Does anyone take advantage of the 'REVIEWS' button before purchasing?

[Victor Wise]

Hi,

 

Does anyone's OScommerce site actually exploit the 'reviews' button next to the 'add to cart' button? Seriously, never in my life have I ever visited someones oscommerce site, clicked on the review button, and have actually seen a review. Has anyone else noticed this or am I just being naive?

 

I admit that I usually look at newer oscommerce sites. But the fact stands that I have never seen a review in my life. In fact, I am conditioned to ignore this button now since it has only wasted my time in the past.

 

Are there any contributions that will make either remove this button if there are no reviews, or write in small print below how many reviews there are?

[Jamez]

Hi,

 

Does anyone's OScommerce site actually exploit the 'reviews' button next to the 'add to cart' button? Seriously, never in my life have I ever visited someones oscommerce site, clicked on the review button, and have actually seen a review. Has anyone else noticed this or am I just being naive?

 

I admit that I usually look at newer oscommerce sites. But the fact stands that I have never seen a review in my life. In fact, I am conditioned to ignore this button now since it has only wasted my time in the past.

 

Are there any contributions that will make either remove this button if there are no reviews, or write in small print below how many reviews there are?

 

Agreed, usually the reviews are written by store owners I think

its easy just to comment out the button.

[Victor Wise]

Thank you Jamez, you are a smart man.

 

Not to criticize oscommerce (because it is the best), but why the hell are they still including this button standard? No one uses it yet everyone has it. The way I see it, there are two ways remedy this oversight 1) make the button optional 2) make available some type of function where oscommerce sends an automatic customer feedback email 30 days after the purchase.

 

 

I hope no one takes my criticism of oscommerce personally. I absolutely love OScommerce and recommend it to all my friends ( I recommend MonsterCommerce to people I hate)

[bobg7]

Actually, I have gotten a few reviews from real customers, I admit there is only a small percentage of reviews vs products sold.

[Guest]

Hi,

 

Does anyone's OScommerce site actually exploit the 'reviews' button next to the 'add to cart' button? Seriously, never in my life have I ever visited someones oscommerce site, clicked on the review button, and have actually seen a review. Has anyone else noticed this or am I just being naive?

 

I admit that I usually look at newer oscommerce sites. But the fact stands that I have never seen a review in my life. In fact, I am conditioned to ignore this button now since it has only wasted my time in the past.

 

Are there any contributions that will make either remove this button if there are no reviews, or write in small print below how many reviews there are?

http://www.lakeland-printing.com

 

I just took the image for the reviews and made it invisible in photoshop. If you go to my site, click any product you will not see it. But, if you hover the mouse over you can still click it. Go ahead and right click to snag it, I don't mind. It will save you some time, then upload it to "/images/button_reviews.gif".

I encourage my customers on a personal level to give me feedback, and they do. I even send the link to them. I call all my customers and personally thank them. This is a brand news store, and I only have 2 reviews. But, as I get more I will make the button viewable again. I feel that will benefit from the search engines. This is my second os commerce store, the other one has real feedback: http://www.diggerschoice-seafood.com/reviews.php

 

What do you all think?

[Victor Wise]

Mike,

 

I would advise caution to anyone that has an invisible link on their website. While you are behaving in good faith - Google might mistake the invisible link for some blackhat dirty SEO trick. And we all know what google does to sites they don't like.....

[Guest]

Mike,

 

I would advise caution to anyone that has an invisible link on their website. While you are behaving in good faith - Google might mistake the invisible link for some blackhat dirty SEO trick. And we all know what google does to sites they don't like.....

 

The link isn't invisible. It's still very much active. It's the image that blends in so you can't see anything. Google or any other spider will still index it because they can't "read" images. There is no black hat about this, but a good alernative until you get enough reviews to have it displayed again. Review pages do get indexed by the serps

[Victor Wise]

The link isn't invisible. It's still very much active. It's the image that blends in so you can't see anything. Google or any other spider will still index it because they can't "read" images. There is no black hat about this, but a good alernative until you get enough reviews to have it displayed again. Review pages do get indexed by the serps

 

I stand corrected - my first instinct in seeing your solution was to be afraid of google.

 

Anyone else have any luck getting or removing the reviews?

[djmonkey1]

This is a product on an osCommerce site that has 14 reviews: http://www.achatzpies.com/product_info.php?products_id=28

 

The one major change I would do to reviews is make it possible to post them without having to login.

[gburks]

Agreed, usually the reviews are written by store owners I think

its easy just to comment out the button.

 

 

How can I take out the comment button?

[Iggy]

I admit that I usually look at newer oscommerce sites. But the fact stands that I have never seen a review in my life. In fact, I am conditioned to ignore this button now since it has only wasted my time in the past.

 

If your products inspire reviews they're worth it as a sticky feature

 

This for example

 

 

You may want to look into putting the reviews on the product page instead of making people click away from it.

 

Anyways, I think reviews are useful.

 

Iggy

[Guest]

Another factor with having reviews (especially on your homepage) is there are alot of morons out there who will post stuff you don't want people to see. I've emailed this store owner to tell them, but it's still there:

http://www.sexinthecitylingerie.com/

 

I hope they realize, you will see someone posted something dirty and it can be seen by all.

