C
Chris K
Add a Trustpilot integration to Citrus-Lime that matches (or exceeds) the current Shopper Approved feature set: automated review invitations, company widgets, and product-level ratings rendered on product pages and product listing (Find & Filter) pages - without manual per-product work.
Problem
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  • Shopper Approved is currently the only native option. Trustpilot has materially stronger brand recognition, better search visibility, and is the first result many users see when they search for “[brand] reviews”.
  • The current Trustpilot approach (Google Tag Manager [GTM] widgets plus manual code) cannot:
-- Show stars next to the product title on product detail pages (PDPs).
-- Show rating badges on product tiles in product listing pages / Find & Filter pages (PLPs/FAF).
-- Scale automatically (manual insertion per product is not viable).
  • Without automation, we lose the search engine optimisation (SEO), user experience (UX), and conversion benefits that Trustpilot provides.
What we’re asking for (scope)
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  1. Automated review invitations
  • Support Trustpilot’s “blind carbon copy” (BCC) to invite pattern by allowing a fixed BCC address on order confirmation emails or a supported server-side call to Trustpilot’s Application Programming Interface (API) for Invitations.
  • Include order ID, customer email, name, item list, and send-delay where supported.
  1. Company review widgets
  • Site-wide TrustBox placement options (header bar, footer badge, homepage block, dedicated reviews page).
  • Configurable via Merchant Tools (MT) - enable/disable, widget type, and placement.
  1. Product-level rating display
  • PDP: show Trustpilot product rating adjacent to the product title, with a link/anchor to the reviews section or a TrustBox Product Reviews widget.
  • PLP/FAF: show rating stars and count on product tiles.
Phase 2 (nice to have)
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  1. Caching/synchronisation layer for performance
  • Nightly (or frequent) import of product rating and count via Trustpilot API into a lightweight Citrus-Lime data store; render from cache to avoid live per-product API calls.
  • Include time-to-live (TTL) and manual re-sync controls in MT.
  1. Structured data
  • Emit product aggregateRating schema (structured data for search engines) on PDPs using the cached Trustpilot rating/count to support rich results, where policy permits.
  1. Admin configuration in MT
  • Global toggle, widget choices, API credentials, BCC email field (if supported), invite delay, and per-template switches (PDP/PLP).
Technical notes (suggested approach)
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  • Invites: Prefer a server-side call to Trustpilot’s Invitations API after order creation. If platform constraints prevent that, expose a fixed BCC field on order confirmations so Trustpilot can ingest orders automatically.
  • Ratings data:
-- Avoid client-side API calls per product.
-- Implement a scheduled job to fetch a simple mapping {sku → rating, count, last_updated} and store it in Citrus-Lime; render stars server-side (or via a single batched payload per page).
  • Widgets: Load TrustBox asynchronously and defer where possible; provide a minimal “no-JavaScript fallback” for critical badges.
Ideally, we'd have
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  • New orders automatically trigger the Trustpilot invite flow (via API or BCC).
  • PDPs show Trustpilot star rating and count next to the title for products with reviews.
  • PLP/FAF tiles display stars and counts without noticeable performance impact.
  • No manual per-product template edits required.
  • MT provides a simple configuration panel.
  • Ratings render even if Trustpilot JavaScript is blocked (using cached values).
  • Structured data (aggregateRating) present on PDPs when data is available.
Constraints
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  • Do not expose Trustpilot API keys on the client side.
  • Live per-product API calls at page render are out of scope for performance reasons.
  • Shopper Approved remains available; this request adds Trustpilot as a peer integration.
Benefits
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Trust and conversion: Recognised review brand with visible stars in all decision points (PLP + PDP + site-wide).
SEO: Eligibility for rich results (where permitted) and alignment with the review brand customers actually search for.
Operational efficiency: Automated invitations; no manual per-product embedding.
Platform value: A reusable, configurable integration that other Citrus-Lime retailers can adopt.