Wow, this thread started on 9/18/07! I find it hard to believe that I am going to be the first post on this. I feel compelled to share what I know about this:
First and foremost, this feature is a must have so I am in. We need totals on what this is going to cost to develop.
In order for this feature to be worthwhile you must have the following features:
A. The customer must be able to type in their opinions.
B. A Product Rating Scale is important as well as "Would you recommend this product?", yes or no.
C. Ability to email the product info to a friend
D. There has to be a way to delete posts that are posted for spamming purposes, because you will definitely get these.
I don't know how many of you shop on line, but personally when I buy a product on the net, I ALWAYS read the product reviews, as a matter of fact, I have never bought an electronics/computer item without consulting CNet.com. CNet is probably one of the better sites that provides customer reviews on electronics. I have yet to purchase a product based on customer reviews that did not meet my expectations. Like me, there are many out there that are finding this out and taking their business where reviews are available. SO, yes this ranks way the hell up there!
From personal experience, Reviews sell merchandise. Internet Retailer Magazine considers customer reviews to be a necessity if you want to compete. In my industry not all of us have this ability, but those that do are doing better than those of us who do not. So I consider this very important. I came on board with Americommerce because this was in the planning stages with an ETA of May 2008.
Another important aspect of customer reviews is that it provides dynamic content, something Google and other spiders love, the more content the more it get's indexed, the more indexing by spiders, the higher you will rank in the respective search engines. Customer reviews are an SEO dream. Google looks for sites with dynamic content, customer reviews are excellent for this purpose.
FYI: If you are in the internet retail business, Internet Retailer magazine is a definite MUST read. I think everyone in the industry should be subscribed to the magazine, and it's free. Lots of valuable information in there. The magazine really focuses on web design and it's interaction with making $$$, which is the reason why we are all here.
I think that Americommerce already has a system in place that will work. If you could use the free hand variant entry, turn it into a site merge, This will allow the free hand window to display. All you would need to do is create a tab under Descriptions called Reviews, then ""CUSTOMER REVIEW"" could be placed in the HTML editor. Same for a rating scale, whether they would recommend the product or not, and the ability to add a <A href="mailto:" mce_href="mailto:"> tag that will email the page link to whomever the customer wishes, since there is a field for Custom URL, that variable could be used to insert it into the mailto: command. Just a thought.
I just thought of this, but another cool feature would be for the customer reviews to have a field that automatically merges it with the product on the page. Example: instead of Customer Reviews: it should read Customer Reviews for ______________ product. This is is crucial because Google will index the review specifically for the product in question. Say the product name is "Rapid Printer", the customer review tag would read; "Customer Reviews for Rapid Printer". Google would index that exact phrase. This is great because if someone does a search for "customer review for rapid printer", that will be an exact match taking it directly to your product page where the review is, AND where the product can be purchased. This shouldn't be a big deal because the product name is already a variable that has been entered, this again would be some type of merge code.
Ed, given that all of the variables needed, product name and custom url are under the General tab, would it be possible to place a checkoff box such as the one you pick when you want the product to show up on the Featured Products section? If it can be done like I am thinking, this should be very feasable since all of the variables needed are under that General Tab. Just an idea.
Best Regards,
Louis
TackleToyStore.com