How CatsPlay Furniture Earned Google Star Ratings on BigCommerce Using JSON Schema App

Business Brief:

Platform: BigCommerce Industry: Ecommerce (Premium Cat Furniture) Schema Type: Product & Review

Project Snapshot

About the Client

CatsPlay Furniture, based in Santa Cruz, California, has been selling cat furniture since 1995. Their BigCommerce catalog spans cat trees, gyms, condos, scratching posts, wall systems, window perches, and outdoor enclosures, organized into curated collection tiers so shoppers can filter by build quality and budget.

Three decades in a niche category builds a deep archive of genuine customer feedback; their flagship cedar jungle gym alone carries seven five-star reviews dating back to 2019. That archive was working hard on the product pages. In search, it counted for nothing, because Google reads structured data rather than visible page content alone, and the store’s structured data wasn’t carrying any of it.

The Challenge

In Google Search, CatsPlay’s products showed up as plain blue links while competitors’ listings carried prices and star ratings alongside them. Everything needed to compete was already in the BigCommerce store, decades of genuine customer reviews, accurate pricing, complete product data but none of it had been translated into the JSON-LD markup Google depends on.

In a category where shoppers research heavily before spending several hundred dollars, the store’s most persuasive proof was missing from the exact place where buying shortlists take shape.

Why BigCommerce’s Default Product Schema Wasn’t Enough

An audit of the product pages in Google’s Rich Results Test found that the theme’s default Product Schema left out several properties Google uses to build rich results:

• Review and aggregateRating were not populated, Review and aggregateRating were not populated, even though customer ratings were rendered on every product page, leaving Google no structured link between the reviews and the products.
• The offer structure could not handle configurable products. Many CatsPlay items display a price range depending on selected options, and ranged pricing requires a different Offer structure than a fixed figure.
• Nothing kept the markup current. New reviews and price changes arrive continuously, so even a correct manual fix would have drifted out of sync with the live catalog

With those properties missing, the pages stayed standard blue links regardless of how much proof the store had earned.

The Solution

CatsPlay needed complete, Google-compliant Product and Review Schema without writing or maintaining JSON-LD manually. JSON Schema App audited the existing markup, connected the on-page customer reviews to review and aggregateRating properties, and structured the Offer object so that ranged pricing on configurable products resolves correctly. Every rating value traces back to a review published on the store itself, so the markup rests entirely on first-party data.

The JSON-LD is generated dynamically from live BigCommerce data, new reviews and price updates flow into the schema on their own, and each change was checked in the Rich Results Test and tracked in Search Console.

Before Schema Implementation

• Product listings appeared as standard blue links.
• Star ratings, review counts, and pricing were absent from search.
• Years of genuine customer reviews were invisible to Google.

Before: a standard blue link, while competing listings show pricing and star ratings.

After Schema Implementation

Approximately 12–15 days after implementation, Google began displaying rich results for eligible product pages. The enhanced listings included:

• Star ratings with review count
• Product price

After: the same product now showing price, star rating and customer reviews.

Results

Eligible product pages now show star ratings, review counts, and pricing directly in Google Search, putting CatsPlay’s strongest competitive asset in front of shoppers at the moment they decide which tabs to open. A 5.0 rating from seven detailed reviews always carried persuasive weight on the product page; it now carries that weight in the results page as well, and visitors who click through have already seen the price and rating before arriving. The first enhanced listings appeared approximately 12–15 days after deployment.

Google controls the appearance of rich results, and they are not guaranteed for every eligible page or search.

Why JSON Schema App?

CatsPlay Furniture chose JSON Schema App to complete their BigCommerce store’s structured data without touching theme code or maintaining JSON-LD. The platform surfaced the missing review and Product Schema properties, implemented compliant markup built on the store’s own first-party reviews, and automated schema management so the markup stays in step with the catalog as it changes.

Key Takeaways

• Reviews visible on a product page do not reach Google Search without review and aggregateRating markup.
• A BigCommerce theme’s default Product Schema may be present without being eligible for rich results.
• Configurable products with ranged pricing need a correctly structured Offer object, or the price display fails silently.
• Review markup must be built from reviews collected on your own store, genuine first-party data is what makes star ratings defensible.
• Eligible product pages began displaying rich results approximately 12–15 days after implementation.

Ready to Put Your Reviews in Google Search?

If your BigCommerce store’s customer reviews aren’t showing in Google, JSON Schema App helps you audit, complete, and automate your structured data so your product pages become eligible for richer search listings