You can solicit customer reviews outside of the typical product review submission scenario. The generic review submission feature, also referred to as “product picker,” enables your customers to select the product or products they want to review. Generic review submission significantly expands your ability to collect valuable review feedback outside the typical product purchase cycle.

In-depthQuick Start

You can provide generic review submission links in email messages. For example, as part of an email campaign to solicit product reviews, you can email customers who have purchased from you in the past. Even if you don’t know which products they purchased, you can email them a generic “Write a review” link. Using this link, your customers can open a review submission form and then use the product picker interface to select one or more products they want to review.

When a consumer selects the review submission link, a lightbox is displayed and shows a set of products to review. The initial set of products can belong to a category or product family.

  • A category-based view allows reviewers to search and navigate in and out of sub-categories. Here is an example for the Bikes category:

  • A product-based view displays only products included in the specified product family. In the following example, the product family is WomensBikes:

Use this link to display the hosted form:

https://display.ugc.bazaarvoice.com/bvstaging/static/<client_name>/<site_ID>/<locale>/container.htm?bvaction=rr_submit_generic

Remove /bvstaging if you are in the production environment, and replace the following with your values:

  • <client_name>— The client name provided by Bazaarvoice. Use lowercase letters for the value.
  • <site_ID>—The ID of the deployment zone you want to use. This is set in Bazaarvoice configuration within the Bazaarvoice Workbench. The default deployment zone is “main_site”. Check with your Bazaarvoice representative to ensure the correct ID, or select to the right of the deployment zone on the Site Manager page during configuration.
  • <locale>—The locale used by the implementation. If you are not using US English (en_US), use the correct locale code.

You also can add one or more of the following options to the URL:

  • To prevent the consumer from closing the form, add the bvpreventClose=true parameter. If you do not include this parameter, the icon is displayed (as shown in the example above), and the consumer can close the form, which then displays the locale's home page as configured in the configuration page.

    https://display.ugc.bazaarvoice.com/bvstaging/static/<client_name>/<site_ID>/<locale>/container.htm?bvaction=rr_submit_generic&bvpreventClose=true

  • To limit the products displayed on the form to a specific category, add the bvcategoryId=CategoryId parameter. CategoryId must match the category's <ExternalId> in the product feed.

    https://display.ugc.bazaarvoice.com/bvstaging/static/<client_name>/<site_ID>/<locale>/container.htm?bvaction=rr_submit_generic&bvcategoryId=<CategoryId>

  • To limit the products displayed on the form to a specific product family, add the bvfamilyProductId=ProductFamilyID parameter. Replace ProductFamilyID with the <ExternalId> of the Product Family that you want to display. You can find the ExternalId for a product in the product catalog.

    https://display.ugc.bazaarvoice.com/bvstaging/static/<client_name>/<site_ID>/<locale>/container.htm?bvaction=rr_submit_generic&bvfamilyProductId=<ProductFamilyID>

  • To associate reviews submitted through the generic review submission form with a specific campaign, specify the bvcampaignId=CampaignId parameter. CampaignId is a string of up to 255 alphanumeric characters (including underscores) created to identify the campaign. Specify a custom ID or specify a system ID; refer to the list of campaign IDs that are provided with Ratings & Reviews Collect-Distribute .

    https://display.ugc.bazaarvoice.com/bvstaging/static/<client_name>/<site_ID>/<locale>/container.htm?bvaction=rr_submit_generic&bvcampaignId=<CampaignId>

You can also use the Submission Link Generator to create the simple submission URL (ssURL) base.

Note: To access the Submission Link Generator in Support Community, sign in to the Bazaarvoice Portal first. Then, select the Access the Support Community link located at the bottom of the Home page or top of the Help window. To open the Help window, select the Help icon in-app help icon in the upper-right corner.

For Bazaarvoice-hosted generic review submission, use this link to display the hosted form:

https://display.ugc.bazaarvoice.com/bvstaging/static/<client_name>/<site_ID>/<locale>/container.htm?bvaction=rr_submit_generic&bvpreventClose=true

Remove /bvstaging if you are adding code to the production environment, and replace <client_name>, <site_ID>, and <locale> with your values.