How to Import Product Reviews in Bulk with UltraCart

Why import reviews

Reviews are some of the hardest-won assets your store owns. They take months of real orders and follow-up to accumulate, and they do more to convince a hesitant shopper than any product description. So when you switch platforms or launch a new storefront, leaving that social proof behind is a genuine loss.

The new Upload Reviews tool solves that. It lets you import product reviews in bulk from a spreadsheet instead of entering them one at a time. Three situations where it earns its keep:

• Migrating from another platform: carry your entire review history over when you move your catalog to UltraCart, so new shoppers see the same trust signals your old store built.
• Seeding a new StoreFront: launch with feedback already in place instead of an empty product page, using reviews you have collected elsewhere.
• Restoring from a backup: reload reviews from an export if you ever need to rebuild.

If you are still setting up reviews for the first time, start with our guide on getting started with UltraCart reviews, then come back here to bring your existing feedback in.

What imports over

Each row in your spreadsheet becomes one product review, attached to the item you name in the Item ID column. The importer preserves far more than the review text, so imported reviews look and behave like reviews that were submitted natively:

• Review status: import reviews as Approved, Unapproved, or Rejected, so moderation state carries over.
• Star ratings: set an overall rating from 1 to 5 on every row.
• Original dates: keep the real submission date instead of stamping everything with today's date.
• Helpful votes: carry over the "this was helpful" and "not helpful" vote counts you already earned.
• Review photos: attach an image to a review by URL.
• Reviewer details: include a nickname, a featured flag, a recommend-to-a-friend answer, and the reviewer email.

Only six columns are required: Item ID, Status, Featured, Review Title, Review Content, and the overall product rating. Everything else is optional, so a minimal import can be as simple as those six fields.

Supported file formats

Upload Reviews accepts the three formats most stores already export to:

• CSV (.csv)
• Excel (.xls)
• Excel (.xlsx)

Column headers are matched by name, so the order of your columns does not matter. Matching also ignores letter case and surrounding spaces, which means Item ID, item id, and ITEM ID all work. The easiest way to get the headers exactly right is the Download a sample spreadsheet link on the Upload Reviews screen: it contains every supported column, already filled in with example rows you can replace with your own data.

Convert your export with AI

Most review platforms let you export your reviews, but every one uses its own column names and layout, so an export from Yotpo, Judge.me, Okendo, Loox, Stamped, or Trustpilot will not line up with UltraCart's columns on its own. Instead of remapping the fields by hand, hand your export to an AI assistant like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini along with the prompt below, and it returns a file that matches the format above.

Before you start, have two things ready:

• Your review export file from your current platform, in CSV or Excel. Most review tools have an Export or Download Reviews option in their settings.
• The UltraCart Item ID each review should attach to. If every review is for one product, you only need that single Item ID. If the export covers several products, keep a short list matching each source product name, SKU, or handle to its UltraCart Item ID.

Copy the prompt below, fill in the two bracketed sections at the top, and paste it into your AI assistant along with your export:

You are a data-migration assistant. Convert the product review export below into a CSV that imports directly into UltraCart's Upload Reviews tool.
STEP 1: Fill these in
Item ID mapping (choose one):
  a) All reviews are for one item:  ITEM_ID = [your UltraCart Item ID]
  b) Reviews cover several items. Match each source product to its UltraCart Item ID:
       [source product name, SKU, or handle] = [UltraCart Item ID]
       [source product name, SKU, or handle] = [UltraCart Item ID]
Review export (paste your CSV, Excel, or JSON rows here, or attach the file):
  [PASTE YOUR EXPORT HERE]
STEP 2: Build the output
Return a single CSV whose first row is exactly these headers, in this order:
Item ID,Status,Featured,Review Title,Review Content,Product Rating: Overall,Submitted,Reviewer Nickname,Reviewer Email,Recommend To Friend,Helpful Yes Votes,Helpful No Votes,Awaiting Screening,Review Media
Map my export's columns onto these, auto-detecting the source field names no matter what the original platform called them:
  Item ID                  From the mapping in Step 1. Never leave this blank.
  Status                   Approved, Unapproved, or Rejected. Treat published or live as Approved, pending or hidden as Unapproved, spam or removed as Rejected. Default to Approved when unclear.
  Featured                 Yes or No. Use Yes only if the source marks the review as featured, top, or pinned. Default to No.
  Review Title             The review headline or subject. Leave blank if there is none.
  Review Content           The full review text. This is required.
  Product Rating: Overall  A whole number from 1 to 5. Round any decimals and clamp out-of-range values into the 1 to 5 range. This is required.
  Submitted                The original review date as MM/DD/YYYY. Reformat any date style (ISO, DD/MM/YYYY, timestamps) to MM/DD/YYYY. Leave blank if the source has no date.
  Reviewer Nickname        The reviewer's display name. Leave blank for anonymous reviews.
  Reviewer Email           The reviewer's email if present, otherwise blank.
  Recommend To Friend      Yes or No if the source has a recommend field, otherwise blank.
  Helpful Yes Votes        The helpful vote count if present, otherwise blank.
  Helpful No Votes         The not-helpful vote count if present, otherwise blank.
  Awaiting Screening       Yes or No. Default to No unless the source marks the review as awaiting screening.
  Review Media             A single image URL for the review if present. Use the first one if there are several, otherwise blank.
Formatting rules:
  - Output only the CSV, starting with the header row. No explanation before or after it.
  - Use commas and UTF-8. Wrap any value that contains a comma, quote, or line break in double quotes, and escape internal double quotes by doubling them.
  - Write every Yes or No field as exactly Yes or No.
  - Keep the review text exactly as written. Do not summarize, translate, or edit it.
STEP 3: Flag the leftovers
After the CSV, list separately any rows you left out because they were missing a required value (Item ID, Review Content, or Product Rating: Overall) so I can fix those by hand.

