X-Cart:Customer Reviews
Contents
What Customer Reviews module does
The module Customer Reviews allows your customers to post feedback about the products in your store. For this purpose, a special form is added onto the product details page of every product - 'Customer feedback'.
Two types of customer feedback are supported: product ratings and customer reviews. Respectively, the 'Customer feedback' form includes two sections: 'Product rating' and 'Customer reviews'.
The 'Product ratings' section allows customers to evaluate a product based on a 5 point scale, the choice Excellent corresponding to the highest rating of 5 points, Poor - to the lowest rating of 1 point:
The 'Customer Reviews' section allows customers to post their own reviews of a product:
Ratings of a product by different customers are summed up, so the resultant rating of a product represents a simple average of its ratings by all the customers who have voted. Rating points are represented by stars, and as soon as a product gets rated by somebody, all the store visitors can see its rating in the 'Product rating' section.
Customer reviews created by your customers are posted for everyone to see in the 'Customer Reviews' section. Each review can be accompanied by the name of the author and the author's email address.
If your store prefers to use just one of the above described types of customer feedback, the store administrator can disable any of the two sections of the 'Customer feedback' form.
You can control which of the store site visitors (all visitors or only registered customers) should be allowed to post reviews, or you can choose to forbid creation of feedback posts by visitors and create all reviews by yourself.
Roles in Customer Reviews module management
If you are an X-Cart GOLD administrator/provider or an X-Cart PRO administrator:
- You can enable/disable Customer Reviews module and adjust its configuration settings (Check out #Enabling and Configuring 'Customer Reviews').
- You can fully control product ratings: view all product ratings in your store/all ratings of a specific product/all ratings posted from a specific IP; change ratings posted by any visitors; delete undesirable ratings (See #Managing Product Ratings).
- You can control customer reviews: edit reviews posted by customers, delete unwanted reviews and add reviews of your own (See #Managing Customer Reviews).
Enabling and Configuring 'Customer Reviews'
To begin using the module:
1. Enable Customer Reviews module (Administration menu->Modules).
When the module is enabled, you can see: Customer Reviews options section in General settings/Modules options.
2. Adjust the module settings via General settings/Modules options->Customer Reviews options:
- a) Enable product rating: Specify whether you want to enable your customers to rate products: select the check box to enable product ratings, unselect the check box to hide the 'Product rating' section from the 'Customer Feedback' form.
- b) Enable customer review: Specify whether you want to enable your customers to create reviews and view reviews by other customers: select the check box to enable customer reviews, unselect the check box to hide the 'Customer reviews' section from the 'Customer Feedback' form.
- c) Who must be allowed to add reviews and rate products: Specify who can create reviews and rate products: select All users or Registered users from the select box.
- d) Rate products without reloading the product list: Select the check box to rate products without reloading the page.
- e) Stars in product rating scale: Select the number of stars you want to be displayed as the product rating scale.
- f) Click the Save button.
Managing Product Ratings
Viewing product ratings from the Admin area
You can obtain comprehensive information about the product ratings posted by your customers via the 'Edit ratings' section of the the Admin area of your store (Management menu->Edit ratings). As soon as you enter this section, you see a dialog box titled 'Ratings':
This box displays all the product ratings in your store. For each rating the following information is available: the column PRODUCT shows the title of the product rated, the column SKU shows the product's SKU, the column REMOTE IP shows the IP address of the customer who rated the product, the column VOTE shows the customer's evaluation of the product. The list of product ratings can be sorted in different ways by clicking on the column headers.
If you want to view ratings for a specific product only, click on the title of this product in the 'Ratings' dialog box. With regard to the screenshot above, clicking on the product title 'Cranium' will produce the following:
To see all ratings posted from a specific IP, click on the corresponding IP address in the 'Ratings' dialog box. In our example, clicking on the IP '192.0.34.166' will produce the following:
To return to the list where all ratings can be seen, click the Show all ratings link in the upper part of the box.
Editing product ratings
Too many negative ratings given to a product by customers can undermine the product's reputation, which can have negative impact on your store's sales. Customer Reviews module allows you to deal with this problem by editing your customers' ratings. If you are not satisfied with a rating given to any of your products by a customer, you can change this rating manually via the 'Edit ratings' section of the the Admin area.
To edit a product rating:
- Find the rating to be edited in the list of product ratings in the 'Ratings' dialog box.
- Select a desired rating from the drop-down box in the VOTE column.
- Click the Update button.
The rating should be saved with the selected value of the VOTE drop-down box.
Deleting product ratings
Customer Reviews module allows you to delete product ratings.
To delete one or more ratings:
- Find the ratings to be deleted in the list of product ratings in the 'Ratings' dialog box.
- Mark the found ratings for deletion by selecting the check boxes next to them.
- Click the Delete selected button.
The ratings should be removed from the list of ratings in the 'Ratings' dialog box; the number of points corresponding to the product rating should be recalculated (may affect the number of stars).
