Star Rate Your WordPress Posts

and your FeedBurner feed!

After a long nearly fruitless search, I’ve uncovered a really great widget that you can put on your Blogger Typepad or WordPress blog. I’ve also found a neat little Java based Star Rating Script that can be placed on any web site.

A few points about Outbrain’s excellent Star Rating Widget

* No registration required
* Installation is super-easy… we adjust the widget’s design to your blog’s look&feel automatically
* It’s absolutely FREE

The Outbrain widget currently supports the following blog platforms:

* Blogger.com blogs are supported with a 1-click install (blogs using the “classic” template - use these instructions)

* TypePad blogs are also supported with a 1-click install.

* WordPress *installed* blogs are supported via a plugin that’s available here.

You can also get star ratings on your FeedBurner feeds

Enabling the Outbrain’s FeedFlare is super-easy. Simply follow these steps:

1. Login to your FeedBurner account.
2. Click on the ‘Optimize’ tab, and select the ‘FeedFlare’ option.
3. Scroll down to the section called “Personal FeedFlare” and paste the following URL into the text box: http://widgets.outbrain.com/FeedFlareUnit.xml
4. Click on the “Add New Flare” button, and check the ‘[x] feed’ check box.
5. IMPORTANT: Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button at the bottom of the page.

You can subscribe to my feed to see an example of plugin in action. You can also rate this post using the star rating widget plugin at the bottom of this post.

Things to keep in mind;

o After PETCO added reviews online, top-rated products were converting at a 49% higher clip; shoppers using the ratings section of the site for navigation spent 63% more than shoppers using other navigation column hotlinks; and shoppers who read reviews and shopped via ratings navigational hotlinks had an average order size 40% higher than the average shopper.

o The president of AWinestore.com told us that adding customer reviews was one of the critical factors that helped his ecommerce sales leap 80% in a single year. (The industry average is 20% growth.)

o Libida.com, an ecommerce site for women, considers reviews so critical to conversions that they insert fliers into all fulfillment packages offering $25 off their next order for all reviewers (even negative ones)

Other Star rating scripts include;

• Review-Script.com. The Amazon-style system allows users to rank a product or service on a scale of 1-5 stars and make comments (reviews) related to the product for other users to read. Email notification allows the administrator to approve comments before adding them to the website. Cost for licensing: $125 USD one-time.
• Rating System. This seems to be the more feature-rich of the two. Different types of ratings can be combined into one rating box. It offers an RSS feed and you can manage, modify and delete your customer ratings and reviews. Cost for licensing: Free up up to a maximum daily usage of 500 impressions. Above that, plans start at $10 per month.
• Bazaarvoice. Bazzarvoice is another popular ratings/review system, but starting at $2,000 per month, may be a bit pricey for smaller ecommerce sites.
• PowerReviews. While the services mentioned above charge a fee for use of their software, PowerReviews takes a different approach. They give merchants the ability to add reviews to their sites at no charge. The caveat is that the company reserves the right to aggregate review data to present on their own site, Buzzillions.

The last Start Rating script is a java script based utility called JS-Kit Ratings

Overview

JS-Kit’s Ratings service lets your visitors rate your merchandise items, services, pictures, blog entries, or any other objects on your site.

Benefits for visitors:

* express opinions quickly and easily
* intuitive, graphical view of community opinion
* ability to change one’s personal rating at any time
* seeing how other people rate the components of your site

Rate It With JS-Kit!!

So there you have it!

Tags: Blogger, community opinion, Featured, feed, Feedburner, Google, outbrain, post, star rating. widget, Typepad, visitors rate, Web 2.0, wordpress, wp