SteemAdd AI review summaries to WooCommerce
Published Updated 2 min read
WooCommerce shows reviews as a list and never sums them up. Amazon has shown AI-generated review summaries for years, and shoppers now expect a short paragraph on what people liked and what they complained about before deciding whether to read individual reviews.
Several plugins fill the gap and some are well made; for a large catalogue and a managed service, Sumzy or YayCommerce may suit. If you want something lean that costs nothing beyond API calls and does exactly one job, a small plugin covers it.
Why the existing plugins cost money
The paid plugins are not overpriced for what they do. Running summaries through a managed API, caching results across thousands of stores and keeping the service up is real infrastructure, and that plus support is what the subscription buys.
If you have your own OpenAI key and are happy to connect it to a plugin, you already have the infrastructure. The plugin only needs to make the call, cache the answer and display it: a few hundred lines of PHP, not a subscription.
One call per product, then a cached paragraph
WooCommerce > Settings > Review Summary takes your OpenAI key, a model, and the minimum number of reviews a product needs before a summary appears. Three is a sensible default; a summary of two reviews is barely worth writing.
The first time a product with enough reviews is viewed, the plugin calls the API and stores the paragraph in product meta. Every later visit reads that copy, so no API call happens per page view. On the product page it appears as a styled box with a short heading above the review list.
A Regenerate button on the product edit screen refreshes the summary when you choose, for example after a run of new reviews shifts the consensus. That is the only time the API is called again.
Imports, photos and Q&A belong to a review suite
Importing reviews from Google, Trustpilot or other platforms needs the integrations paid plugins already have.
Review photos, question-and-answer sections, star breakdowns and verified-purchase badges add up to a full review management suite, which is the scope YayCommerce and similar tools are built for.
What you get
Included
- AI-generated summary box displayed above the WooCommerce review list on each product page
- Admin settings screen for API key, model choice, and minimum review count
- Per-product summary caching in post meta to avoid repeated API calls
- Manual regeneration from the product edit screen
Not included
- Review import from Trustpilot, Google, or other third-party platforms
- Review moderation, spam filtering, or flagging
- Custom review forms, Q&A sections, or review photos
- Automatic regeneration when a new review is approved
Sumzy does the things on the right. This build covers the part most sites use.
Questions
What does the OpenAI API call cost?
Very little for most stores. Each request sends the review text and gets two sentences back, gpt-4o-mini is one of the cheapest models, and you pay per generation, not per page view.
Will the summary update when new reviews come in?
Not automatically in this build; you decide when to regenerate. Updating it whenever a review is approved would take a hook on the comment status transition action.
Does it work with Elementor and other page builders?
It hooks into WooCommerce's review section with the woocommerce_after_reviews action, so themes and builders that render reviews the standard way show the summary. Setups that bypass WooCommerce's templates entirely may not.
Build it in Steem
The button opens the builder with this guide's prompt filled in, so you can change anything before it runs. Nothing is built, and nothing is charged, until you send it.
Read the prompt (181 words)
Build a WordPress plugin for WooCommerce that generates an AI summary of customer reviews for each product. Add an admin settings page under WooCommerce > Settings > Review Summary with three fields: an OpenAI API key, a model selector with options gpt-4o-mini and gpt-4o, and a minimum reviews required field (default 3). On WooCommerce product pages, hook into woocommerce_after_reviews to insert a styled box above the review list with the heading 'What customers say' and the AI-generated summary paragraph. Read all approved WooCommerce reviews for the current product, send them to the OpenAI Chat Completions API with a prompt asking for a two-sentence summary of what customers like and dislike, and store the result in a custom post meta field called _ai_review_summary. On subsequent page loads, display the cached value without calling the API. On the WooCommerce product edit screen, add a button labelled 'Regenerate AI Summary' in the Product Data section that clears the meta field so the next front-end page load triggers a fresh API call. Show nothing if the product has fewer approved reviews than the configured minimum.