Feature Request

[Adva Trading]

I asked Richard the following question, I was hoping to get some views on this:

Would it be possible to develop a feature (maybe a Block?) that will contain automatically the last (lets say 3 to 5) Products Reviews from items in a certain category. Example:

A Block that we will place in each Category page that will display the last 3 Reviews.

The reasons this feature is needed:

1. Search engines will be happy that some main pages are being updated with new relevant keyword rich content.
2. Potential buyers will be able to see in a glance that there are good reviews: Reviews attract the eye - because of the human nature being as it is, it is like pipping through a key hole at other people experiences. I am sure that will make them stay just a little longer on a page, and will entice some to explore deeper.

[john]

Sounds like a good addition if we can have some control over what is displayed, we find that not many reviews have keywords in them. Unless we were to edit every one, at the moment we just publish them as is, to try to keep honest!

This has prompted me to look at reviews on our site and it appears that they are displayed in descending date order, this means that if reviews are not coming in frequently for a product, that part of the page is static.

Does anyone other than me wish that reviews could be shown on a random dynamic basis so that the text is seen as regularly changing (therefore more relevant for SEO)? or perhaps this could be a toggle option?

Please give opinions to assist Richard's consideration.

[petad]

Would be a nice idea.

Eran -not sure about pipping through keyholes...? Is that a euphemism for something rude?

[lewey]

I would like some enhancements to how reviews can be displayed, or options for them. However have voted 'not sure' for this poll as personally wouldn't want the current suggestions.

My preference would be for us to be able to manually set the order of reviews, if there was to be a change.

I understand the reasoning being given for SEO / new content purposes, - but for me the primary function of reviews should be to provide reviews of the product to potential purchases and to help convince them to buy that item.

If you have it set up automatically for last 3 reviews to be displayed, what happens when the most recent reviews happen to be bad or mediocre. I would be similarly concerned about randomly selected reviews being shown.

It is trying to find something that suits those sites with a very large number of products that need some kind of automatic selection system as would be time consuming to manually administer all reviews on all products - versus for me it is important that my most important / popular products will not be adversely affected by what selection of reviews happen to be presented to a customer (hence a preference for an option of manual selection).

Maybe it fits in (but not sure how much extra work or feasibility on Richard's side it would be) to be able to select a group of reviews that get included in the new feature - i.e we can choose a subset of reviews to be included ?

[Rich]

My preference would be for us to be able to manually set the order of reviews, if there was to be a change.

I just noticed your reply to this thread. The reviews are currently listed in reverse date order, with the most recent reviews at the top. You can change the dates of reviews to reorder them manually, if you wish.