How to Add Review Stars on Shopify

Introduction

Tool fatigue is real: merchants juggle multiple platforms, widgets, and scripts just to show something as simple as a star rating on a product page. That friction costs time, slows pages, and makes it harder to focus on what matters most—keeping customers coming back.

Short answer: You can add review stars on Shopify by either using a reviews and UGC solution that injects a star-rating widget and structured data for SEO, or by adding Liquid templates and JSON-LD markup to your theme so ratings display and generate rich snippets. The most reliable path for long-term growth combines a retention-focused reviews platform with the right theme placement and structured data so stars appear on product pages, collection grids, and search results.

In this post we'll walk through everything merchants need to know to add and optimize review stars on Shopify. We'll tie each technical option to practical growth outcomes—higher trust, higher conversion rates, increased lifetime value—and show how a single retention suite removes tool fatigue by replacing multiple fragmented solutions. Along the way we explain the required code, theme locations for Online Store 2.0 and classic themes, SEO and structured data best practices, design and accessibility considerations, common mistakes, and how our Reviews & UGC and Loyalty features fit into an efficient retention stack.

Our main message: show accurate, well-styled stars everywhere shoppers expect them, and power them from a merchant-first retention solution so you get more growth with less stack.

Why Review Stars Matter For Shopify Stores

Stars are a simple signal with outsized influence. They communicate social proof at a glance and reduce friction in the browsing experience.

What stars deliver for your store

• Instant trust signal on product and collection pages.
• Visual shorthand that helps shoppers compare items quickly.
• Higher click-through rates from search engines via rich snippets.
• Improved conversion rates by reducing hesitation at checkout.
• A path to collect user-generated content that fuels marketing channels.

SEO and rich snippets

When star ratings are paired with structured data (aggregateRating in JSON-LD), search engines can show review stars inside search results. That increases visual prominence and click-through rate, which in turn can bring higher intent traffic to product pages.

Business outcomes to track

• Conversion rate lift on product pages and collection pages.
• Click-through rate from organic search with rich snippets.
• Average order value and repeat purchase rate when reviews are tied to loyalty incentives.
• Growth in review volume after implementing automated review collection.

Two Main Approaches: Platform vs. Theme-Only

There are two primary ways to add review stars on Shopify. Each has trade-offs.

Use a reviews and UGC platform (recommended for most merchants)

A reviews solution handles review collection, moderation, star widgets, structured data, and performance optimizations out of the box. This approach minimizes maintenance and keeps schema consistent across pages.

Benefits:

• Fast setup with built-in widgets and automatic schema.
• Centralized moderation and analytics.
• Easy placement across product pages, collection grids, and homepages.
• Integrations to surface reviews in emails and on social channels.

Trade-offs:

• Requires adding a single, unified solution to your store (which we recommend as a replacement for a fragmented stack).

How Growave helps: our Reviews & UGC feature simplifies collecting and showing ratings, and works together with Loyalty & Rewards so you can incentivize reviews without managing multiple vendors. Learn how our plan tiers match different needs on our pricing and plan details.

Theme-only implementation (manual)

For stores that want full control, you can add star rendering and JSON-LD directly in Liquid templates. This gives maximum flexibility but requires developer time and repeating work across themes, templates, and updates.

Benefits:

• Ultimate control over markup and styling.
• No reliance on external scripts for rendering stars.

Trade-offs:

• Time-consuming to implement across product, collection, cart, and search templates.
• Must implement structured data correctly to get rich snippets.
• Ongoing maintenance for theme updates and new Shopify features.

We’ll cover both approaches in detail and provide code examples for manual implementation.

Foundations: How Shopify Themes Render Product Information

Before editing Liquid or inserting widgets, identify where to place stars in your theme.

Key theme files and sections to know

• For Online Store 2.0 themes (OS 2.0), product markup is often in product template sections like main-product.liquid or product.json templates. Collection product cards live in product-card.liquid or main-collection-product-grid.liquid.
• For vintage themes, look for product.liquid, product-template.liquid, collection-template.liquid, and snippets like product-card.liquid.
• Section-based themes allow blocks and schema, so you can add a star block to a product card or use a custom block that renders the widget.

