Review Ratings on category page

[concession-supply.com]

We are testing having the customer review rating in the category listing. We copied the average rating code from the frame file into our category listing template. Now all we need is to get reviews to populate! :p
We have started the followup email for past purchases and we are slowly getting some reviews in.....:o
We offer a coupon in the review approval email.

[Pat Cotter]

Are you using Power reviews or the internal 3dcart reviews?

I'm using power reviews and already each item on my category pages shows the average rating (stars) - but that does depend on what template you use...

[concession-supply.com]

which category template has the power reviews code?
Are you happy with the look, feel and the quality of the PowerReviews integration? Are you using PowerReview Express?
Thanks in advance! :)

[JustPoppin]

If You Care About Repeat Customers, Please Comment.

@concession-supply.com, I know you're considering Power Reviews but considering how active you are on these forums, I'm interested in what you think, generally, about this issue:

I like how you encourage your customers to leave reviews with the "Write a review and receive valuable savings coupons!" link in the right column of your site.

However, you DO realize that your repeat customers have no way of showing that they are repeat customers and indicating their ongoing appreciation of you and your products, right?

It's not cool to have your customers encounter errors when trying to leave feedback, especially when you are encouraging them to do it. But they will.

WHY DOES NO ONE ELSE HAVE AN OPINION ON THIS?
We've had a couple of ongoing threads about 3dcart not allowing multiple reviews by the same customer on the same product (we all want good repeat customers, right?) but no one else has commented on these threads.

3dcart says we're wrong and that repeat customers should not be allowed to leave additional reviews.

We say that each time a customer purchases, they have "bought" the right to comment on us, our store, and our products again. And, we are perfectly capable of policing the submitted reviews to avoid someone co-opting the entire feedback thread for a product.

PLEASE - if you care about repeat customers and their feedback, please comment on this thread. Right now we're a lone voice on this subject and can not seem to get the point across to 3dcart about how important this is.

We can not even send out follow-up emails to our customers requesting their reviews because 1/2 of them will get to the feedback page and get errors when they submit - and that is a crappy user experience on our end.

3dcart's solution - tell your customers to submit from a different email address. NOT a solution.

To get more background info on this topic, see these threads:
http://forums.3dcart.com/general-con...s-same-ip.html
http://forums.3dcart.com/general-con...-customer.html

[concession-supply.com]

Thought there was a setting in the general store settings to allow more than 1 review for each IP. :confused: We are gradually getting more reviews, but,they mostly come from the followup email. For some reason we don't get any reviews from the side banner. :(

[Lea Walsh]

Product Reviews

I don't use product reviews and don't have any desire to use them at the present time, BUT 90% of my business is from repeat customers and so if I wanted to use them, I'd have the same problem. I sell over 1200 products, so why wouldn't/shouldn't the same customer be able to review all of the products they bought? I sell jewelry castings/settings and so it's not uncommon for one person to buy 20 or more products at one time. If I'm undertstanding this thread correctly, the customer who bought 20 products would only be able to post a review on 1 product? Is that right? And if that same customer came back the following month and bought 20 more products, they'd still not be able to post any more reviews? If that is how it works, it sounds flawed to me. I can see limiting a customer to one review per product, but not one review per customer.

[GonzaloGil]

If a customer purchased 20 different products, they can place 20 reviews.
If they purchased 1 product but quantity 20, they can only place 1 review for the product.

[JustPoppin]

Thought there was a setting in the general store settings to allow more than 1 review for each IP. :confused: We are gradually getting more reviews, but,they mostly come from the followup email. For some reason we don't get any reviews from the side banner. :(

Hey there,

Your follow up emails are going to start annoying your customers when they find they can't leave reviews...

As Gonzalo said in his reply to Lea, a single customer (from a single IP) CAN leave more than 1 review ON YOUR SITE as long as EACH review is for a DIFFERENT product.

BUT, if your customer comes back to you, let's say he purchases supplies from you regularly, that customer can NOT leave a review for a product he already left a review for - which is BAD if you have repeat customers who frequently buy the same items.

A customer who comes back to leave a review on a product they purchased previously will get an error message and not be able to leave a review.

Gonzalo, why you don't think that's a bad thing is beyond me. We want to MINIMIZE error messages that customers receive. If that customer gets an error when DOING US A FAVOR by trying to leave a review, chances are that they won't be back trying to leave reviews ever again. That is NOT good customer service on our part.

If I buy things repeatedly from a seller, I WANT to be able to review them EACH time.

It is hard enough to get customers to come back and leave reviews - it makes NO sense to keep customers from leaving reviews each time they buy. I have the option to disallow a review any time I want to so if I feel someone is trying to game the system, I can stop it. But trying to avoid that is an awful reason to not let multiple reviews on the same product.

Please explain how I'm supposed to tell customers that they should come back to our site to review us but only if they haven't done it for that product before, because if they did, we don't want to hear from them on that subject anymore.

Sellers who encourage customers to leave feedback will end up p*ssing off many of those good customers. I know that I would be if I was in their shoes.

This REALLY needs to be a store owner choice/toggle. I'd really appreciate 3dcart leaving the decision to me especially since we seem to have very different views on this issue.

[brassandsilver]

I know this thread is old, but I have a question on this topic. Our main concern isn't actually with customers wanting to place multiple reviews, but what about when we upload the customer's review from our office? We are finding that many of our customers do submit their reviews, but they do so by emailing us instead of submitting the review on the website. If we can only enter one of those per product, that will become a problem for us. Isn't there some sort of way to add these through the admin panel? I can see why you don't want customers to have unlimited review capabilities, but as the admin for our site I certainly should be able to add my customer's reviews that are sent in by email or phone. Have I missed this function somewhere, or do we not have that option?

[concession-supply.com]

we have had customers simply reply to our review request email as well, instead of going online to review the product. :o

[elightbox]

Can't the customer if they purchased the same item a second time, just EDIT their old review?
I am new to 3d cart, but on my previous cart they can and we receive a notification that a review was edited. Then we can send them a thank you letter or coupon.

I believe this would be a good compromise.

The review request e-mails can explain this. If you have reviewed this product previously, you can add comments or elaborate on your existing review.

[piaf]

I think this all might boil down to the difference between "store" reviews and "product" reviews.

For example, we sell candles. I can think of several customers who purchase the same candles over and over and over again, every month in large quantities. I can understand a customer's desire/need to review the store (ease of ordering, straightforward payment processing, fast order processing, accurate shipping, good customer service, etc) each time they place an order. But I don't really see a customer needing to review the product over and over and over again. One review for a specific product pretty much covers what they have to say about it.

So maybe that's what we need. Two types of reviews, one type for the store which can be "earned" with each order, and then another type of review for the specific products purchased.

[BestCPAPprice]

I have to say that I fall on the same side as JP on this one - make it a toggle so the site administrator has the option of allowing multiple reviews on the same product by the same user. What if something changes in the quality of the product? For example, what if they change manufacturing facilities and they are now having problems? What if a new color or feature is added to subsequent versions of a product? I think it is relatively rare that a customer will come back and try to stack reviews for a product, and if we catch someone doing this, we can simply block their IP address or delete the review.

I have also been having problems with customers simply replying to the email instead of clicking the link to review the product. IIt would work better if the emails would link directly to the popup window where they enter the review, rather than forcing them to scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the "Add Review" link. The easier you can make this for the user, the more chance that they will actually do it.

Also, I have had a few customers request to be taken off the email list for these solicitations. Unfortunately, there is no way to do this. You can only opt out of the newsletters. It would be nice to have a "no-email" list to prevent this from happening - otherwise we are asking to be added to ISP spam blocker lists.