Product Reviews and Ratings

[Inchima]

This subject has been touched upon before but with no real conclusion as to what to do.

Many store environments have product reviews and ratings built into them eg. os Commerce, but what if an Actinic Store owner wanted to introduce them?

Are Actinic thinking about adding such a module?

Has anyone with an Actinic store ever integrated one before maybe using PHP or MySQL?

Are there any scripts around to make this easy?

Any help or guidance would be great



Thanks,
Jonathan.

[Jan]

We are working on one, we have a product in development that allows you to collect information from a product review form, brings it downl to the PC, add's it to a database, allows you to select the reviews you want to display and then builds an HTML page based on a template that can be uploaded and displayed in your catalog. Send an email to pat@mole-end.biz if you would like to work with us on this, he is out of the office for a week now but would get in touch with you on his return.

Harlequin have a script that does this, it might be worth getting in touch with them. (http://www.harlequindomains.co.uk/ freephone 0800 083 2077)

Regards,

[Inchima]

Thanks Jan, this is superb news.

As a newcomer to Actinic I am quite surprised that modules such as product reviews haven't been developed before.

We worked with os Commerce a little while back and it is pretty hard work developing the product due to its rigid source code...but, that said...it does have some very good functionality such as the product review and ratings feature.

We will be contacting Pat and hopefully sort something out. Do you have an idea of timescales of when the feature will be ready? We would be more than happy to help test it and take on an early beta version.

One of the key advantages to this feature is that if a client has built a 'non-commercial' site, a community for example...and then they decide that they do need to turn over some revenue. This is the missing link.

They can set up a separate site that deals with the commerce but link it back to the community site using reviews and ratings. This enables them to maintain the credibility and integrity of the independent community i.e. no hard sell, yet have a conduit to drive traffic to the store.

Thanks again Jan.

Regards,
Jonathan.

[Jan]

We will be contacting Pat and hopefully sort something out. Do you have an idea of timescales of when the feature will be ready? We would be more than happy to help test it and take on an early beta version.

It is almost ready - but the holiday season is upon us (and Pat's wife is insisting on at least 4 weeks off in the next 2 months ;-)) so I would predict a full beta version in a month or two.

Regards,