Switching Testimonial module, but need help to decide which way to go!

Hi,

I wasn’t sure in which category to place this thread, but I hope this one is accurate enough :).

I’ve been using the “Testimonial Manager” module since forever, and I’m a big fan of it.

However, I did come across another module that pretty much does the same thing. Only with a little more detail. And the data is presented in a nicer way, in my opinion.

It’s called Shopreview (http://www.web4design.de/module_infos/english/shopreviews/index.php) and a demo can be seen here (in German, but it’s all I got at the moment :)) : http://pool-shop.org/.

The sidebox just looks awesome. And it’s nice to be able to ask for such detailed reviews - I have setup these ratings : Overall store rating, Product Value, Shipping, Customer Service & Website layout. And the customer is able to rate every criteria with 1-5 stars. There is an “additional comments” field too. And the whole thing is extremely easy to customize to my liking.

However, I already have 675 very positive testimonials on my site and I’m not sure what to do with them. Contacting every customer to ask them to leave a new testimonial in this new module simply doesn’t feel right.

I was thinking I could migrate the data from Testimonial Manager into Shopreview, the reviews won’t get any stars obviously but maybe I can contact a few customers and ask them to edit the review, and make it complete by submitting the 1-5 rating as well. I hope I can word it in a way that’ll make sense to them :). And of course offer them store credit or a % coupon as a reward.

Or would it be a better idea to just skip the Testimonial Manager and go with Shopreview from now on? We have about 50 sales / month and at least 50% of them do take their time to leave a testimonial so it won’t take too long to get a decent number at least.

At the moment I don’t know where to take it from here. I was hoping writing about it would help me sort my thoughts a little bit. Any input from other store owner’s would of course be of great value too.

If anyone has any thoughts about this at all, I would appreciate your comments!

Thanks.

Best regards

Peter

dysfunctional:

Hi,

I wasn’t sure in which category to place this thread, but I hope this one is accurate enough :).

I’ve been using the “Testimonial Manager” module since forever, and I’m a big fan of it.

However, I did come across another module that pretty much does the same thing. Only with a little more detail. And the data is presented in a nicer way, in my opinion.

It’s called Shopreview (http://www.web4design.de/module_infos/english/shopreviews/index.php) and a demo can be seen here (in German, but it’s all I got at the moment :)) : http://pool-shop.org/.

The sidebox just looks awesome. And it’s nice to be able to ask for such detailed reviews - I have setup these ratings : Overall store rating, Product Value, Shipping, Customer Service & Website layout. And the customer is able to rate every criteria with 1-5 stars. There is an “additional comments” field too. And the whole thing is extremely easy to customize to my liking.

However, I already have 675 very positive testimonials on my site and I’m not sure what to do with them. Contacting every customer to ask them to leave a new testimonial in this new module simply doesn’t feel right.

I was thinking I could migrate the data from Testimonial Manager into Shopreview, the reviews won’t get any stars obviously but maybe I can contact a few customers and ask them to edit the review, and make it complete by submitting the 1-5 rating as well. I hope I can word it in a way that’ll make sense to them :). And of course offer them store credit or a % coupon as a reward.

Or would it be a better idea to just skip the Testimonial Manager and go with Shopreview from now on? We have about 50 sales / month and at least 50% of them do take their time to leave a testimonial so it won’t take too long to get a decent number at least.

At the moment I don’t know where to take it from here. I was hoping writing about it would help me sort my thoughts a little bit. Any input from other store owner’s would of course be of great value too.

If anyone has any thoughts about this at all, I would appreciate your comments!

Thanks.

Best regards

Peter

One thought would be to keep testimonials, but to disable the ability to add new ones to it, and to go with the new method with some sort of notification that transitioning to using the new method which will stay in place for (pick time frame or date at which it would be expected the existing reviews would maybe roll off otherwise.)
The reason I suggest this is that the existing information is maintained in the format that it was presented. Otherwise, the next thing to do would be to as you suggested copy the information over to the new format without the rating(s), and also provide some sort of description that the ratings may not be available as a result of upgrading to a new process. Then let previous customers know all about the great things that have been done to the site and encourage to set the record straight... :)

I would not necessarily encourage stripping all of the information and only starting from scratch as a standing business, unless you plan on advertising that beginning on this date all of the existing reviews will be removed to support the new process (though some would obviously say why couldn't they be transferred over to the new system?)