Where shoppers expect to see stars

• Product pages, near the product title or price.
• Collection and category grids, under product thumbnails.
• Search and filter results.
• Cart pages and quick view modals (optional but useful).
• Home featured collections and related products.

Finding the right file and insertion point is the first step before pasting widget code or Liquid markup.

How To Add Review Stars On Shopify — Option A: Use a Retention-Focused Reviews Platform

This is the path we recommend for most merchants who want fast, robust, and maintainable results.

What a platform brings out of the box

• Star-rating widgets you can style to match your theme.
• Aggregate rating calculation and moderation tools.
• Automated structured data injection so you get rich snippets without manual JSON-LD.
• Placement controls for product pages and collection grids.
• Performance optimizations like asynchronous loading and local caching.

If you want a retention-first solution that replaces multiple separate tools, our Reviews & UGC feature is built to do exactly that. You can learn more about our approach to reviews, including how to collect photo and video submissions, on the page about our Reviews and UGC feature.

Step-by-step: Set up review stars using a reviews platform

• Sign up for the platform and connect it to your Shopify store.
• Navigate to the widget or on-site display section inside the platform dashboard.
• Choose widget style and placement for product pages.
• Enable automatic injection for product pages, and copy snippet code when required for custom placements.
• Add widget snippet to collection templates or product-card snippets if automatic injection isn’t available.
• Confirm structured data is enabled in the platform settings so aggregateRating is added to product pages.
• Test with Google’s Rich Results Test to confirm JSON-LD is present and valid.

When using a single retention platform, you eliminate the need to assemble separate review, loyalty, and referral widgets—this embodies our “More Growth, Less Stack” principle.

Practical tips for using a platform

• Use the platform’s moderation queue to remove spam and ensure quality.
• Enable photo and video submissions to increase conversion impact.
• Use custom fields (if supported) to capture structured info like fit, size, or use case.
• Tie review requests to post-purchase flows and loyalty rewards to increase response rates—see how integrating reviews with your rewards program can boost participation.

Common platform pitfalls and how to avoid them

• Relying on default placement without testing can create layout issues: preview widgets across viewport sizes.
• Loading too many third-party scripts can slow the page. Choose a solution that optimizes loading and bundles scripts when possible.
• Not enabling schema: always check that the platform adds aggregateRating JSON-LD for SEO.

How To Add Review Stars On Shopify — Option B: Manual Theme Implementation (Liquid + JSON-LD)

For shops that prefer a hands-on approach, follow these steps. This is more technical but gives full control.

Step: Gather review data (metafields or external source)

• If you store reviews externally, expose the aggregated rating and review count via metafields or snippets.
• If you store reviews in Shopify metafields or a custom collection, make sure the product object includes review_count and average_rating values in Liquid.

Example approach using product metafields:

• Create product metafields for:
  • reviews.average_rating
  • reviews.review_count

These can be populated via backend scripts or API integration.

Step: Add star rendering to product template

Place visual stars near the title or price. Use accessible markup and consider SVG icons for crisp scaling.

Example Liquid snippet to render a five-star visual with fractional fills (replace product metafields with your data source):

{% assign avg = product.metafields.reviews.average_rating | default: 0 %}
{% assign rounded = avg | times: 20 | round | divided_by: 20 %}
<div class="product-rating" aria-label="Average rating {{ avg }} out of 5">
  <div class="stars" role="img" aria-hidden="true">
    {% for i in (1..5) %}
      {% assign diff = rounded | minus: i %}
      {% if diff >= 0 %}
        <svg class="star full" width="16" height="16" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="currentColor">...</svg>
      {% elsif diff > -1 %}
        <svg class="star half" width="16" height="16" viewBox="0 0 24 24">...</svg>
      {% else %}
        <svg class="star empty" width="16" height="16">...</svg>
      {% endif %}
    {% endfor %}
  </div>
  <span class="review-count">({{ product.metafields.reviews.review_count | default: 0 }})</span>
</div>

• Use CSS to color filled and half stars.
• Keep SVGs inline to avoid additional requests and to allow easy styling.

