Looking for the perfect review system for an online store

Hi, Habr! In the previous post, we talked about our review system for online stores, and today we made a comparison with other similar products. After all, reviews - perhaps the most inexpensive and effective way to increase site conversion. For feedback, you can write your own system or use a ready-made and proven solution.

Among the ready-made solutions in RuNet three systems were noted - Cackle Reviews , Mneniya.Pro and Shoppilot . We made an unbiased comparison of the mentioned systems for a variety of parameters and placed the results in a pivot table, simultaneously making a small overview of each system separately. The result was a kind of guide that will help you better understand the features of each system and select the appropriate product for your site.

Main features

The table below compares Cackle Reviews, Shoppilot, and Mneniya.Pro for the most important parameters. In the "Opportunity" column, some parameters have links to the extended description.

For clarity, for each " yes " the system gets 1 point, for " no " 0.

Opportunity	Cackle Reviews	Shoppilot	Mneniya.Pro
1. Year of foundation	2013	2013	2013
2. Download speed (milliseconds)	72	123	87
3. Sending letters after purchase	Yes	Yes	Yes
4. The “Leave Feedback” link from the letter leads to the store website	Yes	not	not
5. Verified buyer	Yes	Yes	Yes
6. Collect feedback from Yandex.Market	Yes	Yes	not
7. API sync feedback for search indexing in Yandex	Yes	Yes	Yes
8. Automatic indexing in Google with micro markup	Yes	not	Yes
9. Broadcast reviews in social networks	Yes	not	not
10. Anonymous authorization	Yes	Yes	Yes
11. Social authorization	Yes	not	not
12. Single authorization with the site	Yes	not	not
13. SPAM protection	Yes	not	not
14. Likes reviews	Yes	Yes	not
15. Download images	Yes	Yes	not
16. Video support (YouTube, Vimeo)	Yes	not	not
17. Open registration	Yes	not	not
18. Realtime update	moderation	not	not
19. Moderation reviews	Yes	not	not
20. Pre-moderation	Yes	not	not
21. Comments to reviews	Yes	Yes	Yes
22. Plugins for CMS	Yes	Yes	not
23. Responsive design	Yes	not	Yes
24. Minimum price (rubles per month)	600	2490	2490

Eventually:
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Cackle Reviews: 20 points
Shoppilot: 9 points
Mneniya.Pro: 7 points

Learn more about some of the features.

1. Year of foundation

Was chosen according to archive.org/web . A small remark about Cackle: on archive.org, the first mentions of cackle.ru are in 2011 - then the comment service was implemented, and the Cackle Reviews system was released in 2013.

2. Download speed

For each product, one page of the site was selected where the solution is used. Then, from several computers (located in different networks), in turn, the selected pages were updated with a reset of the cache (Ctrl + F5) and each time the total average load time of all resources for each system was measured (Chrome DevTools, Network, filter by domain cackle.me , shoppilot.ru, dev.mneniya.pro). From the results obtained, the average time was the result.

4. The “Leave Feedback” link from the letter leads to the store website

It is about sending follow-up letters after purchase with an invitation to leave a review. Suppose a user receives a follow-up letter asking them to evaluate a newly purchased product. It is important that the link “Leave feedback” from the letter leads exactly to the page of your site (and not to the site of the feedback collection system) without any redirects. Otherwise, you will receive less feedback, as many users do not trust links to third-party sites.

It is also extremely important that when clicking on the link “Leave a review”, the form for posting a review is opened and the user is automatically authorized. For example, in the Cackle Reviews system, the “Leave feedback” link leads to the page of the purchased product of the online store, and all service parameters for opening a review writing form and automatic authorization are transmitted after the hash (#) in the link address. In other systems, links lead to the solution developer's site, in the form of writing a review, without automatic authorization, which, of course, reduces the transitions and the number of comments left.

6. Collect feedback from Yandex.Market

For Cackle Reviews and Shoppilot, several sites were found where reviews downloaded from Yandex.Market are visible (for example, forma-odezhda.ru , delonghi.club , digital.ru , wiki-tovar.ru ).

8. Automatic indexing in Google with micro markup

Micromarking is a special format by which other systems, such as search engines, understand and display data in a certain way. Here we are talking about micromarking reviews schema.org/reviews schema.org/reviews . On Google, it looks like pretty stars reflecting the current page rank:


Automatic indexing of micro-markers of a rating, for example in Cackle Reviews, works simply through JavaScript. Using Cackle Reviews you can forget about the difficult setting of saving reviews to a local database or manipulating Apache (Nginx) to pull external HTML-code.

Example: in Google, find “site: kinderus.ru based on a review”, go to any page from the search result, say, kinderus.ru/products/7173 , and open the display in HTML-form. In the HTML code, reviews and micro-markup are missing, which means that everything works automatically through JavaScript.