Save the result as a .csv file and it is ready for the import steps below.

How to import reviews

To import product reviews, go to Item Management, then Review Settings, then Upload Reviews, choose your file, and run it through two steps: Validate, then Start Import. The full walkthrough:

1. Open Item Management, then Review Settings, and click Upload Reviews.
2. Optionally click Download a sample spreadsheet to get a template with every supported column.
3. Prepare your file with the required columns and any optional ones you want, then save it as CSV, XLS, or XLSX.
4. Click Choose File and select your spreadsheet.
5. Click Validate. UltraCart checks the file's structure and reports how many review rows and columns it detected.
6. Read the detected column list to confirm UltraCart matched the columns you intended, including whether an email column was found.
7. Click Start Import to create the reviews. Each row is validated as it is imported.
8. When the import finishes, review the summary. Any rows that could not be imported are listed so you can correct and re-upload them.

The two passes do different jobs. Validate confirms the spreadsheet is well-formed and shows which columns matched. Start Import then checks the details of every row and creates the reviews. Running a small test batch first is the safest way to confirm your reviews appear the way you expect before you import a large file.

Match reviews to customers

If your spreadsheet includes a Reviewer Email column, UltraCart uses it to link each review to a matching customer profile on your account. During validation the tool confirms this with a note that an email column was detected and will be used to link reviews to customer profiles when a match is found.

Linking is optional and never blocks an import. If a row has no email, or no matching customer exists, the review still imports. It is simply not tied to a customer profile. When it does match, though, that review becomes part of the customer's history, which is where keeping reviews in the platform starts to compound.

When a row won't import

Validation runs in two stages. During Validate, only the file's structure and columns are checked. During Start Import, the details of each row are validated, so Item IDs, ratings, dates, and email matches are all confirmed row by row.

Any rows that cannot be imported are listed when the import finishes. The most common reasons a row fails are:

• An Item ID that does not exist on your account.
• A rating outside the 1 to 5 range.
• A submission date that cannot be read. Format the Submitted column as MM/DD/YYYY to avoid this.

Fix the flagged rows and upload the file again to bring in the remaining reviews. One thing to watch: re-uploading a corrected file imports every row in that file, so remove the rows that already imported successfully first, or you will create duplicate reviews.

Keep reviews built in

Bulk import is the easy part. The lasting payoff is that your reviews now live inside the same platform that runs your storefront, checkout, and marketing, instead of sitting in a separate review app that only knows how to display stars. That changes what your reviews can do.

• One source of truth for feedback: reviews sit in the same account as your product, customer, and order data, so what customers actually think is part of your operational picture, not stranded in a tool your other systems cannot see.
• No separate app, no extra fee: collecting and managing reviews is included in your UltraCart plan. On most platforms, reviews mean a third-party service or a plugin with its own monthly bill on top of your subscription.
• Reviews that trigger automation: because review activity lives in the platform, you can use it to fire marketing automation flows, such as asking a happy five-star reviewer for a referral or following up with a shopper who left three stars.
• Smarter segmentation: build customer segments from review behavior, then target your best reviewers with loyalty offers or win back the ones who were not satisfied.
• Native storefront presentation: reviews render directly in your store through the StoreFront Visual Builder, styled to match your brand, with no third-party widget or iframe slowing the page down.
• Data you own: the reviews you import become part of your account, yours to display, report on, and keep as your store grows.

That is the difference between a review that decorates a product page and a review that works across your whole store. For the full field-by-field reference, see the Importing Product Reviews documentation. When you are ready, open Item Management, download the sample spreadsheet, and bring your reviews home.