Boardwalk Block Guide

Testimonial Block

Learn how to add and customize individual Testimonial blocks — including star ratings, review text, customer attribution, and optional featured product cards.

About

A Testimonial block is an individual customer review card that lives inside the Testimonials section of the Boardwalk theme. Each block represents a single piece of customer feedback — a quote, endorsement, or product review — that helps build trust with visitors browsing your store.

Every Testimonial block can include a star rating, a bold headline, the full review text, the customer's name and title, and an optional linked product. When a product is linked, a product card showing the item's image, name, and price appears directly below the review. You can add as many Testimonial blocks as you need inside the Testimonials group, and reorder them at any time.


How to Add a Testimonial Block

Follow these steps to add and fill in a Testimonial block inside the Testimonials section.

1
Open the Theme Editor

In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store → Themes, find Boardwalk, and click Customize. Use the page selector dropdown at the top of the editor to navigate to the page that contains your Testimonials section.

2
Locate the Testimonials Group

In the Theme Editor sidebar, expand the Testimonials section and find the Testimonials group. This is the container that holds all of your individual Testimonial blocks.

Note: If you haven't added a Testimonials section to your page yet, click Add section and choose Testimonials from the list first.

3
Add a New Testimonial Block

Click Add block inside the Testimonials group and select Testimonial. A new card will appear with placeholder content that you can customize.

4
Fill In the Review Details

Click the new Testimonial block to open its settings. Set the star rating, enter a headline, write or paste the review text, and add the customer's name and title or company. All of these fields are optional — leave any field empty and it simply won't appear on the card.

5
Link a Product (Optional)

To connect a review to a specific product, use the Product picker in the block settings and choose a product from your store. A product card with the item's image, name, and price will appear below the review automatically.

Note: The product must have a status of Active in your Shopify admin and be available on the Online Store sales channel. Draft or archived products won't display on the storefront.

6
Save and Preview

Click Save in the Theme Editor and preview your page to make sure the testimonial card looks the way you want. Repeat steps 3–5 to add more testimonials.


Block Settings

These are the settings available on each individual Testimonial block. Click any Testimonial block in the Theme Editor sidebar to access them.

Review Settings

Star rating

Displays a visual star rating above the review text. Accepts values from 0 to 5 in half-star increments (e.g., 3.5 or 4). Set to 0 to hide the star rating on this card entirely.

Headline

A short, bold title displayed at the top of the testimonial card (e.g., "Absolutely Stunning" or "Best Purchase Ever"). Leave empty to hide.

Testimonial text

The body of the customer review. This is a rich text field, so you can use bold, italic, links, and other formatting to emphasize key phrases. Leave empty to hide.

Customer Settings

Name

The name of the person who wrote the review. Displayed at the bottom of the testimonial card in uppercase styling. Leave empty to hide.

Title or company

An optional secondary line below the customer name. Use this for a job title, company name, or location to add context to the review. Leave empty to hide.

Featured Product Setting

Product

Select any active product from your Shopify catalog. When set, a product card showing the product image, name, and price appears below the review text. This is a great way to connect customer feedback directly to the product being reviewed. Leave empty to show the testimonial without a product card.


Card Anatomy

Each Testimonial block renders as a card with a consistent layout. Here's what each part of the card looks like and where it appears.

Star Rating

Appears at the very top of the card. Stars are displayed visually with full, half, and empty states. The rating also includes an accessible label so screen readers can announce the score. When the rating is set to 0, this entire area is hidden.

Headline

A bold title displayed directly below the star rating. Use this for a short summary of the review such as "Best Purchase Ever" or "Exceeded Expectations."

Review Text

The main body of the testimonial, displayed below the headline. Because this is a rich text field, you can use bold, italic, links, and other formatting to highlight key phrases.

Customer Attribution

The customer's name and optional title or company appear at the bottom of the review content. The name is displayed in uppercase styling, and the title appears on a secondary line below it.

