Customer reviews - suggested improvements

[bortolani]

Hi,
I think that the current implementation of reviews should be improved in two areas:

a) product variants
b) multi language

A
If a product has several variants such as size & color, having a review assigned to a specific variant makes it practically useless.
One possibility would be to add a product flag to indicate that all reviews written for its children should be assigned to it and that all its children will show the reviews of the parent. I think that a flag is the best solution because one may want to use parents for other purposes such as patterns, etc.
I implemented a partial solution that could be used a base as explained here: http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=129234.msg461531

B
Reviews are always displayed regardless of the language they are written in or the language of the current page.
One way to solve it would be to assume that the review should be displayed only if the current page is in the same language of the original page where the review was written. Eventually this behaviour could be controlled by a parameter.
I'm just implementing this solution in my site now.
Of course this is not the best solution but showing all reviews in all languages is far worse.

Anyone has better solutions?

Thanks,
Bruno

[lindapowers]

There are many other posts commenting issues related to the review system http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=129234.15

What you and many others don't understand is that VM can't be done thinking in your own needs but rather giving options for the multiple cases in the benefit of most users.

A
If a product has several variants such as size & color, having a review assigned to a specific variant makes it practically useless.

What for you seems useless is exactly how we want it cause you forget that child variants for some of us are concrete products and the parent is just a mini category so for me having all the reviews in the parent is nonsense.

Furthermore your statement is not correct cause simple variants dont have reviews assigned, only childs (and maybe multivariants don't know).

However I do understand your needs and agree that some options are needed in order to offer different solutions.

And in my opinion there are other issues more important related to the review system from the backend even:

- autopublish still doesnt work correctly.
- shop owners should be able to reply to reviews.
- the display in the backend has no logic order. Is even difficult to find latest reviews.

B
Reviews are always displayed regardless of the language they are written in or the language of the current page.
One way to solve it would be to assume that the review should be displayed only if the current page is in the same language of the original page where the review was written. Eventually this behaviour could be controlled by a parameter.
I'm just implementing this solution in my site now.
Of course this is not the best solution but showing all reviews in all languages is far worse.

Again, your opinion. We find quite logic that all reviews are shown regardless of language, even more, is interesting that shoppers see other languages and understand foreign users are buying too.

What you want to do, assign reviews per language? and what language should it take, the one used when review was written? the one detected by ip from the user?
What if a user writes a review in a different language from the language he is currently using in the site.

Again you forget about foreign users checking website in another language etc Not that simple.

Regards

[jenkinhill]

As relatively few VM sites have reviews turned on I suspect that the way forward is to use a reviews extension for those who wish for a more advanced review system than available in the core. I only know of one such extension at the moment ( http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=123514.0 ) so maybe there is a gap in the market for some developer(s).

[bortolani]

Hi Lindapowers,
I agree with you that there might be very different needs and that variants may be used in many different ways.
This is why I suggest adding a setting to control how and where reviews are published and not to implement a default behaviour.

I think that if you had the possibility to merge all children reviews and link them to the parent by setting a flag, this would solve a common problem for all those stores who use variants such  size & color.

The review language issue is more difficult to solve. Again a flag could help in some common situations where you might want to filter reviews based on the language of the page where they were written in.
However I understand this might have lots of drawbacks.

Ciao,
Bruno

[lindapowers]

As relatively few VM sites have reviews turned on I suspect that the way forward is to use a reviews extension for those who wish for a more advanced review system than available in the core. I only know of one such extension at the moment ( http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=123514.0 ) so maybe there is a gap in the market for some developer(s).

There is a gap which I don't understand till this day, the solution you post is the only one that I know that works although you have to take in to account is an external review system which uses its own reviews.

We have like 5 one page checkout solutions, many custom field extensions and not a single review module.

[GJC Web Design]

so maybe there is a gap in the market

I guess the component is just so good that no one thinks they can better it!!!! 

1. works with parent/childs
2. All reviews together in clients maintenance area where they can make and review their old reviews
3. Possible to send automatic multiple configurable html email reminders at set intervals for a configurable number of times
4. fully http://schema.org compatible
5. 'helpful' ranking of reviews
6. separate reviews views a la Amazon
7. problem free addition of ratings stars in any module or display
8. all reviews independent of the actual product .. so if the product is discontinued or one off you still have your reviews and images
9. import of all old orders as separate product purchases and you can kick off email reminders for these old orders
10. simple one line integration in any template

damn.. page is too short to fit the rest..   

http://extensions.joomla.org/extension/product-review-for-virtuemart

[lindapowers]

Your component is really nice but would be even better if you sold the module as a standalone module that worked for core VM reviews

And for the VM reviews is just a feature forgotten by the team:

Why there is no menu item to create a page for reviews?
Why no core module for reviews?
Maybe a link to easily choose products and write a review without making the customer visit the detail view and the review tab.
Even in the emails that are send a message to rate products would help.

So many things that could be improved in the rating system of VM.

Not sure how many shop owners use it but ratings and reviews are basic for SEO and really increase your sales.

Regards

[GJC Web Design]

the reason I developed it as a stand alone package (module!!    component with various modules and plugins .. so package please  ) is because of the limitations of the base VM reviews
Particularly it is a real problem for sites with limited stock items (i.e. art, handicrafts etc) where when the product is sold it is gone.. and so are all the reviews which gave good feedback as to the quality of the sites offerings.
These remain accessible along with images and desc etc to be displayed in the site reviews view or modules etc etc even if totally gone from VM...