Step: Add JSON-LD aggregateRating for SEO

Place valid JSON-LD in the product template head or just before the closing body tag.

Example JSON-LD snippet in Liquid:

{% if product.metafields.reviews.review_count and product.metafields.reviews.average_rating %}
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org/",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "{{ product.title | escape }}",
  "image": [
    "{{ product.featured_image.src | img_url: 'master' }}"
  ],
  "sku": "{{ product.variants.first.sku | escape }}",
  "aggregateRating": {
    "@type": "AggregateRating",
    "ratingValue": "{{ product.metafields.reviews.average_rating }}",
    "reviewCount": "{{ product.metafields.reviews.review_count }}"
  }
}
</script>
{% endif %}

• Confirm numeric values are raw numbers (not strings).
• Test using Google’s Rich Results Test or Structured Data Testing Tool to verify output.

Step: Add stars to collection/product grid cards

For collection grids, find product-card snippet or main-collection-product-grid file and insert the star rendering where product titles or prices are displayed.

Example insertion point:

• In Online Store 2.0 card: insert the visual star markup under the product title in product-card.liquid or product-card.json templates.
• For vintage themes: add snippet to the product loop in collection.liquid or Collection-template.

Step: Consider quick view and AJAX-loaded elements

If your theme uses quick view modals or lazy-loading product cards, ensure the star rendering is included in the AJAX response or that the widget is reinitialized after dynamic content loads.

Accessibility considerations

• Use aria-label on the rating container (e.g., "Average rating 4.5 out of 5").
• Ensure icons are decorative when appropriate and provide text fallback for screen readers.
• Maintain sufficient color contrast for star icons.

Common mistakes when implementing manually

• Forgetting to include structured data or using invalid JSON-LD formatting.
• Outputting numbers as strings in aggregateRating, which can hinder rich snippet eligibility.
• Placing duplicate JSON-LD blocks with conflicting values—ensure a single source of truth per product page.
• Styling or position that hides the stars on mobile.

Design and UX: How Stars Should Look and Behave

Good design makes stars useful, not just decorative.

Visual best practices

• Place stars next to the product title or price for immediate context.
• Include review count near the stars to provide quantity context.
• For fractional ratings, display half-filled stars or numerical rating with the visual stars.
• Keep stars crisp and consistent across product pages and collection grids.

Microcopy to use with stars

• Use “Average rating” or “Rated X out of 5” for clarity.
• If review volume is low, show the review count or a CTA to write a review: “Be the first to review this product.”

When not to display stars

• If a product has zero reviews, consider hiding stars or showing a neutral prompt like “No reviews yet.”
• Avoid displaying misleading or inflated ratings.

Performance: Keep Stars Fast

Even star widgets can slow pages if not implemented carefully.

Performance checklist

• Prefer inline SVGs over external image sprites to avoid extra requests.
• Load review scripts asynchronously and defer until after critical content.
• Use server-side rendering or static JSON-LD injection to avoid waiting for client-side rendering.
• Cache aggregated ratings server-side or via metafields so Liquid renders static markup instead of expensive API calls on each page load.

A unified retention solution often includes performance optimizations—another reason we recommend reducing tool sprawl and using a single platform designed for speed.

SEO: Structured Data and Rich Snippets

Stars alone don’t guarantee rich snippets. Proper schema is required.

What to include in aggregateRating

• ratingValue: average rating (number).
• reviewCount: total number of reviews (integer).
• bestRating and worstRating (optional but useful if not using the default 5 and 1).

Example expanded JSON-LD:

"aggregateRating": {
  "@type": "AggregateRating",
  "ratingValue": 4.6,
  "reviewCount": 134,
  "bestRating": 5,
  "worstRating": 1
}

Validate and monitor

• Test each product page with Google’s Rich Results Test.
• Use Search Console to monitor how many pages are eligible for rich results.
• Avoid repeated or conflicting structured data—the platform or theme should generate one authoritative JSON-LD block per product.

