You've spent years working hard on your online reputation. Hundreds of customers took the time to leave a review on Trustpilot, Kiyoh or Reviews.io. Those reviews are worth their weight in gold — they help decide whether a new visitor checks out or not. And then a platform migration to Shopify lands on the agenda. The natural question that follows: what happens to my reviews?
The good news: if you migrate with Syncer, you don't have to worry about it. We make sure your reviews come along. But before that makes sense, it helps to understand why reviews are so crucial and what can go wrong in a migration.
Customer ratings do far more than give your store a trustworthy look. They are a direct growth driver for both conversion and organic traffic. Research shows that products with reviews have a 270% higher purchase likelihood than products without them. For higher-priced products the conversion lift can climb to as much as 380%.
For search engine optimization (SEO) reviews are also enormously valuable. Stores that display product reviews see on average 25% more organic search traffic. Reviews continuously generate fresh, unique content on your product pages — exactly what Google wants to see.
Trust is the third pillar. 72% of consumers take no action until they have read reviews. Your average star rating is often the first impression a potential customer gets of your business, even before they reach your website.
A migration to Shopify is technically complex. Product data, customer information, orders and SEO settings all need to be transferred correctly. Reviews are unfortunately often overlooked, sometimes with devastating consequences.
What can go wrong:
The consequence? Months of accumulated social proof vanish in a single click. Visitors see an empty or nearly empty review page. Conversions drop. Meanwhile your competitor who's been on Shopify longer enjoys their five-star rating.
Each review platform works differently and has different rules around data ownership and export. That makes carrying reviews across a migration more complex than it looks.
| Platform | Type of reviews | Export options | Shopify integration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trustpilot | Business and product reviews | Limited, data stays with Trustpilot | Official Shopify app available |
| Kiyoh | Business reviews (NL focused) | Available via CSV export | Widget and API integration |
| Reviews.io | Business and product reviews | CSV import and export fully supported | Native Shopify integration |
Trustpilot states that review data is primarily owned by the platform. A domain switch or account change can directly affect your score. Trustpilot's official Shopify app helps display reviews on your new store, but the historical data has to be managed carefully.
Kiyoh is popular in the Netherlands and Belgium. Reviews are exportable, but the connection to product pages needs to be re-established after the migration. A difference in URL structure or product code is enough to detach reviews from the matching products.
Reviews.io offers the most flexibility of the three. Product reviews can be imported via CSV including star rating, date, name and SKU link. The native Shopify integration makes hooking it into your new store relatively easy. But here too: without the right preparation, data is lost.
At Syncer we work with the Live Sync® method: an approach in which we analyze your entire data structure before the migration begins. That applies to your review data too.
Our process in three steps:
Customers don't need to do anything themselves. No downloading CSV files, no manual imports, no risky data copies. Syncer handles it from A to Z.
Building reviews takes time. A business with hundreds of ratings typically needs several years to get there. When that data is lost during a migration, your reputation starts again at zero. The consequences are immediate:
Research shows that 93% of consumers let their buying decision be influenced by online reviews. Losing that data is, commercially speaking, one of the most expensive mistakes you can make during a replatforming.
Do you currently show stars (rich snippets) in Google through your review platform? That's another thing that can go wrong during a migration. If the structured data markup isn't transferred correctly to your Shopify theme, those stars disappear from search results.
At Syncer we make that part of the migration plan. We check whether the schema markup for reviews is present in your Shopify theme and make sure Google continues to recognize and display your product reviews.
Shopify offers excellent native integrations with Trustpilot, Kiyoh and Reviews.io. Once set up correctly, you get more out of your reviews than on most other platforms. Think of:
But you can only unlock all of that if you start with a clean, complete review dataset. A flying start on Shopify begins with carrying over correctly what you already built.
About to migrate to Shopify and want to be sure your reviews, SEO value and customer data make it across intact? Request a free migration plan from Syncer. We analyze your current situation and give you concrete advice on what needs to happen, including your review strategy.
