Internet Entrepreneurs Blog

An important Review App feature is the ability to upload spreadsheet data to your website: listings, categories, and even input field choices. Yeah, we went a little nuts with the spreadsheet tools but they speed up the configuration process so much that we couldn’t resist.

Loading new listings via spreadsheet

On SeriousRunning.com we needed to transfer our ‘places to run’ data from an existing site into the Review App framework. Using a common spreadsheet format we simply exported the data from the old site, manipulated the columns in Excel, then loaded all 200+ listings into Review App. Total time to completion: less than 30 minutes.

SeriousRunning also uses data from Amazon.com’s affiliate program for running shoe listings and we were able to load a spreadsheet downloaded from the Amazon API into Review App as well. Sure beats typing hundreds of listings by hand

Editing Listings in Excel

Not only can you load new listings using the Review App spreadsheet tools but you can edit them as well. Just download your existing listings, make changes in Excel, then upload the file to Review App. Your changed listings will be updated and new listings will be added at the same time from the same file.

Loading/Editing Categories and Field Choices

Review App also makes it easy for you to quickly add or update categories and field choices using spreadsheet data. Import categories from your old website, create new categories using data you found online, or edit all your category names at once to make them more consistent - spreadsheet uploads make it simple! Field choices (the choices in your input forms’ drop down menus) work exactly the same way - simple. All our spreadsheet forms include simple step by step instructions: download the spreadsheet template, edit your data, upload to Review App. Done.

Some web software packages include spreadsheet data support as an ‘add-on’ (read: extra charge) but with Review App you get it all standard. It’s your data - upload and download it however you want!

We’ve spent a lot of time on this blog talking about search engine optimization and what it takes to improve search engine rankings so it seems appropriate to talk about some of the search engine friendly features included in Review App.

First, Review App makes it easy to create search engine friendly URLs for your page listings - just check the ‘Enable SEO URLs’ box and choose the field you’d like to use for your document name - and that’s it! All your listing URLs will be transformed from ‘item.php?c=1&i=2′ to something like ‘1/2/Restaurants/Famous-Daves.html’. For most situations your listings’ title field will be your best choice for the document name but with the ability to add hidden fields to your listings you can manually set the virtual document name to anything you like.

In addition to SEO-friendly listing URLs, Review App includes many features that will help improve your site’s search engine rankings. Custom lists and user contribution logs increase internal links and our category filters and tags add dozens of additional pages for the search engines to crawl. Within each section of your Review App site you can configure the page title and description fields plus you can quickly set overall meta keywords and description content with one simple form.

We’ve been steadily growing our own web businesses using these techniques - let Review App do the same for you!

One cool feature we included in Review App is the ability to search for listings based on a zip code radius. Users can enter a zip code and Review App will return listings located within a specified distance from the search zip code. Zip code search functions are typically reserved for complex, expensive web software but we decided zip code searches are too powerful and useful to leave out of Review App.

You can add a zip code field to your listings by selecting ‘US Zip Code’ from the ‘Field Type’ drop-down menu in the admin control panel. We’ve also included the necessary zip code data table with almost 80K postal codes so you don’t even need to purchase this data separately. On your category pages you’ll see a zip code search box that allows users to restrict search results to a given area.

We implemented a zip code search on singletracks.com several years ago and we even posted the pseudo-code for building your own zip code radius function on this blog. The singletracks zip code search function is fairly unique because our users don’t actually enter zip codes for trails (since most don’t know the actual zip code anyway). Users are simply asked to specify the city and state for new trail submissions and our software automatically looks up the appropriate zip based on the location information entered. Once a zip code has been associated with a given trail that trail will show up in zip code searches - for example, trails within 25 miles of 30030 (Decatur, GA). The zip code field in our trail data table is neither input or output but works behind the scenes to help mountain bikers find local trails.

Review App can provide the same functionality with the ability to keep listing field inputs and/or outputs hidden. Your users will love the ability to zero-in on applicable search results geographically while zip code and city filters can add yet another dimension to your natural search marketing strategy.

Picture this: You’re planning a vacation to Hilton Head Island, SC and you want to go to dinner at this seafood place you ate at years ago but can’t remember the name - you think it starts with an ‘S’. Wouldn’t it be great to search a restaurant review website for restaurants at Hilton Head and sort by the first letter of the name so you could view the ‘S’ restaurants all at once? With Review App you can.

Review Apps are different from forums, blogs, and wikis because they organize important information and reviews hierarchically rather than by date or broad subject (though you can use Review App to organize items this way as well). Once you’ve created your data fields and loaded some data, just use the powerful back-end interface to set up the fields you’d like your users to be able to filter and sort.

In our restaurant example, we’ll want to include a field for the city where the restaurant is located and the name of the restaurant (among other things). Now we’ll choose the ‘Filter’ checkbox next to the city field and then choose ‘Ascending’ in the sort drop down menu for the name field. We’ll also allow users to sort by city as well.