Collection Pages and Catalog-Level Stars

Many merchants want stars on collection pages to help shoppers browse faster.

Two ways to show stars in collections

• Display the average and review count under each product card using metafields or by letting the reviews platform automatically inject stars into the product card.
• Render stars server-side in the product-card snippet so they appear with the initial page load.

Performance trade-offs

• Injecting stars via an external script after the page loads is easy but can cause layout shifts. Server-side render or static metafields avoid layout shifts and improve perceived performance.

Common Questions and Troubleshooting

Why aren’t stars appearing on collection pages?

• Verify you added the star markup to the product-card or collection-product snippets.
• Check whether the reviews platform supports collection-level injection; if not, paste the widget snippet into the collection template.
• Confirm that product metafields used for rating data are available in the collection loop.

Why aren’t rich snippets showing in Google?

• Structured data might be missing, malformed, or using strings instead of numbers.
• Google doesn't guarantee display of rich snippets, but correct schema increases eligibility.
• New pages or schema changes can take time to appear in search results.

Why are stars showing different values in different places?

• Multiple sources of truth (platform vs. theme metafields) can create mismatched ratings. Ensure a single canonical source and update it consistently.

Collecting Reviews Efficiently

Stars need reviews behind them. A system to collect and encourage reviews will sustain long-term social proof.

Automated collection flow

• Send a post-purchase review request via email or SMS after delivery confirmation.
• Use a single retention solution that includes review requests and integrates with loyalty so customers earn points for leaving reviews.
• Offer incentives sparingly and in compliance with platform guidelines—focus on points redeemable for discounts or free shipping rather than cash rewards.

We make these connections simple by integrating reviews with our loyalty program so merchants can reward reviewers and encourage repeat behavior.

Increasing response rates

• Keep the review form short and mobile-friendly.
• Allow photo and video uploads for richer content.
• Use stars and sliders for quick rating capture, then allow optional written feedback.
• Follow up with a friendly reminder if customers don’t respond.

Legal & Moderation Considerations

• Avoid incentivizing only positive reviews—policies typically require unbiased reviews.
• Moderate reviews to remove spam and offensive content, but don’t remove legitimate negative feedback without a reason.
• Ensure privacy compliance for data collected during review submission.

Integrations That Multiply Value

A star rating is more valuable when it’s connected to other retention signals.

• Loyalty and rewards programs that give points for leaving reviews.
• Wishlist and referral features that surface highly-rated products to advocates.
• Shoppable UGC that links review photos to product pages and converts social proof into sales.

We designed Growave to be a merchant-first retention suite that replaces multiple separate tools and combines reviews, loyalty, wishlists, referrals, and shoppable UGC into one ecosystem—this delivers stronger results with less friction than stitching multiple vendors together. Learn more about how our solution fits into a streamlined retention strategy on our pricing and plan details.

Step-By-Step Implementation Checklist

Use this checklist to ensure nothing is missed when adding review stars. The list is presented as bullets for clarity.

• Identify product and collection template files where stars should appear.
• Choose between a full retention platform or a manual Liquid + JSON-LD approach.
• If using a platform, enable automatic widget injection and structured data in the platform settings.
• If implementing manually, create metafields for average_rating and review_count and populate them.
• Add visual star rendering to product and product-card snippets using accessible markup.
• Insert or generate JSON-LD aggregateRating with numeric fields.
• Test product pages with Google’s Rich Results Test.
• Verify mobile rendering and responsive behavior.
• Monitor performance and defer or async-load scripts as needed.
• Set up automated review collection and moderation workflows.
• Tie review collection to loyalty incentives in your rewards program to boost volume.
• Maintain a single source of truth for ratings to avoid conflicting displays.

Troubleshooting: Quick Fixes For Common Problems

• Stars not showing on collections: ensure the product metafields are available in the collection loop, or paste the widget snippet into product-card.liquid.
• Stars showing but no rich snippet: validate JSON-LD for numeric types and required fields.
• Styling broken after theme update: move star markup into a reusable snippet and include it in templates so you only update one file.
• Slow page performance: defer review scripts and inline critical SVGs.

