Quick Onboarding Playbook

Product Catalog

The product catalog is a crucial step in a successful onboarding experience.  Setting up correctly is the best way to ensure the optimal use of Yotpo and reviews. See documentation HERE. The points to consider are:

1. Deciding on the best product identifier and hierarchy
2. Deciding and setting up groups
3. Setting up tags and custom questions
4. Setting up unique identifiers for PLAs

Setting up the product identifier

Design your product hierarchy and decide on the product identifier

• This is the major step in deciding how Yotpo will interact with your site.  We use the product identifier to match the reviews to the corresponding products.
• Products can either come as standalone, or as a main/variant hierarchy.

Example product hierarchy

Extension cord (main, product ID 10):

1. 2 meters (variant A, product ID 10A)
2. 6 meters (variant B,  product ID 10B)
3. 10 meters (variant C,  product ID 10C)

In this example hierarchy there are two options:

Option 1 - Decide that the length is not relevant and that reviews are to be collected on the main product.  This means that the order feed should always have 10 as the product ID, regardless of which length was purchased.  The product URL, name and image URL should also match the main product.

• Another example of this is a clothing store with different colors (variants) for the same product style (main).

Option 2 - Decide that you want to collect reviews for each variant.  In this use case, the product identifier sent to Yotpo will be either 10A, 10B, or 10C, depending on the length variation that was purchased.  The product URL, name, and image URL should also match the purchased product.

• Another example is a furniture store that has the same style of furniture, but each variant represents a different type of raw material.

Platform-specific instructions

• Shopify:  Shopify products will be created according to the parent ID, even if a product does have variants.  We cannot receive variant product details from Shopify
• Adobe Commerce 2: For configurable products, Yotpo will get the configurable product ID, and not the simple product ID.

Grouping products

Product groups are used to share reviews across products.  If you’re not interested in sharing reviews across identical products you should not be using product groups. The recommended use case for groups:

1. If you’re sending variant IDs, but all products are showing up on the same style page, see the example HERE.  In this case, reviews are collected on the variant level but are displayed on the main style PDP.  Reviews are grouped so that the main style PDP has reviews for all different variants
2. If you’re sending variant IDs, but each variant has its own PDP, for example, the products HERE and HERE are sent to us as distinct IDs and each variant has its own PDP.  Reviews are grouped so each PDP shows all reviews for all different variants.
3. If you’re using standalone products (no hierarchy), but would like to share reviews across identical or similar products.

See documentation HERE.

Custom Questions and tags

Our default reviews form has the review content and title fields.  You can customize that form and add different questions to rate certain aspects of your product and customer base.

It is possible to create different forms for different product types.For example, a cosmetics store can have different forms for the following product types: Skincare, makeup, and fragrances.Products can be tagged to decide which form will be displayed for them.

• See our general guidelines for custom forms HERE
• See our product tagging guidelines HERE

Unique identifiers for PLAs

Sync should be done according to the following:

• Merchant feed gtin - same as Yotpo's Spec UPC
• Merchant feed sku - same as Yotpo's Spec SKU
• Merchant feed isbn - same as Yotpo's Spec ISBN
• Merchant feed brand - same as Yotpo's Spec Brand
• Merchant feed mpn - same as Yotpo's Spec MPN

If your Google merchant feed includes variants:

• Spec SKU in the Yotpo feed should have the same value as the item_group_id in Google’s feed
• make sure that both feeds are sending Spec Brand.

Metadata

• Metadata is another layer of data that’s added on top of Yotpo’s orders and reviews. Yotpo has 3 types of metadata:
  • Customer-related information (age group, location, height, etc..)
  • Product related information (Color, size, weight, etc..)
  • Order related information (Delivery method, purchased as a gift, etc..)
• Uses:
  • Metadata can be used for our filters.
  • Metadata can be used to add pre-filtering logic and only display a segment of reviews for a product
• How is this different from custom questions?
  • Custom questions are a part of the review request.  The seller needs the Shopper’s input
  • Metadata doesn’t require the shopper’s input.  This is data that the seller already collected and want to send to Yotpo
• How to set it up:
  • Send it along with the order data [LINK] (recommended)

Backfill existing reviews [LINK] (not recommended)Examples of how the metadata looks in the reviews widget, both in the filters and as part of the review:

Syndication

Syndication is a way of sharing reviews across different stores. It’s highly recommended to go through the documentation before setting up this feature:

• /v1/docs/about-syndication
• /v1/docs/syndication-configuration-guide
• /v1/docs/syndication-implementation-guide

There are two syndication types that can be used:

• Full review syndication:
  • This is commonly used for stores that share a language and want to share review content across all stores.
  • For example - the US, UK, and AU domains that want to share the reviews will be using full syndication.
• Bottomline syndication:
  • This is commonly used for businesses that have multiple domains across different languages, and do not want to share the content - only the aggregate rating.

For example - a European brand with stores in English, French, and German.  Using bottomline syndication will only share the total number of reviews, but not the actual content: