Looking for a way to add reviews to your website? Or maybe you're wondering how to make a review website of your own? Whether you are trying to build a review website yourself or you are adding a reviews section to your website, Formidable has all the flexibility you need to make it happen!
In this tutorial, we'll show you how to use Formidable Forms to create a review page. Sure, you can do this with one of the many standard customer review plugins available. But since collecting and displaying reviews revolves around website forms, why not skip the extra plugin and just use a form plugin like Formidable?
Before showing you how powerful Formidable can be for customer reviews, let's look at the entire world of reviews under a microscope.
The power of customer reviews
Customer reviews have become a giant part of the online buyer's journey. One recent report stated that 88% of customers say online reviews influence their purchasing decisions.
This means that business owners large and small can gain huge advantage against their competitors just by collecting positive customer reviews for social proof.
Reviews are essentially a kind of user-submitted content. This kind of content is a powerful addition to any website - WordPress site or otherwise. Unless your WordPress theme allows customers to leave reviews by default, you'll need another solution.
Why you shouldn't use a WP customer reviews plugin
As mentioned above, a dedicated WordPress customer reviews plugin is an option. But before searching for one of those, take a look at your plugin directory. How many plugins do you have? Can you even remember what they all do?
Web expert Brad Smith asks the question, "How many WordPress plugins is too many?" Turns out there are some very good reasons to keep your plugin directory clean. A bloated plugin directory can cause:
- Decreased Site Speed
- Security Vulnerabilities
- Reliability Issues & Site Crashes
- Difficulty Managing Your Site
WordPress experts Kissmetrics on the power of site-speed.
Carefully considering the above is critical to success. It doesn't matter how well curated your customer reviews are if your website crashes due to a bloated plugin directory. One solid form plugin can replace several other plugins, going a long way towards solving the above issues.
Harness the power of reviews: two methods
By now we must be in agreement: customer reviews are powerful. So how do you plan to use them to your advantage? There are two main methods:
- Adding a reviews section to your website
- Building a dedicated review website
If you are a small business owner, maybe all you want is to add reviews to your website. The good news: Formidable can help you do that.
Now people are learning they can create a review website as a standalone. This kind of site curates reviews about specific products, locations, and experiences. Again, good news! Formidable can help you do that.
Luckily, the overall approach is the same no matter which method you are developing. To the end-user, writing a review is as simple as leaving a comment. Keep reading to learn how Formidable can turn your website into a review curating machine.
Displaying reviews on your website
Whether you want to build a review website to stand alone, or are interested in simply adding a reviews section to your website, there are a few basic steps involved:
- Create a Form with Star Ratings
- Build a Review Listing Page
- Add a Widget to Display Reviews
To properly display and collect reviews on your site, you'll need the pro version of Formidable. This is needed to add a Star Rating field and access the Views feature.
1. Create a form with star ratings
The first thing you'll need to do is to create a new Review form. You will need to include the following three fields: Your Name (text field), Your Review (paragraph), and a Star Rating field. You may want to mark all these fields Required as well.
Before moving to the next step, try submitting a few sample reviews through your newly created form. To do this, click on the Form Entries tab and input your sample reviews. This can also be done anywhere you choose to display the form on your site.
2. Create a review listing page
Next, you'll need to create a review listing page. This is a dedicated page where you can display customer or product reviews.
In your WordPress admin, go to Pages and click Add New to create your review listing page. After that, go to Formidable → Views section. Once there, select Add New.
Give the new View a title and a description for reference if you would like. Select your review form from the Use Entries from Form drop-down. Make sure to select All Entries for the Display Format.
Add your HTML into the Before Content, Content, or After Content boxes. In this case, you would want to add the field id's for Your Name, Your Review, and another field to display the corresponding Star Rating for each review.
To display the star ratings properly, use this shortcode: [x html=1] and replace x with the Star Rating field ID. Now that you've done that, you can finally save your newly created View.
All that's left is to insert the View on the review listings page using the shortcode found on the Views menu. You can also insert the View automatically using the Advanced Settings at the bottom of the View.
3. Create a random review widget
Creating a random review widget is actually easier than you might think. The process is very similar to the above except for a few key differences. To get started, create a new View, only this time, select Single Entry for the Display Format.
Then, just as before, add your HTML into the Before Content, Content, and After Content boxes by adding the correct field ID's.
In the Advanced Settings at the bottom of the View, set the Order to Random so that a different review is generated each time the widget is loaded. After that, you can save your View.
The last step is to copy the shortcode for your View, i.e. There are no views with that ID and then click Appearance in your WordPress menu. From there, go to the Widgets section and drag a Text widget into your sidebar. Insert your shortcode into the text widget and save.
Voila! Now every time the page is loaded, a randomly chosen review will load as well.
There you have it - who knew adding reviews to your website could be so easy? With a form plugin like Formidable, there's no need for anything else.
If you aren't using Formidable yet, don't miss out! With all the other features that make this plugin shine, it's clear that Formidable Forms can help you build an amazing WordPress website no matter what your goals.
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