Syndication enables you to distribute reviews across the Bazaarvoice Network of retail websites. You can reach more consumers by syndicating reviews than by displaying each review only on the website through which a consumer submitted the review.

Syndication also increases the overall number of reviews and percentage of products that have at least one review. Products with at least one review on a product page have an average conversion increase of 10%. Products with 50 reviews on a product page have an average conversion increase of 30%. More reviews lead to more purchases.

The following is a general description of how syndication works.

  1. Brands and retailers send Bazaarvoice information about their products.
  2. Bazaarvoice turns each brand’s and retailer’s product information into a Bazaarvoice product catalog.
  3. Bazaarvoice compares the information in your catalog with the information in retailers’ catalogs to find common unique identifiers.
  4. Bazaarvoice syndicates reviews about your products to retailers for publication.

Maintain your retailer list

Maintaining your list of retailers is vital for successfully syndicating your reviews to retailer websites. Contact Bazaarvoice Support when you need to add or remove retailers from your list. To see which retailers are receiving your reviews, open Outbound syndication growth in Bazaarvoice Insights.

Note: If you remove a retailer, existing reviews will continue to display on the retailer's website.

Manage your product catalog

Maintaining an up-to-date product catalog is vital to having a successful Bazaarvoice program. We use information in your catalog to match your products to those in your retailers’ catalogs. Correlating products across catalogs enables reviews you collect to syndicate to retailer websites.

Choose which products to include

If you have fewer than 10 products, consider adding all your products to your Bazaarvoice catalog. If you have hundreds of products, consider adding the products that impact your business the most, such as products that drive sales or have high margins. Also, consider factors like upcoming product launches, seasonal offerings, and product promotions within key categories.

Create and maintain your catalog

To create and maintain your catalog, use the Product Catalog application in the Bazaarvoice Portal. Your product catalog displays accurate, detailed information about the products you want consumers to review. Using Product Catalog, you can add new products, edit product details in the catalog, and remove products that you no longer sell from your Bazaarvoice catalog.

Provide the following information in your product catalog to create a complete, accurate catalog of the products you want consumers to review. The most important pieces of information we need to syndicate your reviews are Product ID and either UPC or EAN depending on your locale.

Note: If you do not provide either a UPC or EAN, your reviews will not syndicate.
  • Brand—The brand of the product. If you are a conglomerate with multiple brands, provide the specific brand to which the product belongs. This information is important for generating reports that are easy to parse.
  • Product ID (required)—The unique value you use internally to identify your product. This may be a SKU or manufacturing part number. If you don’t provide an ID, we’ll generate one for you. Product IDs help you track your products in reports. You also reference this ID when setting up post-interaction email campaigns.
  • UPC (required in the US)—A 6- or 12-digit number used for standard retail packaging in the United States. We use this value to match products in your catalog with corresponding products in retailers’ catalogs.
  • EAN (required in Europe)—An 8- or 13-digit number used worldwide for uniquely identifying retail goods. We use this value to match products in your catalog with corresponding products in retailers’ catalogs.
  • Product name—The name of the product on retailers’ product details pages.
  • Product Description (recommended for Ratings & Reviews Collect-Distribute, required for Sampling)—A detailed description of your product. We recommend it be at least three sentences or 300 characters long. Product Description does not appear on submission forms or product pickers, but it can facilitate syndication.
  • Product page URL—The URL of the product detail page on a retailer’s site. A link to this URL is included on submission forms so reviewers can refer to the product detail page when writing a review. For unreleased products, leave blank.

  • Image URL (highly recommended)—The URL of a product image. This image appears on post-interaction email invitations, submission forms, and product pickers. You can enter a link to an image you host yourself or a link to a retailer’s image of your product.

    To get the image link from a retail site:

    1. Browse to the product display page.
    2. Right-click the image.
    3. Depending on your browser, select Copy image address or Copy image location, or select View source and search the HTML for the image’s URL.
  • Category—The parent category to which your product belongs. Reviewers can filter products displayed in the product picker by this value.

You can export your product feeds by downloading the Product Catalog Export reports.

Amplify review impact through product families

Product variants are products that are nearly identical to other products in terms of consumer experience but have different SKUs or part numbers. For example, products that come in different colors, different sizes, or are packaged in different weights or quantities may be variants of one another. You can group product variants into product families so that reviews written about one product display on the product display pages of all family members.

Product families increase the following key performance indicators of your Bazaarvoice implementation:

  • Percentage of products with displayed reviews
  • Number of products with displayed reviews
  • Average reviews per product
  • Number of total displayed reviews

Use the Product Catalog application to add all products to your catalog that meet the criteria of being a product variant. List all products that belong to the same family on separate rows, using the same product ID for each row but each product’s individual UPC or EAN, as shown in the following example:

Brand Product ID UPC Product Name Product Description Product Page URL Image URL Category
Brand A LBK431356 123456789111 Small Gadget in red A small red gadget. http://retailer.com/LBK431356/123456789111 http://retailer.com/sm-gadget-red.jpg Hardware
Brand A LBK431356 123456789122 Small Gadget in blue A small blue gadget. http://retailer.com/LBK431356/123456789122 http://retailer.com/sm-gadget-blue.jpg Hardware
Brand A LBK431356 123456789133 Small Gadget in green A small green gadget. http://retailer.com/LBK431356/123456789133 http://retailer.com/sm-gadget-green.jpg Hardware