Review data can be captured for your locations and displayed in the locator. This article discusses the options for how reviews can be added to MetaLocator and how they can be displayed.
Reviews stored in MetaLocator do not need to be displayed on the locator, they can be kept private in the control panel.
Collecting Reviews
Reviews can be imported in bulk or collected directly from visitors. Reviews can also be imported from Yext. To collect reviews from your users, you can display a “Leave a review” link on your locator as shown below:
We updated the below example to use the text “Leave a review” and also to display as a small, secondary color button.
Once the user clicks the Leave a review link, they are presented with a form which captures the review. The form requests name, email, rating and comments.
Upon completion, the reviews are saved in an unpublished state in the back-end under Reviews. There they can be published, ignored or edited as required.
To publish a review, click the published toggle.
Once published, the review will count toward the location’s rating, and it can be displayed in the results.
Displaying Reviews
MetaLocator can display a summary of a location’s reviews in the results. This is optional, meaning you can collect reviews without displaying them. You can also choose to display only certain reviews by managing the published state of the review described above.
To display reviews, add the Review Summary field to the results list as shown below
Review Display Options
Reviews can be displayed in a few different ways. In summary forms, or the full content of the reviews. For performance reasons, the full review contents can only be displayed in the Details Pane.
In the below example, we customized the Review Summary to use our Danger color class by updating the Styles setting as shown bellow.
As shown above, the Review Summary displays a summary of reviews in a compact format using the “Stars” template.
The Review Details template includes progress bars for each rating, a star and numerical display in a compact format:
When added to the List group of settings, the Review Details template does not display the progress bars. This is intentional and for performance reasons. Instead the following display is output:
The Review List field can display individual reviews in a list format. Reviewer personal information is anonymized by replacing parts of the email address with asterisks and removing last names.
The Review List field can only be added to the Details Pane as shown below:
The Review List field includes a few options. Review Limit controls the number of reviews displayed.
The Rating Filter controls which ratings and below are excluded. For example, a Rating Filter value of 3 will ensure that only 4 and 5 star reviews are displayed.
Review Notifications (Enterprise Only)
When reviews are submitted a notification can be delivered to the administrator, the location contact or both. To enable this feature, set Enable Review Notifications to Yes, and choose recipients as shown:
The notification contains the body of the review and a link to publish or unpublish the review. This allows your location contacts to manage which reviews are publicly displayed on their profile. To edit the contents of the email, update the Review Notification Email Body Template under Review Settings as show above.
Review notifications can be a great place to let your users know if you are ranking them in the locator based on their rating. The dealer rating is calculated not only using reviews, but also average response time, average rating, any ignored leads and total leads. Letting dealers know that their responsiveness and customer satisfaction in this locator can impact their visibility is an important step in optimizing your dealer network.