This article discusses a deeper dive of the configuration options available for the Write-a-Review (WAR) form. To learn how to implement the WAR form, click here. To learn more about the WAR form and its features, click here.
Write-a-Review Configuration Options
The following parameters are all possible variables you can pass within the JavaScript configuration in the source code for your WAR page.
Ensure that when you add these parameters that you include your specific information, and hard-code these values. The URL of the WAR form will NOT populate the parameters on your page, and can cause your form to not work properly.
| Parameter | Description | Required? |
| merchant_id | Your merchant identifier. | Yes. Either your Merchant ID or the combination of your Merchant Group ID and your Site ID is required. |
| merchant_group_id | Your merchant group identifier. | Yes. Either your Merchant ID or the combination of your Merchant Group ID and your Site ID is required. |
| locale | The locale of your site. This defaults to en_US. | Yes |
| unique_review_id | Your internal unique identifier for the review. This parameter ensures that duplicate views don't get created. | No |
| merchant_user_id | Your unique identifier of the customer who creates the review. If you don't assign user IDs to all of your customers, and have no values for this field, you must set this value to an empty string, "". Don't use the null character value NULL; a quoted string value of "0", "NULL", or "null"; nor a string of blank space characters. | No |
| merchant_user_email | The email address of the customer creating the review. | No |
| source |
Designates a source for the review. You can add web, email, paid_web, or paid_email as the value for this parameter. Web - review submitted via website Write-a-Review link. Email - review submitted via direct link from a Follow-Up Email. This assigns the Verified Buyer badge. |
No |
| order_id | The ID of the customer's order associated with the review. | No |
| return_url | When set, a Continue Shopping link appears on the Write-a-Review Thank You Page, that links to the URL you provide for this parameter. This URL should be fully qualified and not relative. | No |
| style_sheet | The URL to your CSS override sheet. | No |
| disclosure_code | This parameter denotes a sampling or sweepstakes campaign. You can add sampling or sweepstakes as the value for the parameter. It will display a text-only disclosure alongside the review on your site and is not the same thing as a badge. | No |
You can also pass parameters in the WAR form URL to customize the experience for your customers. By passing parameters in the URL, the parameters override any JavaScript passed in your WAR form.
To pass parameters in the URL, take any of the parameters listed in the table and prepend pr_ to the parameter. For example, pr_disclosure_code=sampling.
Pre-Populating Write-a-Review Fields
You have the ability to pre-populate fields on your WAR form. This is helpful if your website requires customers to log in, because you can then pre-populate the form with your customers' first name or a user name that they use on your website.
You can pass the following standard parameters in the URL of your WAR form to pre-populate fields:
- pr_name - the name, or nickname, of the person leaving the review
- pr_location - the location of the person leaving the review
- pr_headline - the headline, or title, of the review
- pr_rating - a value of 1 to 5 that signifies the star rating
- pr_comments - the comments of the review itself
You can also pass in additional parameters in the WAR form URL. To locate these additional parameters:
1. Navigate to your PDP.
2. Right-click on the PDP, and then select Inspect.
3. Navigate to the Network tab in Developer Tools.
4. Locate the form fields you want to pre-populate, and then make note of the key.
5. Add the key to the URL of your WAR form, and then specify the value you want to appear in the form.
As a best practice, you should only pre-populate fields on the WAR form that assist your customer in writing a review. You should avoid pre-populating fields that gather your customers' opinion.
Track a Campaign
You can add the pr_campaign_id variable to your WAR form to measure or count the number of reviews produced by specific tactics or experiences.
User Scenario
Sally at Brand X wants to see how many users leave a review of Product Y after she interacts with her users via Facebook. She wants to know if Brand X gets more reviews after reaching out directly to their users, so that Brand X can increase their coverage through social media campaigns. Sally calls this campaign facebook and adds the name of the campaign to the pr_campaign_id variable, then adds the variable to the URL of her WAR page.
She sends the updated URL to users after she interacts with them via Facebook. After a few days of the social media campaign, Sally accesses the All Reviews Report in the Analytics tool in the PowerReviews Portal. She sees that Brand X is gaining more reviews as a result of the social media campaign.
Adding 'Track a Campaign'
If you want to add a campaign ID to your WAR form URL, you must first decide on a name for your campaign. You can then append the pr_campaign_id variable with the name of your campaign(s) to the end of your WAR form URL. In the example of the user scenario above, the WAR form URL with Track a Campaign added would appear like the following:
http://www.example.com/en-us/review?page_id=123456789&pr_asin=A012BCD3EF4&pr_campaign_id=facebook
Reviewing Your Metrics
After you add the variable to the URL of your WAR form, you can see the number of reviews produced by social media interactions in the All Reviews Report in the Analytics tool in the PowerReviews Portal. To see the results of your campaign:
1. Navigate to the Analytics tab.
2. Click the Reviews tab to see the All Reviews Report.
3. Click Edit Columns.
4. Click +Campaign ID and Apply.
You can now see the reviews you collected via your campaign.