviews to your e-commerce pages. It would help if you had someone with access to editing HTML and JavaScript code on your e-commerce site first. When you're ready:
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Click Embed Display to generate custom HTML and JavaScript code for the display and follow the instructions on the pop-up screen.
- Your Customer Success partner will provide the API key. This must be inserted into the copy and pasted code in the next step.
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You can either copy and paste the code for immediate use or select Email Instructions to share the code with another individual managing your on-site implementation.
- Please get in touch with your Customer Success partner if you need further support.
- If you want to go back and change any of the display’s visual settings, click Embed Display again in the Display tab to generate and implement refreshed code that reflects your new visible edits.
Learn more details about how to install the display here.
Measure performance and optimize your display
- If you turned on Automation, regularly track how many reviews are auto-syndicated in your Automation Dashboard.
- Talk to your Account Executive about setting up E-Commerce Advocacy Optimization to increase revenue on your product display pages by 41%.
- Use the Recommendations Over Time Report in the Advocacy Platform Analytics feature to monitor the number of reviews your brand is collecting overtime on ExpertVoice.
ExpertVoice recommendation display FAQs
What will show on my website product page if I don't have any recommendations approved for my product(s)?
If the ExpertVoice Recommendation Display detects that no approved recommendations exist for the product on the page, it will not show the display.
Will I need to embed the ExpertVoice Recommendation Display every time I approve a new recommendation?
No, the display is built to dynamically pull in any expert reviews approved for syndication whenever it is loaded. As such, there is no need to re-embed after curating.
How do I know what my product codes are?
ExpertVoice can provide your brand with a list of the current product codes used in your ExpertVoice store. Reach out to your Customer Success partner for more information.
The ExpertVoice product codes don't match the product identifiers in my e-commerce system. What should I do?
There is a mapping system that the ExpertVoice e-commerce team uses to associate alternate identifiers with our internal Product Codes. Brands can use the provided list of ExpertVoice product codes to build out a mapping of their internal product identifiers to our product code.
Note: We can generally do this mapping for brands who use Shopify with no assistance needed.
Can expert reviews feed into my brand's existing ratings and reviews display?
The ExpertVoice Recommendation Display itself will not feed into the existing review platform that your brand chooses to use. However, you can syndicate expert reviews to your Bazaarvoice, Yotpo, and/or PowerReviews Reviews Display if you have an active contract with these brands and set up the integration. Please get in touch with your ExpertVoice Account Executive for more information.
Can I display a general feed of expert recommendations across many products?
Generally speaking, no. The limitation behind this is that the display doesn't include anything that attempts to identify the product associated with each recommendation. It assumes that the page it is being placed on provides product-specific context to the consumer. The exception to this is a brand with a sufficiently narrow or overlapping product line where there are very few products, or the differences between each product are small.
What happens if I choose to syndicate a recommendation and then the expert edits it to be negative?
The moment the recommendation is approved for syndication, a snapshot is taken. It is this snapshot that is shown within the display. This insulates the brand from automatically picking up negative edits and nefarious users who might view this as an opportunity to troll the brand's e-commerce experience.
The trade-off is that it also will not automatically pick up new changes. There currently is no functionality to message when an approved recommendation's snapshot is out of sync though it is on the roadmap. To regenerate the snapshot for a recommendation you need to reset the approved status (e.g., change to Needs Review and back to Approved).
Why aren't the changes I'm making in the Display tab showing on my site?
The Display tab in the Review Manager of the Advocacy Platform is a preview tool that allows you to generate the embed code to be installed on your website. Any changes on this page are not saved or stored, so they won't automatically update your display.
If you change the display settings after installing the display, copy the new embed code and re-embed it onto your site (or copy and replace the differences).
I have restrictions on the types of images I allow to be displayed in association with my brand. Can I exclude the photos from the expert recommendations?
Yes. The display has a toggle to exclude any images that the experts have attached to their recommendation. It does not allow any fine-tuning of individual images, however.
I have a redirect store. Can I use the ExpertVoice Recommendation Display?
You can host your product catalog on ExpertVoice to start collecting expert reviews to syndicate to the display. Learn more here.
Do you have an API that I can call to load the recommendations and display them in my own custom widget?
No. This is something on the ExpertVoice product roadmap but is not currently supported.
What is the size of the ExpertVoice Recommendation Display? Will it slow my page down?
The bulk of the ExpertVoice Recommendation Display is loading within an iFrame, so it should not slow the page down. The JS plugin script that is loaded outside of the iFrame is built to be as lightweight as possible and is currently ~28KB.
The actual size of the content that is displayed within the iFrame will vary depending on the number of recommendations being displayed and whether or not they have any images.
- The expected range should be around 400KB-500KB for a few recommendations without images.
- If no recommendations exist for the product, it will be minimal (~100KB). We also limit the maximum number of recommendations being loaded to 25, so we won't adversely impact load times.
Will I need to do anything CORS-related for the ExpertVoice Recommendation Display?
No specific work for CORS (cross-origin resource sharing) support is necessary for the ExpertVoice Recommendation Display. Because the Display is loading in an iFrame, it is isolated to the same domain/origin and will not experience any CORS issues.
The plugin JS embedded in the e-commerce page has a mechanism for communicating with the iFrame contents (window messaging) and can be used to listen to or communicate with the iFrame.
Is the ExpertVoice Recommendation Display accessible? Does it meet ADA/WCAG standards?
The display was built to be accessible and meets the thresholds or WCAG 2.1 AA standards, which implicitly means it is also ADA compliant. Learn more here.
Will the ExpertVoice Recommendation Display affect my SEO?
What impacts SEO changes frequently, but the assumption is that the ExpertVoice Recommendation Display will positively boost the SEO performance for the product display page.
- Search engine crawlers look for unique rich content on each page when determining how to rank them for relevant terms. Most modern crawlers will be able to execute the JS that triggers the Display to be included, and so they will be able to pick up the content of the recommendations being displayed. The content is unique text and images, so it is rich for search engines to use and evaluate.
- The content will likely be penalized because it is hosted on another domain (expertvoice.com). Still, given that it is being included as a first-class element by the domain authority (the site itself and not some other third-party plugin), having reviews on the page will likely be given decent weight.