Featured Product Card

When a product is linked, a product card appears at the bottom of the testimonial card, separated from the review content. The card displays the product image, title, and price. When the product is on sale, both the original and discounted prices are shown.

Tip: Hovering over the product image reveals a magnifying glass icon. Clicking the image or product name opens a Quick View popup that shows full product details, variant options, and an Add to Cart button — all without leaving the page.


Built-In Features

Testimonial blocks include several features that work automatically — no apps or custom code required.

Feature Overview

Half-star ratings

The star rating supports half-star increments, so you can set values like 3.5 or 4.5 for a more accurate representation of customer feedback. Stars render with full, half, and empty visual states.

Rich text formatting

The testimonial text field supports rich text formatting including bold, italic, links, and more. This lets you highlight key phrases in the review to draw the reader's attention.

Product Quick View

When a product is linked, visitors can click the product image to open a Quick View popup. The popup shows the full image gallery, variant options, stock status, quantity selector, and an Add to Cart button — all without leaving the page. Product data loads in the background without the need for a page reload.

Scroll-triggered animation

Each testimonial card animates into view with a smooth slide-in effect as the visitor scrolls down the page. The animation is staggered across cards for a polished cascade effect. This respects the visitor's reduced motion preference when enabled in their operating system settings.

Accessibility

Star ratings include a screen reader label that announces the numeric rating value. Decorative star icons are hidden from assistive technology so they don't interfere with the reading experience.

Flexible visibility

Every field on the Testimonial block is optional. Leave any setting empty and that element simply won't render on the card. This means you can create review-only cards without stars, cards with just a headline and customer name, or any other combination that fits your needs.


Admin Steps and Requirements

Some features require action in the Shopify admin before they'll work as expected in your theme.

Before You Begin

Products must be active

If you link a product to a testimonial, that product must have a status of Active in your Shopify admin. Products in draft or archived status won't display on your storefront. Go to Products in your admin and make sure the product status is set to Active.

Product images

The featured product card displays the product's first image. For the best appearance, make sure your linked products have at least one image uploaded in the Shopify admin under Products → Media.

Sale pricing

For the sale price to appear on the product card, you need to set a Compare at price on the product variant in your Shopify admin. Go to Products → select the product → Pricing and enter a value in the "Compare at price" field.

Online Store channel

Linked products must be published to the Online Store sales channel. If a product is only available on other channels (e.g., Point of Sale), it won't appear in the testimonial. Check this under Products → select the product → Publishing.

Content is manually entered

Testimonial blocks are filled in manually through the Theme Editor — they are not pulled automatically from a reviews app. You'll need to copy and paste customer reviews into each block yourself.


Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. The star rating is set individually on each Testimonial block. Set the rating to 0 on any block where you want to hide the stars, and they won't appear on that card.
Make sure the product is set to Active status in your Shopify admin (not Draft or Archived) and that it's published to the Online Store sales channel. If the product is active but still not showing, try removing and re-selecting it in the block settings.
Testimonial blocks are designed for manually entered reviews. They do not automatically pull content from apps like Judge.me or Loox. However, you can copy and paste reviews from those apps into the block settings. If you want reviews to populate automatically, check whether your reviews app offers its own display widget.
No. Every field is optional. If you leave a setting empty, that element simply won't appear on the card. For example, you can create a testimonial with just a headline and customer name, or one with review text and a product but no star rating — whatever combination works for your store.
The card color scheme and corner radius are controlled at the section level, not on the individual block. Click the Testimonials section in the Theme Editor sidebar and look for the Testimonial card color scheme and Testimonial card corner radius settings. These apply uniformly to all testimonial cards in the section.
There is no hard limit — you can add as many Testimonial blocks as you need inside the Testimonials group. If you have a large number of testimonials, consider enabling carousel mode in the section settings so visitors can swipe through them without the page becoming too long.