Custom WP Post Type for Reviews

I determined that using Gravity Forms with it’s survey and advanced post creation add-ons was the most efficient way to fulfil the requirements of this project. The form setup also worked well with the spam guards we had in place for form submissions so that was a benefit. Working with the company’s quality team, we created a series of feedback questions to add to the form. These were different across groups within the company, as some groups had retail store locations while others had locations customers don’t typically visit in person. They also had a few corporate office locations for which they needed a feedback option.

Building A Dynamic Reviews Form

Building an individual review form for each location could quickly get out of hand, especially for a fast growing company with nearly 30 locations. Rather than building that many forms, I leaned on the dynamic capabilities of the Gravity Forms plugin and was able to streamline the collection and management process for the company, utilizing one form.

Creating A Feedback Post-Type in WordPress

Once the feedback form was built, I needed to set up a connection with Gravity Forms to create a WordPress post for each review entry. These were the posts needed to populate a review widget post query. From the form, I mapped a location field over to a tag for each new post to determine where the review should show up. This allowed each review to automatically populate query widgets on each location page, based on the selected location.

How I Set Up Review Notifications 

In addition to automatically showing each new review post in the correct location’s reviews widget, I needed to make sure we had the correct notifications going to the correct teams. Each group at the company had a unique set of requirements for notifications, so I had to build customization into the form. For example, one group needed to manage reviews through their quality department while another needed to manage them through their sales team, and another through store managers. Some wanted certain email subject lines and some even wanted to see the aggregate star rating in the email subject line. In total, this setup had about 70 different individuals across nearly 30 locations that got customized notifications.

Getting Reviews in Google Business Profiles

The company was also looking to boost Google local business reviews to help their locations with SEO, so we decided to set up a connection to each location’s Google business profile. When a visitor filled out a feedback form with a score above a certain threshold, they were directed to a custom confirmation page with a link to review the business on Google.