How to Add Review Summaries to WordPress (In 3 Steps)

These days, a lot of people turn to the internet  to find out whether a product or service is worth purchasing. If you happen to be an expert on a particular subject, theres nothing stopping you from creating your own reviews. If you want to make the most of those reviews, learning how to add review summaries to your WordPress articles is an easy way to improve their effectiveness.In fact, the stats on the popularity of online reviews are quite impressive:(Data source; chart by Visualizer Lite.)The best way to convince readers to trust your opinions is by making your reviews as professional as possible. That means including images, backing up your statements with reliable sources, and including review summary sections to tie everything together.In this article, well explain what review summary sections are, why theyre so effective, and how you can set one up on your WordPress website using the WP Product Review Lite plugin (its the one we use for reviews on this blog). Thats a lot of ground to cover, so lets jump right in!3 key benefits of review summariesAs its name implies, a review summary is a short section – usually located at the end of an article – which briefly sums up the most important points. If youve read some of our hosting reviews (like this one), youll notice we like to include review summaries at the end. Example:Review summaries might seem redundant, since they dont contain any new information. However,  they offer several benefits:Increased readability. A lot of people skim through online content – they only look for the information they care the most about. Review summaries enable those readers to find what they need  quickly.Highlighting key findings. Review summaries provide a nice format to highlight the most important points in your articles.Positive visual impact. If properly styled (which well teach you how to do), a review summary section can look professional, and will bolster the overall look of your websit e.Increased Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Review summaries can also provide a definite SEO benefit when combined with Schema markup. This  is essentially code that helps search engines to read  your content better.Now that we know the why, its time to get to the how. As usual, WordPress enables us to implement this feature using a simple plugin.How to add review summaries to your WordPress website (in 3 steps)For this section, well be using the same plugin that powers our review summary sections throughout ThemeIsle – WP Product Review Lite.  Its an open-source version of one of our premium  products. WP Product Review Lite Author(s): ThemeIsleCurrent Version: 3.7.1Last Updated: August 24, 2019wp-product-review.zip 90%Ratings 1,313,581Downloads WP 3.5+Requires Before we get started, youll need to install and activate the plugin. Then you can jump into Step  1 whenever youre ready.Step 1: Configure WP Product Review Lites general settingsAfter you activat e the plugin, a new Product Review tab will appear in your dashboard. Click on it, and youll be sent to WP Product Review Lites configuration page.  Before we can add review summaries, we need to configure  the plugins settings.First, youll want to determine where your summaries will appear on the page. The two main options are before or after your content, but you can enable manual placement if you want to be more specific. You can also enable user reviews:If you turn this option on, users will be able to contribute their own reviews through the comments section. Furthermore, the scores they give may affect the score displayed in your review summary, if you enable the Visitor Review Influence option:You can also configure how many items you want to appear under the pros and cons section, with three being the minimum and ten the maximum. Finally, you can specify a width for your review summary sections, which will depend on the layout of your pages:Once youve  personalized the se settings (which shouldnt take  more than a few minutes), youre ready for  the fun part – styling your review summaries.Step 2: Style your review summariesWP Product Review Lite enables us to customize our review summary sections using color settings. To do so, head back to the Product Review tab and click on the Ratings Color section.Most of the settings here are self-explanatory, and your choice of colors is a personal decision. However, you should try to aim for a variety of colors that are easily distinguishable and complement each other well, to make sure your review summary looks stylish.You can also change the colors of the text that appears within each summary from the Typography tab. The same section will let you customize  the color of your Call to Action (CTA) text. Each review summary includes a CTA or affiliate button, which can be used to drive conversions.Step 3: Add your first review summary sectionNow that youve configured the plugin and chosen which colors it will use, its time to add review summaries to your site. All you have to do is select  any post or page and navigate to the bottom, where youll find an option to enable review summaries.Once the option is enabled, youll be able to set a title for your summary and select a featured image:Below that, youll find several options to configure your CTA or affiliate button. You can choose which text to display and which link to include:Its worth noting this section also includes the option to display a price. However, any value you enter here will appear next to the sections title, rather than on the CTA.In the next section, you can add the criteria you used to review the service or product. You can use any criteria you want, such as performance, features, or reliability. We recommend for consistencys sake that you re-use the same criteria for other reviews of similar products. For each criterion you add, youll need to provide a score from 0–100:Finally, the plugin enabl es you to list pros and cons under separate lists. You can add as many or as few as you want, depending on the settings you customized in Step 1.  When youre done, remember to hit the  Publish button to make your changes go live.ConclusionAs long as you focus on providing readers with the information they need, they will come to trust your reviews over time. Of course, it doesnt hurt if your reviews also happen to look professional and stylish, and thats where review summary sections can help. Furthermore, these sections enable readers to find the information they need faster, and they can even help you drive more conversions.To recap our steps above, heres how you can add review summaries to your website using the WP Product Review Lite plugin:Configure the plugins main settings.Style your review summaries.Add review summaries to your posts and pages.Do you have any questions about how to add review summaries to your WordPress website? Let us know in the comments section below!