Product Reviews

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Product Reviews

So far, it is looking really, REALLY good.

Here is the link again for anyone who wants to test it out:

http://www.emporiumplus.com/BOGUS.html

Will we be able to have the full reviews (including the tag line and customer recomendations) displayed on the Miva Product page as well (instead of them showing up in a pop up window when someone clicks on the Read All reviews link)?

for seo purposes, if you don't have a TON of reviews, it would be great if the reviews could appear on the product page.

and for those stores that DO get a ton of reviews, will there be a way to paginate reviews?

And did I mention that so far it is looking totally awesome?

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Product Reviews

Just noticed in the Average Rating section, you have the percentage of recommendations listed:

100.00% of those who responded said they would recommend this to a friend

That is a nice touch, too!

Would it be easy to integrate the sendmail or smtp function in ToolKit so that when they choose that they would recommend it to a friend, they are actually given the ability to tell a friend about it?

[wcw]

Re: Product Reviews

It is using the smtp in tool kit to send the customer thank email and merchant "you have a review awaiting approval" emails. So you should be able to have a tell a friend email too. Use conditional in the rating insert section to check if a friend email address was supplied. You'll have to be careful as you would not want folks spamming the convent from your store with sexy underwear or something. Since they have the full review input to write just about anything, it could be embarrassing.

The same tool kit function that puts the full list of reviews in the popup is the one that puts the first sentence of the first two on the product page. The function has a parameter to only include X number of reviews in the array. PROD page in the example is set to 2. Popup is set to 50.

I just finished two more hurdles.
1) If the exact same review is submitted (except for the timestamp), it does not erase and replace the original nor send a thank you email.
2) Approved reviews are searchable when using Power Search. For example, search on Heinz Catsup

[Keitho]

Re: Product Reviews

Bill,

The module looks great and is another example of your attention to detail. I'll beat on it more a bit later.

I'm sorry to be a perpetual noob but can you help me understand a couple of the terms you used in the opening message in this thread pertaining to users not logging in? When you say "coupon, email, instant approval,..." I assume that means how they get into the store or product. What is "Instant Approval" and how is it obtained? Could it be used as way to get a customer into a Price Group?

Thanks.

[wcw]

Re: Product Reviews

I'm getting close to finishing. I opened up all the products for logged in ratings/reviews. So if you have an account, you can log in and post a rating/review. I'd like to put some stress on the system. When the customer is logged in, I have it set that the rating/review is immediately viewable to the public, i.e. instant approval. The only product I have for ratings/reviews when not logged in is the BOGUS product just to show how that works. All of my past customers have an account so logging in is a trivial event. You can have either or both methods in your store. When you review the product, the module will see if you actually purchased it in the past. You can set the flag to let others know that you did. Not sure how that works yet as nobody has rated the non-BOGUS products in this system. All the current ratings are from the Rate This database in my old 4x store.

It has been awhile since someone rated the Tool Kit, so if you haven't or you want to revise your old review, have at it at http://www.emporiumplus.com/1AA00223.html

You can optionally send an email if you want. It can be different between logged in and not logged in customers. Since you don't have the email of anonymous raters, you can't send them an email but you can send one to the store to tell them they have a review that needs approval (assuming you are making them private until approved for not logged in customers). For the logged in customers you can embed a unique on-the-fly generated coupons (using our coupon redemption module) to reward them for taking time to write a review.

As for price group insertion, that is another subject, although the Tool Kit module can do that too.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Product Reviews

One thing I noticed when going to the ToolKit product page to review it was these were the first two review headlines:

The "Swiss Army Knife" for Miva Merchant 5!. Samuel
A must-have module. mark

So the " marks were being rendered as &quot: when displayed on the product page, and in the BODY of the review page.

In the HEADLINE of the review page, it had the actual " marks instead.

Please feel free to let me know if I am crossing the line from constructive criticism into PITA territory :)

[wcw]

Re: Product Reviews

The " is from text where I sanitized input that customers entered; making potentially dangerous characters harmless. So " was changed to " Now if I simply render that with &mvt:review:review; it would show as the " character. However, you can't do that because of those bloody hackers. You have to use &mvte:review:review; Thus it encodes already encode text. So if it had a " in the text it would appear visually as " but if you view source it would be " which eliminates that character from hacks. I just edited that one so it looks correct now.

