In today’s competitive ecommerce landscape, customer reviews have become the foundation of online shopping. For BigCommerce stores, displaying authentic customer feedback isn’t just a nice-to-have feature - it’s essential for building trust, increasing conversions, and establishing social proof.
Whether you’re migrating from another e-commerce platform, launching a new store, or looking to improve your existing review strategy, choosing the right review application is crucial. In this guide, we’ll explore why reviews are critical for BigCommerce stores, introduce you to Fera and provide you with a step-by-step walkthrough on how to import and display reviews.
Why Reviews Are Important for BigCommerce Stores
Unlike marketplaces like Amazon where reviews are built into the platform experience, standalone ecommerce stores must work harder to establish social proof with first-time visitors. Here’s why reviews are particularly crucial:
Building initial trust: When customers land on your BigCommerce store, they’re often encountering your brand for the first time. With 93% of shoppers saying reviews impact their purchasing decisions, reviews as social proof that helps overcome the natural skepticism associated with unfamiliar brands. Think about it - would you rather purchase from a store that has zero reviews, or one that has at least twenty reviews? Personally, we’d rather purchase from a store that has twenty reviews!
SEO benefits: User-generated content through reviews create fresh, relevant content that search engines such as Google love. This can significantly improve your product pages’ search rankings and drive organic traffic. Having reviews show during the online shopping process, having visible, indexed reviews can dramatically increase your search visibility and click-through rates.
Customer insights: Reviews provide valuable feedback about product quality, shipping experience, customer service, and areas for improvement - insights that are pure gold to optimize your product and customer experience.
Why Choose Fera for Your BigCommerce Store
Fera has emerged as a leading review management platform. With a 5.0 out of 5.0 star rating on the BigCommerce app store, Fera is developed to help e-commerce stores automatically collect reviews and showcase them beautifully across their site.
Key Features of Fera
Import Reviews and Aggregate Them: Whether you’re migrating from Shopify, Big Cartel or any other platform, Fera allows you to import your reviews via CSV file, to ensure you don’t lose valuable social proof that you worked so hard to collect during any platform transitions. Fera doesn’t just allow you to import reviews, it aggregates reviews from multiple sources including Google, Facebook, Etsy, giving you a comprehensive view of your brand’s reviews across your website.
Automated Review Collection: Fera removes the hassle of having to manually request reviews from customers. Our automated review collection workflows includes automated follow-up sequences for non-responders with customizable intervals. Also, you can determine the timing of the emails based on your shipping, fulfillment, and delivery confirmation. Reward customers who submit reviews, with coupon codes, cash-back increasing engagement and authenticity.
Photo and Video Review Collection: Fera goes beyond star ratings and text-based reviews by encouraging users to submit photo and video submissions. We streamline this process with our easy drag-and-drop functionality and mobile-friendly capture tools.
Advanced Display Customization: Fera offers extensive customization options that allow you to match your brand’s aesthetic perfectly. From color schemes, fonts to layouts, Fera ensures your reviews on your website feels like a natural extension of your brand.
Extensive Third-Party Integrations: Fera integrates seamlessly with popular e-commerce tools and platforms, creating a unified ecosystem for your business operations. Key integrations include:
- Email marketing platforms such as Klaviyo
- Customer service tools such as Gorgias and Zendesk
- Inventory management systems for product syncing and fulfillment
How to Use Fera to Import and Display Reviews on BigCommerce
Step 1: Installation and Initial Setup
- Access the BigCommerce App Store
- Log into your BigCommerce admin dashboard > navigate to “Apps” in the left sidebar.
- Or, go to the BigCommerce app store > search for “Fera” > and click “Get This App” button.
Step 2: Complete the Authorization
- BigCommerce will prompt you to authorize Fera to access your store data.
- Review the permissions and you’ll be redirected to Fera’s setup wizard.
Note that as a new store utilizing Fera, you will receive a 14-day free trial.
Step 3: Import Existing Reviews
- In your Fera dashboard, navigate to the Configuration tab on the left-hand side.
- Scroll down to Import Reviews.
- Click the top right “New Import” button.
Step 4: Prepare Your Data
- Export reviews from your previous platform and ensure your data includes information such as customer names, review text, ratings, and dates.
- Clean up any formatting issues in the CSV file template that is prepared for you. This is important since when you upload your review data file, Fera can properly map your products and reviews and ensure accuracy.
Step 5: Configure Review Display
- Choose your desired widget types that you’d like to place across your website by in your Fera dashboard, navigate to the Configuration tab on the left-hand side.
- Select Widgets and choose from the various review widgets. To learn more about the review widgets that are available, click here .
- For each of the review widgets that you select, you will have various customization options from colors, fonts, sizing, and placement rules.
By following this guide, you'll be able to leverage Fera's powerful features to create a review system that builds trust, increases conversions, and provides valuable customer insights for your BigCommerce store. Remember that review management is an ongoing process—regular monitoring and optimization will ensure you continue to maximize the impact of customer feedback on your business success.