9. Broadcast reviews in social networks

Here the system Cackle Reviews again distinguished. Reviews are broadcast on VKontakte, My World, Facebook, Twitter with a link to the site where the solution is installed. As a result, you get additional traffic and popularity among the friends of the reviewer. You can try the broadcast on the solution demonstration page.


In other social authorization systems there is no, respectively, no cross-posting (broadcast).

12. Single authorization with the site

This is when an authorized user on your site is automatically logged in to the feedback system. Useful when follow-up mailing letters. The user clicks on the "Leave feedback" from the letter and when he goes to the form of writing a review, he is automatically authorized.

19. Moderation reviews

Cackle Reviews has a built-in administration panel for moderating reviews in real time, that is, you choose, approve a review or reject it. Shoppilot and Mneniya.Pro, on the contrary, moderate reviews on their own.

22. Plugins for CMS

CMS	Cackle Reviews	Shoppilot	Mneniya.Pro
1C-Bitrix	Yes	Yes	Not
Joomla (VirtueMart, K2, Zoo)	Yes	Not	Not
Opencart	Yes	Not	Not
PrestaShop	Yes	Yes	Not
Insales	Not	Yes	Not

It is worth noting that all the Cackle Reviews plugins save reviews to the local database automatically, besides, in 1C-Bitrix and OpenCart there is an import of orders for follow-up mailings .

Cackle Reviews

Leader review due to the maximum number of opportunities and adequate prices. Registration is open, you can try the system for free - link to registration

Such significant results Cackle Reviews owes a lot to the long-term development of cloud services of the company as a whole. The first product was announced in 2011 - in the Cackle comment system . Much has migrated from the comments in the system reviews. For example, social authorization, transmission to social networks, SPAM protection, download speed, moderation system, work on mobile devices and other features. You can read more about the Cackle architecture in Habré in the article “ Cloud services under high load. Experience Cackle .

Main advantages:

Indexing reviews with a micro-mark ranking on Google

As mentioned above, when installing Cackle Reviews on your site, Google starts scanning pages automatically, indexing reviews with a micro markup rating.

It's great that all this works through JavaScript - you just copy the installation code of Cackle Reviews and in the Google search results your site becomes something like this:

Collect reviews from Yandex.Market

To collect it is necessary through the API (Cackle Reviews) to load products from your online store in Cackle, JSON format. Each item must have a special parameter, ymId, that takes the modelId value from Yandex.Market.


Reviews from Market are marked with a special link to the source.


Some examples: wiki-tovar.ru , shveiburg.ru , mrklimat.ru .

Single authorization with an online store

It is possible to make sure that users registered on your site are automatically logged into Cackle Reviews with their name, avatar and profile link. The possibility greatly simplifies writing reviews, because in this case, the user does not need to enter their data or select a social network for authorization. As a result, you get more feedback.

SPAM protection

The only feedback system with built-in spam protection. Once you mark a review as spam and the system will automatically remember your action. The same or similar next review will be marked as spam automatically. If you approve a spam review, the system will remove it from the database. This is how learning happens. A well-trained SPAM protection system can replace your moderator.

In addition, there is support for Akismet .

Moderation Panel reviews

Unlike Shoppilot and Mneniya.Pro, reviews of Cackle Reviews are moderated by you yourself. Any review can be approved, marked as spam, delete, edit (flaws, advantages, comment - everything except the rating).

Moderation takes place in Real-time mode with Tray and sound notifications. There are group operations, search for reviews by the author, IP, everything on the page, a ban on time with the cause, warnings, information about the browser and other features.

Shoppilot

Service Shoppilot began as a system for collecting feedback on online stores. Later the product reviews widget was made. Registration is closed, by invitation only - link to registration . Unfortunately, due to closed registration, a more detailed review could not be done.

Main advantages:

Evaluation by several criteria

As far as I understand from their documentation, the criteria are set by the site owner and for each section they may be different.

Term of use

In addition to the standard “Dignity”, “Disadvantages” and “Comment” fields, there is an additional “Duration of Use” field with values:

• less than a month;
• about six months;
• more than a year.

Mneniya.Pro

Mneniya.Pro is a well-advertised system with several large customers, for example, Garmin. Registration by invitation is a link to registration . Similarly, due to closed registration, it is not possible to make a more detailed review.

Feedback form

The system has a massive form of writing reviews, with several standard fields.


Of the minuses, I would single out the lack of automatic indexing in search engines, the absence of micro-markers rating, the absence of plug-ins for CMS.

Thank you for your attention and have a good weekend!

UPDATE: The table of opportunities is updated in the aftermath of providing information from a representative of the service Mneniya.Pro.

PS: In conclusion, to complete the picture, a small survey: