40 replies to this topic

[Mark Evans]

This thread is aimed to discuss the advancement of the reviews system in osCommerce.

The reviews have been expanded to include

* Moderation
* Guest Reviews
* Reviews only when purchased
* Can be disabled in the administation tool

Please provide any comments on changes you would like to see to the reviews such as the layout, location or any additional features you would like to see.

Comments should be based on the reviews system only. Any posts not related to the reviews system will be removed to keep this thread on track.

[burt]

1/  A small summary of each of the latest "X" (choosable in Admin) reviews should be shown in the product_info.php page (if chosen to show in Admin), with a link on each for "full review".

2/  Review Text should be searchable.

[medvid]

I second Gary's #1.

Also, the ability to provide reviews on the whole store.

ed

[Mark Evans]

medvid, on Nov 10 2004, 03:18 PM, said:

Also, the ability to provide reviews on the whole store.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What about the possibility to review a whole category?

[Mark Evans]

burt, on Nov 10 2004, 09:37 AM, said:

1/  A small summary of each of the latest "X" (choosable in Admin) reviews should be shown in the product_info.php page (if chosen to show in Admin), with a link on each for "full review".

ok

burt, on Nov 10 2004, 09:37 AM, said:

2/  Review Text should be searchable.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

From the standard search area or a seperate search area?

[burt]

Thinking about it, I'm not sure that reviews text being searchable would be of much use?

[medvid]

sparky, on Nov 13 2004, 09:29 AM, said:

What about the possibility to review a whole category?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I don't know.  What would they say?  "This is a great set of 128 t-shirts" or "You should drop your line of scented candles"?  I've seen people comment on products and on the store, not on sections.

ed

[shopaholic]

Recycle The Reviews Feature  

I am using osCommerce MS 2 to be an online art works gallery
and was wanting to know if you could point me in the right direction
as to solving the problem i have with the "Reviews" feature.

With the nature of the products I am selling which are one off art works
there is no need for this feature but what it could be used for is, instead of being
"Reviews" it could become "View Artists Biography" I would also have to
disable the ability to post form "Joe public" to submit any information to this feature...but will still have to be able to write to it myself

Any ideas how i could convert it ?
seems an awful waste of a great piece of codeing to just loose it from my version of the cart.

Hope this makes sence to you and you can offer me some help

regards


troy

Edited by shopaholic, 16 November 2004 - 01:29 AM.

[osc_svendsen]

medvid, on Nov 14 2004, 09:29 PM, said:

I don't know.  What would they say?  "This is a great set of 128 t-shirts" or "You should drop your line of scented candles"?  I've seen people comment on products and on the store, not on sections.

ed

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Funny way of putting it But you're right, no real use of category-review comes to mind, but the concept of wholestore-review is a really good idea. E.g. a review when purchase completed, possibly as a poll to make up a store-overall. Knowing that most ppl just want to 'get out here' once the purchase is done it could also be as an email with a link to a poll/review-section that they can visit when they feel like it.

[moonlitsun]

Here is another idea for the new and improved Review System:

A Comparative Review of similar items within the same storefront.
The storefront admin reference could simply be "Comparative Reviews", where the store owner can assign any given product review to a similar product.   Essentially, it is a way of cross-selling merchandise within the same site, while educating the customer about other related products.

In fact, this is a clever way of veiling the widely known X-Sell contribution work already in place for MS 2.

If one of those products happens to go out of stock, the Comparative Review is simply disabled within the admin screen automatically.  

Example:
PRODUCT REVIEWS PAGE
....XXX stars.....

Compare Similar Product Reviews:
Widget A:  XXX stars
Widget B:  XX stars
Widget C:  XXXX stars

IMHO,

THX

[NotTakenID]

I am very new to osCommerce, but I was playing with reviews today, so I will make my very first post. Please forgive me if one or more of these features already exists and I have overlooked it.

* Customer can use an alias when writting a review.
* The ability for reviews to be submitted pending admin approval (I imagine this falls under Moderation?).
* The ability for customers to edit/update their reviews (and if so configured, need to go through the approval process again).
* Did you find this review helpful? With the idea that good reviews float to the top and bad ones float to the bottom (or that they are flagged for an admin to review).
* View reviewers other reviews (presumably you click on thier name or a link next to it).
* Ability to set the order in which reviews are displayed (i.e. date, rating, most active reviewer first).

NotTakenID

[happy2help]

What about have a pull down menu with set option instead of a text box! Can this be done easly?

[cmbyrne]

medvid, on Nov 11 2004, 12:18 AM, said:

Also, the ability to provide reviews on the whole store.

ed

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

i second that idea

Christina

[CorpBoy]

Are site reviews really all that beneficial?  Sure, they are designed to build trust in the site, but any site admin worthy of the position will be able to simply delete bad site reviews.  I think site reviews only really work when the reviews are collected and maintained by a unaffiliated third party web site.

[Gil-Gallad]

CorpBoy, on Dec 13 2004, 09:24 PM, said:

Are site reviews really all that beneficial?  Sure, they are designed to build trust in the site, but any site admin worthy of the position will be able to simply delete bad site reviews.  I think site reviews only really work when the reviews are collected and maintained by a unaffiliated third party web site.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No one will stop you, if you'll want to put good site rewievs at third party web site, or say that bad rewievs was paid-up by your competitors.

Here is not the discussion about necessity of rewievs system - you will deside this problem by yourself at your project, here is the discussion about imroving of rewievs system.

I think that here must be:
- a "search at rewievs" possibility from the standard search area;
- possibility to write review to a whole shop

[clothbaby]

osc_svendsen, on Nov 16 2004, 08:38 AM, said:

Funny way of putting it But you're right, no real use of category-review comes to mind, but the concept of wholestore-review is a really good idea. E.g. a review when purchase completed, possibly as a poll to make up a store-overall. Knowing that most ppl just want to 'get out here' once the purchase is done it could also be as an email with a link to a poll/review-section that they can visit when they feel like it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm pretty new to this (in fact my osCommerce site isn't even live yet...), so maybe I don't quite understand reviews.  Personally, however, I would love to have this functionality.  

We sew and sell cloth diapers.  Every diaper we sell is a one of a kind, never to be seen again.  It doesn't do me much good to have them review a product that will never be carried again.  However, all the diapers fall into one of several categories that rarely change.  I would love to allow the customer to review our hemp diaper category, or our All In One category for example.  

I would think a category review would be beneficial to any site that sells one of a kind items... or am I missing something (as often happens...)??

[ACE99]

Don't see why anyone would want to search for a review?

Some suggestions:

- Admin can control how many reviews (from 0-hide, to 99- display all reviews) are displayed under the product on product_info.php.  (See Amazon.com as one of the best examples)
- option to add an "Average Customer review: [5 stars]" on product_info.php
- Only info required for a customer to create a review is their first name and where they are from.  So a review header will then say "John from Cool Town, USA"
- reviews should have a field for the customer to add a title to their review?

[jon_l]

An option to enable customers to give a product a star rating, without having to add any review text would be good. I think a lot more customers are likely to rate a product if its a nice quick and easy process.

Links from order history to write a review / rate a product. Or maybe a new option within the my account section to list products for which reviews haven't been written (which the customer has bought).

Definable keyword blocking (ie to stop swear words being used).

Make as much of the new system configurable via admin options as is possible.

Jon.

[PartyMania]

I would really like to see category reviews.  It shouldn't be too hard to implement, and just have a feature in the admin panel to turn them on/off.  

One little thing I've noticed is that when viewing one of the partial reviews, (infobox, or reviews.php) sometimes a word will get cut in half.  It would be easy enough to make it include the entire word, not sure if anyone cares about this though.

[radders]

Tell us what you thought of your recent purchases.

I just logged on to a video rental site and got a message inviting me to comment on films I had recently hired. It seemed like a pretty good idea. It is certainly a way of making it easier for customers to contribute. Kind of jogs their memory a bit and provides the links right there. Of course we wouldn't want to distract them from buying more things.

Could this feature be added to the review system as an option?

  I see it as being particularly valuable for a site like ours where typically people buy one each of different products over several months/years -eg. books, DVDs , gifts etc.