[djmonkey1]

Another factor with having reviews (especially on your homepage) is there are alot of morons out there who will post stuff you don't want people to see. I've emailed this store owner to tell them, but it's still there:

http://www.sexinthecitylingerie.com/

 

I hope they realize, you will see someone posted something dirty and it can be seen by all.

 

Well, maybe they think 1 review is better than zero reviews. :)

[Iggy]

Well, maybe they think 1 review is better than zero reviews. :)

 

And of course you can always mod your store to require admin approval.

 

Iggy

[nemiroff]

And of course you can always mod your store to require admin approval.

 

Iggy

 

 

better or worse, I believe the clients are looking for some reviews before buying an item. Even they don't know the people who is writing them, they are willing to believe this item is nice, or not.

 

But, the best thing is to put the reviews on products_info pages (without clicking an additional button). I saw some examples above, but don't know how to do it ?

 

Could someone above please show me the way to put the reviews on products_info page ??

 

Like;

this ->

http://www.sodaking.com/product_info.php/products_id/399

 

and this ->

http://www.achatzpies.com/product_info.php?products_id=28

 

Thanks...

[Guest]

Reviews on product_info: http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,3340/

 

Approve Reviews before posting: http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,76/

 

 

There are others but these seem pretty good.

[armadillo]

I stand corrected - my first instinct in seeing your solution was to be afraid of google.

 

Anyone else have any luck getting or removing the reviews?

 

I just replaced the button with a cleardot, a 1px image is impossible to find! Just resize any image to 1x1px and save as whatever button you want to lose.

[Guest]

Agreed, usually the reviews are written by store owners I think

its easy just to comment out the button.

 

Sorry, but that is not true. I have clients who order what I sell primarily because they read the reviews and testimonials of other clients. I do agree a great many are written by the seller, but not in my case.

 

Go to www.al-karaoke.net

Donabano

[Guest]

I have reviews on my site, the customer leaves reviews of products...www.yourchocolateshop.com.

[Victor Wise]

2) make available some type of function where oscommerce sends an automatic customer feedback email 30 days after the purchase.

 

They are called transactional emails. If you want to learn more about them, I just stumbled across what is easily the best email marketing blog I have ever read.

[Guest]

How can I take out the comment button?

I tried to comment out the review button but I had no luck. I think I was putting "//" in the wrong place, so I just removed this whole line (In Bold):

 

       <td><?php echo tep_draw_separator('pixel_trans.gif', '100%', '10'); ?></td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
       <td><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="2" class="infoBox">
         <tr class="infoBoxContents">
           <td><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2">
             <tr>
               <td width="10"><?php echo tep_draw_separator('pixel_trans.gif', '10', '1'); ?></td>
               [i][b]<td class="main"><?php echo '<a href="' . tep_href_link(FILENAME_PRODUCT_REVIEWS, tep_get_all_get_params()) . '">' . tep_image_button('button_reviews.gif', IMAGE_BUTTON_REVIEWS) . '</a>'; ?></td>[/b][/i]
               <td class="main" align="right"><?php echo tep_draw_hidden_field('products_id', $product_info['products_id']) . tep_image_submit('button_in_cart.gif', IMAGE_BUTTON_IN_CART); ?></td>
               <td width="10"><?php echo tep_draw_separator('pixel_trans.gif', '10', '1'); ?></td>
             </tr>
           </table></td>

[Guest]

I tried to comment out the review button but I had no luck. I think I was putting "//" in the wrong place, so I just removed this whole line (In Bold):

 

       <td><?php echo tep_draw_separator('pixel_trans.gif', '100%', '10'); ?></td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
       <td><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="2" class="infoBox">
         <tr class="infoBoxContents">
           <td><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2">
             <tr>
               <td width="10"><?php echo tep_draw_separator('pixel_trans.gif', '10', '1'); ?></td>
               [i][b]<td class="main"><?php echo '<a href="' . tep_href_link(FILENAME_PRODUCT_REVIEWS, tep_get_all_get_params()) . '">' . tep_image_button('button_reviews.gif', IMAGE_BUTTON_REVIEWS) . '</a>'; ?></td>[/b][/i]
               <td class="main" align="right"><?php echo tep_draw_hidden_field('products_id', $product_info['products_id']) . tep_image_submit('button_in_cart.gif', IMAGE_BUTTON_IN_CART); ?></td>
               <td width="10"><?php echo tep_draw_separator('pixel_trans.gif', '10', '1'); ?></td>
             </tr>
           </table></td>

Sorry, I forgot to mention file: product_info.php

[abra123cadabra]

Over the last year I have seen many e-commerce sites with some kind of reviews feature. Most just had a few reviews if at all. My guess is that the first two or three are the ones the store owner put in to see how and if the feature is working.

 

I would love to use them to help new customers to decide if the product is for them or not but that means that customers who bought the product come back to the shop and add a review. About 50% of my customers choose to checkout without creating an account so I'll need to remove the need to login requirement. I'll have a look how I could integrate this best with the normal status update emails.

 

As for the reviews info on the products info pages, I removed the reviews count and modified the button displayed depending on whether reviews already exist or not.

 

abra