My users of this package have only positive things to say and see no disadvantage that is "separate " from VM ..  it is easier for the user and site admin to have all review management available in one over view.
As the package sells each user has new suggestions for improvements and usability which are normally integrated in the next release

Why there is no menu item to create a page for reviews?
Why no core module for reviews?
Maybe a link to easily choose products and write a review without making the customer visit the detail view and the review tab.
Even in the emails that are send a message to rate products would help.

mine has all these things

[Milbo]

A
If a product has several variants such as size & color, having a review assigned to a specific variant makes it practically useless.

This problem exists at the moment only for the MultiVariants (MV). It is planned to fix that.

B
Reviews are always displayed regardless of the language they are written in or the language of the current page.
One way to solve it would be to assume that the review should be displayed only if the current page is in the same language of the original page where the review was written. Eventually this behaviour could be controlled by a parameter.
I'm just implementing this solution in my site now.

If you send a patch, or the changed files, we can add it to the core.

[Milbo]

What for you seems useless is exactly how we want it cause you forget that child variants for some of us are concrete products and the parent is just a mini category so for me having all the reviews in the parent is nonsense.

Thank you for pointing on that. And as you explained before, vm is written to offer possibilities and solutions, not just solutions.

- autopublish still doesnt work correctly.
- shop owners should be able to reply to reviews.
- the display in the backend has no logic order. Is even difficult to find latest reviews.

Yepp, I completly agree.

What if a user writes a review in a different language from the language he is currently using in the site.

Again you forget about foreign users checking website in another language etc Not that simple.

Regards

Interesting problem, indeed.

And for the VM reviews is just a feature forgotten by the team:

.....

So many things that could be improved in the rating system of VM.

Not sure how many shop owners use it but ratings and reviews are basic for SEO and really increase your sales.

Regards

No, as you said yourself before. We cannot write anything perfect. We can enhance it here and there, but it is not planned to write a native system similar complex as Johns.
First it would destry the market for John and so John would have no interest anylonger to answer in the forum and work within the team.
and second it bounds too many ressources, which are then missing for more important features.

[bortolani]

Hi,
not having found a review module for VM, I decided to write one myself.

The module shows VM reviews that may be filtered according to several criteria:

• All reviews (no filter)
• All reviews concerning products of a given VM category
• All reviews concerning products of the currently displayed VM category

Given a category you may also choose to pick reviews from all its subcategaries (and recursvely its sub-subcategories).

Reviews may also be filtered based on minimum rating, i.e. if the associated rating is less than minimum the review is discarded.

You may choose how many reviews are displayed and if they are picked at random or starting from the most recent ones.
You may truncate the reviews to a maximum number of chars  and in case of truncation you decide wether to show arrows to expand them in accordion style.

The module comes with its own language files (english and italian) and CSS.
You may add a class style and also override the layout php file.

If you are interested in testing it just PM me and I'll send you a copy.

Bruno

[lindapowers]

So after some time I decided to buy GJC component for reviews and I must say that is an amazing extension and perfect for new websites however we decided not to use it cause it requires some overrides and has too many plugins.

He was very kind offering super fast help and the component works great.

So both component and support 10/10. We will use it in a future website but for now we just needed a simple module to show reviews and finally we found one here, http://joomboxr.com/product/cbx-virtuemart-product-reviews

Again this guys fantastic support.

-------------------------

Of course I don't want to destroy other business and GJC has a really great component which ofc I will love to see some of the features in the core of VM knowing that is quite impossible.

His component requires some little lines added in core VM and if those were there it would be way more easy to use 3rd party extensions.

Still the core reviews are way too basic, no one asks for a full component but.. let customer check their own reviews, shop owners replies. Some of our customers reviewed products 5 years ago and they cant edit or write another review in same product.

Even the autopublish bug is still present.


Regards

[GJC Web Design]

Thanks for the kind words...   

Just to correct though .. 

His component requires some little lines added in core VM

No core changes are required  .. all is done in template over rides

latest version now allows the site owner to add comments to the reviews and import the old VM reviews

[bpos]

Is there any way to add "guest" to rate or review?  It would be great if you didnt need to log in or sign up to rate or review. The current rating and review Core looks great. But if the visitors arent using it then it has no value. I find that my guests wont log in just to rate or review a product. Maybe too much trouble? who knows. But if they could simply just go to the item and rate it and or review it then I could get some feed back on what people like and what they dont.  It could still be moderated from the back side to have moderator OK it before it gets posted?
Sound dumb? I have read where many people would LOVE this to happen. How hard would it be to add guests to do this?  After all the whole point is the usefulness of these mods? A few simple tweaks would make this more diverse.


Would be great to have this added in future releases. If not is there any simple way to add/change some code to make this happen?

Thanks

[GJC Web Design]

If I get some spare time I will look at this -  although the whole starting point of this ext. was to ONLY allow proven buyers to leave reviews - this was back b4 VM had this restriction

The problem will be though it is an open invitation for spammers - any of my clients who had "open" reviews very quickly got rid of it because trolling thru 20 weird or obscene reviews a day just wasn't much fun.

The emails sent after a period of time asking politely if they would leave a review does though increase dramatically the number doing this although of course again this is only useful for registered users..
Perhaps an option for guest buyers is to have them use the order number/password as access to the review form?
the index.php?option=com_virtuemart&view=orders&layout=details&order_number=U7G1025&order_pass=p_YVVq8Vc7

and add a form there.. hmmm