As for the tagline, here is the code. As you can see, I've just added quote marks around the tagline to show I lifted it from the main text review.

<mvt:if expr="l.settings:review:tagline">
<span style="color: #ff0000;">
"&mvte:review:tagline;"
</span>
<br />
</mvt:if>

Thanks for the new review in the tool kit. It appears the verified buyer thing is working correctly in the review listing. Also, when I view the raw data, the order number of your most recent purchase of that item is listed.

Keep the ideas rolling in. However, I am getting close to release so features are almost cast in store at this time.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Product Reviews

Had a wild idea that may not have much of use for some store owners, but some store owners might find it a blessing..

How about a customer photo upload?

People love to show off themselves on facebook and stuff, and I would imagine they are going to be more comfortable in the future showing off themselves on commercial web sites using a particular product.

If there is any way to include an upload photo function so that people could show the item in use, that would be great.

Having said that, it could be a nightmare to implement, because people would be uploading ALL KINDS of photos, if you know what I mean. And they might be all different sizes.

so maybe instead it would be best if there was a way to upload customer photos into a particular directory, and the photo name would have the review reference number in the title, so that if the store manager wants to add the photo to a gallery, they would at least know which photo came from which product and which review.

(If there isn't a global ID number for each review, then maybe the photo that is uploaded could have the name as product_code-review_id.jpg)

I know people can upload photos using commonly available tools out there, but my concern is just getting a consistent naming convention so they can later be "attached" to the review.

Another wild idea long the line of customer uploads:

How about Avatars? Maybe choose an Avatar feature or upload one?

Obviously, this if far and beyond the call of duty for most review / ratings modules, but it is just a thought...

[lesliekirk]

Re: Product Reviews

Bill, do you need me to put Mark in timeout before he drives you crazy?

Just kidding :)

Leslie

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Product Reviews

Bill, do you need me to put Mark in timeout before he drives you crazy?

Just be thankful that I did practice SOME restraint and didn't include the three other suggestions I was going to write. :)

When you are an ex-journalist who used to get paid by the word, some habits are hard to break :(

I do realize that if I were to write out ALL my ideas, Bill would look older by the time he got finished reading through them all...

[wcw]

Re: Product Reviews

Mark - that is an interesting thought. I wouldn't tie it to the rating/review module. I would tie it to the customer in a custom customer field. Then for various things in the store you could include those images. But hold that thought for awhile. Three is something in the works for tighter integration of shopping carts into Facebook.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Product Reviews

Three is something in the works for tighter integration of shopping carts into Facebook.

Bill; with all due respect, maybe you should go to one of those cult deprogrammers, because you are starting to think too much like me, which, as my wife will tell you, is NOT a good thing...

One of the other three ideas I was going to mention was literally allowing people to use their Facebook image as their avatar (or to allow login to their Merchant customer account using their facebook login).

anyway, I don't really want to hold up the process too much, because I know others are chomping at the bit to get their hands on it (and because I fear the wrath of Leslie ;) ). And since you frequently update ToolKit, and the update cost is so reasonable, it will be easy for us merchants to get those added features if you update the ratings and reviews feature down the road.

[wcw]

Re: Product Reviews

I am looking at two more features. What do you think of these?

1) In the popup list, make the rater's name a link. Clicking the link would show all ratings this rater has made. It may help test legitimacy. If reviews feel off kilter, they would likely be for most of his/her ratings.

2) Allow the rater to delete their own post.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Product Reviews

Both of those are GREAT ideas (as long as their is a fail safe way for the reviews NOT to be deleted by competitors).

But I think they are both great ideas.

[wcw]

Re: Product Reviews

In order for the rater to delete their own review (they can't delete other people's reviews), they have to enter the correct login and password to get into their account.

The only folks with the power to delete other people's reviews is the store admin. In admin you can delete one or more of a raters reviews fairly quickly. Since you get the merchant emails when reviews are made, you should be able to stay on top of rogue raters.