Product Reviews

[William Davis]

Re: Product Reviews

In addition to product reviews, it would be ideal if store reviews could be added as well.

A store dealing with the sale of authentic vintage collectibles, will most likely NOT be able to replace the sold out (out of stock) product. Consequently, merchants would not benefits from product reviews. Who would write, and/or read a product review on an product that is sold out?

We currently manually collect testimonials via email, then cut and paste them to a text feed file. We then have a script that randomly selects a testimonial from the text feed file and displays same on page refresh on all categories and product pages -what a pain.

[wcw]

Re: Product Reviews

That would not be possible as every review is tied to a specific product code. That is the way the module logic works. On the other hand you could use the tool kit to collect the data in a form on a special page and email it to you. Then do as you have been doing.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Product Reviews

I really think it is coming along nicely. I think that it is quite intuitive for users to post a review.

Here are some further thoughts:

1) Will it be flexible enough so that the store admin can refrain from showing the Write and Anonymous Review link IF the visitor is already logged in?

2) I am not sure if there will be a lot of demand for allowing supplemental info for anonymous reviews (such as order number or state or city or first name), but for those store owners who MIGHT want to add them, it would be great to have the flexibility to do so - even if it requires using some of the string functions in toolkit to display that supplemental info.

I guess really the thing I would do is make it so that it is easy for 90% of the store owners who are going to use it to do what they want right "out of the box," but still have that flexibility for the other 10% of store owners who want to modify it - even if modifying it is not going to be particularly easy.

[wcw]

Re: Product Reviews

Yes, you can hide the "write anonymous review" from logged in customers.

Another thing I thought of using the string functions. In addition to the tagline that the admin could insert, you could also insert a "rebut" or "editor note" if you want to say something about a review and let other see it, e.g. "it looks like our competitor is having a bad day."

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Product Reviews

In addition to the tagline that the admin could insert, you could also insert a "rebut" or "editor note" if you want to say something about a review and let other see it, e.g. "it looks like our competitor is having a bad day."

Nice!!!

[Datagg]

Re: Product Reviews

I also added an instant feedback after posting a review. As you know, the review screen is different between logged in and not logged in customers. Also, the logged in customer gets an email with a coupon after posting the review. The non-logged in customer gets nothing since the module does not have their contact info, hence they don't know if it was recorded and why it is not showing up. Now after posting a review, they see text thanking them. The text is different between logged in and not logged in reviewers. You can see how this works by going back and doing your review again. It will overwrite the old one.

Sweet, this on all levels is looking so damn awesome........I'm gonna down a beer tonight in your honor Bill....

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Product Reviews

One more thought...

maybe for anonymous reviews (or even logged in reviews) it might be a good idea to capture the IP address, just so you can see whether the same person keeps posting negative reviews to the site.

[wcw]

Re: Product Reviews

Maybe not for the review record. But you could include it in the email that goes to the merchant.

[morditech.com]

Re: Product Reviews

Something that I have always liked about newegg's reviews is that it has different comment sections for instance pros, cons, other thoughts.

It would be cool if somewhere down the road you could create several comment sections per review. Of course it would depend on the types of products as to what the sections are labeled.

[morditech.com]

Re: Product Reviews

Another thought. Kind of along the lines of what William Davis originally said or maybe this would be a different module but what about adding a testimonial comment section to the review. So there would be a separate variable you could drop wherever you wanted the testimonials to display for instance the category tree footer or the global footer. Reviews and testimonials in my opinion are closely related.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Product Reviews

Ok, here is sort of my pipe dream...

I love how certain clothing web sites will allow for users to vote on whether a particular dress (or pair of shoes, or other clothing item) runs large, runs small, or is about true to size. They do this IN ADDITION TO a standard star rating / user review.

I am guessing how they do it is similar to how a star rating works. Except instead of selecting how many stars they would give it, they would select on a scale of 1 to 5 the size (1 being Runs Very Small, 2 being Runs A Little Small, 3 being True To Size, 4 being Runs Slightly Big, 5 being runs very big).

anyway, since so many different stores would have different criteria, so I would imagine that the only way to do this would be to allow the store owners to define their own different criteria on a per product basis. and I would imagine some products might only have one criteria they want to measure, while some products might need user input for more than one criteria.

Again, just a pipe dream.

If this isn't practical, I am guessing that one could create a custom field for each aspect they want measured - such as 'Size_Runs' and then using some of the ToolKit string and insert functions, insert values into that custom Size_Runs field, and then count them??? Maybe it would be something along the way the alsobought function works by reading the contents from the alsobought field.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Product Reviews

My intent is to make this the best rating and review feature available.

Ok, since you did say this, I thought I would run more idea by you...

Some of the sites out there have a Yes / No option for "Would Recommend This Product To A Friend" followed by the percentage of raters who picked Yes or No. something like that might be nice. Again, it might be doable with ToolKit's string and insert functions, so maybe it doesn't have to be part of the ratings function per se.

BTW: Which is quicker? Reading a single long string and parsing it with the ToolKit / SMT functions? Or opening up several rows from the database and using an SQL query to have the database manipulate the data (say, return the average)?

[Datagg]

Re: Product Reviews

Another idea Bill... Viable or not, worth it or not.. I dunno, yet Ive seen it done before.... is that the reviews, can be pulled to say the SFNT page as an upward slide.... Say like set 5 random reviews for instance that cycle up in a column that people can see and click on it to go straight to the product..... Just a thought

[wcw]

Re: Product Reviews

The previous test reviews have been erased. I added 3 new data elements (tagline, storenote, friends). The admin can edit a review and add a tag line or rebuttal type store note. See the oldest review in the "read reviews" popup at the BOGUS product. The friends takes the value of Y, N or nothing. Then using the function reviewfriendshow will return the number of Yes and No, the sum of the two, and the percentage Yes. You can see that affect in the popup also, just below the average rating. You can also display each reviewer's answer to that question in the list of reviews.

[Datagg]

Re: Product Reviews

The previous test reviews have been erased. I added 3 new data elements (tagline, storenote, friends). The admin can edit a review and add a tag line or rebuttal type store note. See the oldest review in the "read reviews" popup at the BOGUS product. The friends takes the value of Y, N or nothing. Then using the function reviewfriendshow will return the number of Yes and No, the sum of the two, and the percentage Yes. You can see that affect in the popup also, just below the average rating. You can also display each reviewer's answer to that question in the list of reviews.

Schweet.....