The Best Third-Party Review Platforms For Parts And Accessories Ecommerce

One of the keys to selling auto parts and accessories online is trust. Trust comes from a strong brand, a nice-looking website, and lots of product reviews. Most of the time, you want product reviews to come from a third party to really maximize trust.

In this post, we’ll explain more about third-party reviews, offer advice on choosing a third-party review platform, and throw in some tips, too.

Why Pay For A 3rd Party Review Platform? Why Not Use The Built-In Review System?

Most ecommerce platforms have a built-in ability to collect product reviews. These systems tend to be basic – just name and rating – but they work. Some built-in review systems – like BigCommerce – have an automated system for collecting product reviews.

While you certainly can use the review system that is built into your website, we don’t recommend it.

• Third-party review tools get more engagement. Most of the built-in review systems are pretty basic, with no way to display a histogram, search reviews, or share photos or videos. Most third-party review tools do all of these things well, improving engagement with the reviews themselves.
• Third-party reviews hold more meaning. Consumers assume that it’s harder for retailers to edit or censor negative reviews left on a third-party platform. So, when consumers see that reviews are from a third party, they tend to trust them more. (Read more about how to manage negative reviews in this blog post from Spork.)
• Photos and videos boost sales. Most third-party review platforms make it easy for consumers to upload photos and videos. Customer-submitted content like this is super helpful. Not only does it get customers more excited and ready to buy, but it also boosts organic search quite a bit.

Finally, third-party review platforms are affordable. There’s no reason not to use them.

What To Look For In A Third-Party Review Platform

We’ve reviewed several dozen third-party review platforms over the years, and the best platforms have several key features.

1. Great widgets and tools for showcasing reviews. Your website users shouldn’t have to go to a product page to see all the great reviews your store has collected. With the right tools, you can display recent reviews, top-rated reviews, and average review scores on any page of your site.
2. Google syndication. Google ads will accept review data from a list of third-party platforms – you can find the list here. Be sure to check this list against whatever tool you’re considering, as a lot of review tools do not syndicate to Google.
3. Integrated semantic markup with clear instructions. Semantic markup is important in SEO, and a good review platform will automatically inject this markup into reviews. This semantic markup can then be indexed by search engines and is generally great for SEO. The trick is to make sure you understand how the markup is injected. If it’s done incorrectly, it can lead to Google treating your product pages like spam…so make sure you know how it works.
4. The ability to mass email old customers. If we start working on an ecommerce site with lots of old customers but no reviews, we’ll use a 3rd party tool to send old customers review requests. This will give an established site a good number of reviews and a meaningful average rating in a very short amount of time.
5. Good tools for moderating reviews. While you shouldn’t be able to hide negative reviews, you should be able to hide reviews with profanity, spammy links, and so on. And if a review is unfair, you should have a way to either remove the review or ask the review platform to do so.

Recommended Review Platforms

We recommend these three review tools: Yotpo, ShopperApproved, and TrustPilot.

We like Yotpo because it’s affordable, has excellent features, and is starting to become a highly trusted name in ecommerce. We wish it had a nicer ratings “badge” widget, and the integrations are sometimes a little buggy, but overall it’s very good. The cost is excellent if you don’t need to syndicate reviews to Google.

We like ShopperApproved because it gives you maximum control fires on the order confirmation page. Collecting reviews on the order confirmation page all but guarantees a great rating. We also like that ShopperApproved is easy to integrate into any platform, as it’s a simple javascript snippet. ShopperApproved supports collecting reviews via email and call center and also supports custom review questions. It’s more expensive than Yotpo, however.

We like the free version of TrustPilot because, at that price, the value is good. TrustPilot might sound familiar. (They have run Superbowl ads.) They have a good reputation in the industry. If you use this tool you get a nice page on their website. However, if you start to pay for TrustPilot, you’ll find that Yotpo and ShopperApproved offer better value for a lower price. For that reason, we only recommend the free version.

Integration Tips And Tricks

Integrating a third-party tool into your ecommerce website isn’t always easy. Our recommendations:

• Check the documentation before purchasing any review tool, and make sure you understand how everything will work. Integration usually involves adding code to both the order confirmation page and product pages. Some tools work better with some platforms. If you’re hesitant to integrate anything on your site (i.e., you’re not what they call, “techy,” or your site is finicky), stick with ShopperApproved. It will integrate with just about any site easily.
• Make sure you understand automation and weigh the pros and cons of implementing it. While all tools encourage automation, you can send review requests manually with most tools. Many retailers prefer to send reviews manually to try and prevent poor reviews, only some platforms don’t let you do that.
• Make sure it’s easy to import reviews from other systems. If you have reviews already, you want to import them into whatever your new review tool is. Make sure you know how that works too before buying.

Summing Up

Reviews collected by third parties boost trust in your site and your products. While they cost more than built-in review tools, they offer substantially more value.

The keys are:

1. Make sure you understand how the reviews will be presented on your site.
2. Make sure you understand how reviews are collected, and what code needs to be implemented on your site.
3. You can price and feature compare several platforms. We’d point you to Yotpo, ShopperApproved, and the free version of TrustPilot if you want to save time looking for the best solution.

Whatever platform you integrate, don’t hesitate to get going. Third-party review tools can often boost conversion rates up to 25%. A simple $100/month tool could generate a massive increase in sales.