Why We Recommend A Single Retention Suite

Managing separate tools for reviews, loyalty, referrals, and UGC creates integration and maintenance overhead. A single retention suite reduces that friction.

• Less time spent connecting and synchronizing data.
• Consistent user experience and unified performance optimizations.
• Cross-feature growth loops (e.g., reward points for reviews feed loyalty and social proof).
• Better value for money compared to buying multiple separate solutions.

Growave follows this approach to help merchants get more growth with less stack. We’re merchant-first and focused on building features that matter over the long term—trusted by 15,000+ brands and maintaining a 4.8-star rating on Shopify.

Deployment Notes for Shopify Plus and Large Catalogs

Large catalogs and Shopify Plus stores need scalable solutions.

• Use server-side caching for aggregated ratings to avoid repeated API calls.
• Use a centralized feed or API to update product metafields programmatically.
• For stores with high traffic, favor platform-managed schema injection to ensure consistent structured data and performance.
• Coordinate deployment with theme versioning and staging to test changes at scale.

If you’d like help mapping a scalable implementation for a large catalog, consider booking a technical walkthrough so we can advise on migration and performance best practices.

Measuring Results: What To Track After You Add Stars

Track the following metrics to understand the impact of review stars:

• Product page conversion rate before and after stars.
• Click-through rate from search results if rich snippets appear.
• Review submission rates and review volume growth.
• Changes in average order value and repeat purchase rate tied to reviews or loyalty promotions.
• Page load times and Core Web Vitals after adding widgets or scripts.

A retention suite that combines reviews and loyalty makes it easier to correlate review incentives with longer-term LTV improvements.

Launching With Confidence: Rollout Strategy

• Launch in a staging theme and test across devices.
• Verify structured data with Rich Results Test for multiple SKUs.
• Start with product pages, then add stars to collection pages.
• After successful tests, roll out to home and search pages.
• Monitor Search Console and analytics for any unexpected changes.

Final Checklist Before You Publish

• Single source of truth for ratings established.
• Star visuals and review count placed on product and collection pages.
• JSON-LD aggregateRating present and valid on product pages.
• Accessibility labels in place for screen readers.
• Scripts optimized and deferred where possible.
• Review collection automated and integrated with rewards where appropriate.
• Monitoring set up for performance and SEO.

Conclusion

Review stars are a small visual element with big business impact—when they’re implemented correctly, visible everywhere shoppers expect them, and backed by a system that collects and displays honest feedback. The fastest, most reliable way to add and scale review stars across your Shopify store is to use a merchant-first retention solution that handles widgets, structured data, moderation, and incentives in one place. That approach reduces tool fatigue, improves performance, and helps you drive sustainable growth.

Start your 14-day free trial and explore our pricing and plans to see how our retention suite can help you add review stars quickly while powering loyalty and UGC. (See pricing and plans)

FAQ

• How soon will stars show up in Google search results?
  • After adding valid structured data, it can take several days to weeks for Google to reflect rich snippets. Proper JSON-LD makes your pages eligible, but display is not guaranteed.
• Can I show stars on collection pages without a reviews platform?
  • Yes. Use product metafields for average rating and review count, and render stars in the product-card snippet. But this requires a reliable way to populate and update metafields.
• Will displaying stars slow down my store?
  • It can if you load many external scripts synchronously. Optimize by inlining SVGs, deferring scripts, caching aggregated values, or using a performant retention solution that minimizes requests.
• How do I encourage legitimate reviews without violating policies?
  • Encourage reviews with points or rewards that are available for any review (positive or negative) to avoid bias. Keep requests honest, avoid incentivizing only positive feedback, and use moderation to remove spam.

Additional resources:

• Learn more about our Reviews & UGC feature and how it integrates with retention workflows on the Reviews page: discover our reviews features.
• To tie review collection to repeat purchases and incentives, see how a rewards program can help grow reviews and retention: build a rewards program.
• If you want to install Growave directly on your store, you can install Growave on Shopify.