Short definitions of the terms you meet when you collect and show customer reviews on a webshop. Missing a term? Email [email protected].
- Review aggregator
- Software that collects reviews from several review platforms and combines them into one feed and one overall score. Shopreviews is a review aggregator for webshops.
- Review widget
- A block of reviews embedded on a website — for example a carousel, badge, grid or list — that loads its content from a review service and updates automatically.
- Embed snippet
- A short piece of HTML, usually one element and one script tag, that you paste into a theme or CMS to show a widget.
- Shop review (service review)
- A review about the shop as a whole: delivery, service and communication. Kiyoh, WebwinkelKeur, Feedback Company and Trustpilot mainly collect shop reviews.
- Product review
- A review about one specific product. Product reviews belong on the product page and, with valid Product markup, can earn review stars in Google.
- AggregateRating schema
- Structured data (schema.org/AggregateRating, usually as JSON-LD) that states an average rating and the number of reviews, so search engines can read the score of a product.
- Rich results (review stars)
- Search results with extra visual information, such as yellow stars. Google shows review stars for eligible content such as products, but not for reviews a business publishes about itself on its own site.
- Seller ratings
- Google's star rating for a store in Google Shopping and Google Ads, based on shop reviews from Google and approved review partners. A store usually needs around 100 reviews in the past 12 months in a country before they appear.
- Google Review Partner
- A review platform that Google accepts as a source of shop reviews for seller ratings. Trustpilot, Trusted Shops, Kiyoh and Feedback Company are examples.
- Verified review
- A review linked to a real purchase or customer, for example because the platform sent the review invitation after an order.
- Review invitation
- An email or message sent after a purchase that asks the customer to leave a review. Invitations are the main way to collect a steady flow of reviews.
- Review deduplication
- Recognising the same review or customer across platforms or imports, so it is counted and shown only once.
- Rating normalisation
- Converting ratings from different scales — such as Kiyoh's 1–10 score or Facebook recommendations — to one common scale, usually 1–5 stars, to calculate one overall score.
- Trustmark (quality mark)
- A certification seal, such as Trusted Shops or WebwinkelKeur, showing that a shop follows a code of conduct. Many trustmarks combine the seal with reviews and sometimes buyer protection.
- Social proof
- The effect that people trust a choice more when they see others made it. Reviews and ratings are the most common form of social proof in ecommerce.
- UGC (user-generated content)
- Content created by customers instead of the brand, such as photo and video reviews.