Improve review and support forms

  • Hello,

    I’m quite knew as a plugin author at www.ads-software.com.
    After receiving some bad reviews, I think the integrated review and support form is somehow broken (don’t know, if this is the right place for posting this).

    Some of the reviews should have been support requests instead. Maybe some users just aren’t aware of the support forum.

    Also I’m not sure, if some of the reviews are “fake” reviews from other authors. The main reason for this is, that mostly “normal” users respond to questions and provide additional feedback. Fake reviewers just register to review one plugin, without providing any serious feedback and patterns like “one star is to much”.

    Another problem is the really high amount of combinations of plugins and themes. It might be that all the bad reviews are right, but I’m personally not able to prove this, as the users don’t give any clues about there systems and many users don’t have any problem at all.

    So my suggestions are:

    1. Improve visibility of the support forum, so users don’t misuse the review form for support requests. For instance, when a user wants to give 3 or less stars, he should be explicitly asked if he had contacted support first.
    2. Make more visible that there is a trillion combinations of themes and plugins and that some just may not work together and that this is not a reason to just give a very bad review. Typically there is more than one plugin for the same functionality.
      A better way would be to tell users: Choose another plugin, if it is good, give it a good rating instead of giving a bad rating here. (Even better provide some information about the compatibility for the original author too)
    3. Encourage people to rate plugins at all. Maybe this should be some integrated mechanism in WordPress itself, so uses can rate directly from their WP backend.
    4. Let reviews age and remove them from the overall rating, for instance when they are for older versions of the plugin.
    5. Note the version, a review was made for, or just “for an older version”/”the current version”
    6. Implement some reputation system to better avoid fake reviews, so users can’t give bad reviews just after their first login or registration or just don’t count reviews for the overall review from new users with less than x given reviews in total. Else, I’m not sure what are good conditions for this. Maybe some kind of activity. To give 3 or less stars: tried to use support forum first, member for at least 1 month or has a couple of good reviews. Stackoverflow might be a good inspiration for this.
    7. Implement implicit ratings. For instance our plugins are bad rated, but (from the stats) have a quite good amount of installations. So the overall quality can’t be as bad as some reviewers state. I don’t know what other good criterias are there.

    Hope this helps to improve the site, as well as user and author experience.

    Adrian

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    Thanks for the suggestion and I’m really happy that you formatted the <ol> and <li> correctly. ??

    6. Implement some reputation system to better avoid fake reviews, so users can’t give bad reviews just after their first login or registration or just don’t count reviews for the overall review from new users with less than x given reviews in total.

    That part I disagree with. ??

    That one review from a new account is good. It’s an engagement and that’s what is desired. If someone only creates an account to leave a review then that’s fine and authors should not use that one post as a reason to discount that review.

    That fact that your plugin or theme solicited someone to take the time and leave a review (good or bad) should be flattering. ??

    *Drinks coffee*

    The review section in www.ads-software.com is not Online Book Seller Turned Global Retailer? and authors should not worry about bad reviews. If someone is using these reviews to supplement their income then… they’re doing it wrong. The main focus should not be getting good reviews, it should be supporting your users.

    Your plugin and themes are a gift to the community. How you reply to a bad review is extremely more valuable than the community than the bad review is detrimental.

    There are some authors who remind the user incessantly to leave a good review. That has happened to the point where one plugin’s review section is completely worthless. Honestly, thousands of 5 star reviews of “Hey, I reviewed. Can you stop nagging me???” adds zero value to anything.

    7. Implement implicit ratings. For instance our plugins are bad rated, but (from the stats) have a quite good amount of installations. So the overall quality can’t be as bad as some reviewers state. I don’t know what other good criterias are there.

    I disagree with that too. ??

    Implicit ratings are just another statistic that will get gamed and that’s abusive (the gaming). I want to read real reviews from real users and even “Plugin. Doesn’t work.” is an opportunity to see that author respond well.

    Don’t take the bad reviews so personally. Yes, there are trolls out there who abuse the review system. But the moderators are really good at finding that and reviews from real fake sock puppets get deleted when found.

    Someone leaving a bad review from a new account isn’t fake. You really should see that as an opportunity to engage someone new.

    Thread Starter Adrian

    (@adrian2k7)

    Hi Jan,

    Thanks for your feedback and some clarification. You are propably right. Reviews shouldn’t be overvalued and may not be such a concern as many think.

    I’ll just continue to get feedback from such reviewers and improve our items where users are willed to provide feedback and help us as well.

    Eventually the most pain point for me is, that users mix the review section with the support forum. Hopefully this will be improved in the future, but with the latest changes here and the high velocity on the platform I’m sure people are hard working doing a lot to improve the site. So this will come sooner or later.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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