Product Reviews

[hotlobstah]

Are any product reviews compatible with Shopsite? I attempted to install Power Reviews but apparently not compatible.

[ShopSite Lauren]

I have seen ShopSite merchants use PowerReviews on their ShopSite website. The complaints that I have heard with PowerReviews is that PowerReviews needs to review any customer reviews before you as the merchant can review the reviews, so the whole process for one review takes a few days. If you are fine with that, I do like the look of the PowerReviews.

Also, some companies have created add-on modules for product reviews. For example, LexiConn has a product review module (you may need to be hosted with LexiConn for this).

[hotlobstah]

What I really like about Power Reviews is their reviews rank very well on search engines like Google-that's huge. I've been working with my in house developer at Fatcow for months trying to figure out how to implement this in our Shopsite stores (as Shopsite isn't a partner with PR) and he can't figure it out-most recently he contacted a Shopsite engineer who stated it won't work-I'm assuming they just don't want to deal with it. Shopsite needs a solution here as online stores need reviews to stay relevant.

Would you mind giving me an example of a Shopsite store with Power Reviews?-it will help if I can demonstrate PR's compatible with Shopsite

Thanks

[ShopSite Lauren]

Honestly, I can't give you an example, both sites that were using PowerReviews have switched to the LexiConn reviews module. I setup both the PowerReviews module and the LexiConn module on one website. If I remember correctly, when you upload your products into PowerReviews, you need each product to have its own unique identifier, as well as its own URL. So with ShopSite, you can use the SKU number (if all your products have their own unique SKU) or you can use the ShopSite itemnum, which is a number (like a row number in Excel) that ShopSite assigns to each product. You would then include each product's more information page URL in your product upload with PowerReviews. Of course, PowerReviews needs you to upload other product information such as name, price, brand, quantity, description, etc.

I agree that this feature should be added. I know that there are going to be talks on important new features to add in the next few weeks, so I will submit a reviews feature to be discussed. This may already be something that ShopSite is planning on implementing.

[davidroth]

I have tried out both PowerReviewsExpress and Lexiconn's review module.

I don't know why someone would say that PR wouldn't be able to be used on Shopsite stores. Lauren implemented mine on my site and it didn't seem to take very long, so I would assume it was straight forward. Maybe you're talking about PR, instead of PR express. I would think Express would be fine for most businesses.

The upside to PRE is that it's a slick system. I think it's probably the most visually appealing and there are places where you can add notes for service/product reviews. Plus a spot to add pictures, videos, etc.

I didn't like 2 things about it though. For one, there is a Tier 1 review process with the company so all reviews will take 3 days to even be able to view. Second, I was getting the impression that they owned the reviews and it would be a huge pain if you ever decided to cancel the service. And another thing, you're paying $80/month for it.

Personally, I liked to have more control over the process. I hated the long review process and needing to get their permission everytime you wanted to change something with your campaign. So I switched over to Lexiconn's free product review module. I had to make a lot of modifications to it with the help of a MYSQL developer. Namely I wanted the number of reviews to display on the category/product pages. So once I did that, I think it turned out well. Now, the review come right to me. I can edit them or publish them right away.

After cancelling with PRE, they became very flexible. They said if I ever decided to cancel, they would send me a zip files of all the reviews. And they said if I wanted to turn off the Tier 1 reviews, I could do that. At that point, it was too late though cause I already transitioned. They weren't that flexible when I first asked though. If you want to save some headaches and just get a nice system, then definitely go with PRE. It's worth the $80/month.

I'm not even kidding here, my conversion rate SKYROCKETED right when I implemented the review module. And I already had a good conversion rate. I compared it with prior months and at the same period last year. On the day I implemented it, the conversion rate from this year and last year were about the same. Once I got some reviews in, there was a separation and my conversion rate for this year was a full % higher than last. And that's been consistent.

But on your comments about PRE having better search engine positioning. There's nothing special about the way they do it. You just need to make sure your pages can get crawled/indexed. Lexiconn's work the same way.