That’s it. Now when users navigate to our ‘South Carolina restaurants’ category or section they’ll see a list of all the South Carolina restaurant listings. The filter list will be automatically generated based on the cities saved in our restaurant listings and the column headings will become links that, when clicked, will re-sort the listings based on the column data. Keeping with our example, we’d click ‘Hilton Head’ in the city filter list, then click the restaurant name column heading to sort alphabetically. Scroll down to the restaurants starting with the letter ‘S’ and we found it - the Sea Shack!

Sorting and filtering capabilities are native in Review App meaning you’ll spend less time coding and more time building your review site! See sorts and filters in action at BBQRestaurantReviews.com!

As we’ve expanded some of our websites over the years we’ve found that we want each new section to work a little differently than the others. For example, on singletracks.com we added mountain bike gear reviews but we wanted to moderate new item submissions before they were visible on the site. Then we also added a trail map section, and in this case, we wanted to limit access to the maps to subscribers only. These two sections were in addition to our trail section where we wanted to limit new trail, review, and photo submissions to registered members only. Since the permission rules on singletracks varied section by section, we decided to make Review App to be as flexible as possible when it comes to adding new site features and setting permissions.

That’s why we built section-level permissions into Review App. Each listing section has its own set of permissions and you can even adjust the permissions on reviews and photos within the section (see screen shot below). You can even choose to moderate new posts individually and have an email notification sent to one of your admin users for processing. Review App also gives your members (if you so choose) the power to edit their posts once they have been submitted - a feature we added to our own sites after our members demanded it.

Section level permissions can be changed at any time once your site is live so you can make adjustments on the fly (in case, for example, your site is suddenly bombarded with spam bot posts). Want use Review App as a content management system (CMS) for just one of your sections? No problem - just set the “Who can add listings” permissions to “Admin users only.” The way you configure your sections is up to you and there’s no pressure - you can always change permissions later.

I wrote last week about the power of Top 10 lists and how they’re a great form of word of mouth and search engine marketing. Today I’d like to highlight one of the features included in Review App along the same lines: Custom lists. With Review App you can create lists for your users to keep track of virtually anything: campground wishlists, favorite running shoes, BBQ restaurants visited, bike trails ridden, etc. You name the list, choose the listing section your list applies to, and you’re done - it’s that easy with Review App!

Lists can serve several purposes on a Review App site. First, lists give your members a fun way to interact and collect items on your website. If you don’t think this is a powerful motivation in itself, just take a look at all the popular Facebook applications out there that are little more than favorite or collection lists. One of the most popular Facebook applications, “Where I’ve been” allows users to create a list of countries they’ve visited or want to visit. With Review App you can have a similar list up and running on your site in just seconds. Members enjoy collecting and communicating their personalities through their “lists” and Review App custom lists give you endless flexibility in creating lists your users will love to keep.

Custom lists can also be great at motivating your members to submit even more content (listings) to your site. Say a member wants to add Dusty’s BBQ to their list of “BBQ I’ve eaten.” If Dusty’s isn’t listed on your site yet, the user will be motivated to first add a listing for Dusty’s so they can add it to their “BBQ I’ve eaten” list. Sweet.

Finally, custom lists expand the number of internal links on your site and help improve search engine visibility. Keeping with the BBQ example, if 10 people have eaten at Dusty’s, your site will have at least 10 links pointing to the Dusty’s listing - and you didn’t have to add a single line of HTML! The individual user lists are unique content pages as well which increases your indexed page count - more gold!

Custom lists are a great feature to add to any website and Review App makes it simple to add as many lists to your site as you like. Caution: Review App custom lists may be addictive

One cool feature we included in Review App is the ability to add pre-built categories to organize your listings. Say, for example, your website is about places to bungee jump around the world. Instead of typing in a list of world countries or searching online for a list to load via an Excel spreadsheet, just click on the ‘Countries’ pre-built category link and voila - all the world countries will be added to your site. Review App includes other pre-built category lists including US States and the top 100 US metro areas with more lists on the way. If you have a suggestion for a pre-built category list, let us know - we’ll include it in the next revision of Review App!

The best part about adding pre-built categories is that once they’re added you can edit and delete them just as if you had added the categories manually yourself. You can even place your pre-built category list as a subcategory to any of your existing categories. So, for example, if you have categories for the US, Canada, and Mexico you can plop the US States category list under the US category leaving Canada and Mexico as top-level categories. Simple, huh?

We’ve built enough websites ourselves to appreciate the time pre-built categories will save when setting up a new consumer review website - we think you’ll appreciate it as well.

After several months of coding and testing, Review App is finally on the scene with a fresh new homepage! We’ve been quietly testing a few sites running on the Review App platform over the past month or so and we’re excited to share what we’ve accomplished. Some highlights from our test sites:

• Serious Running: 135 pairs of running shoes, 249 places to run, and 55 races - and 14 reviews were already posted in the first month!
• fresh BIBLE: almost 70 registered users and hundreds of favorites have been recorded in the past month. fresh BIBLE holds the current record for the number of listings on a Review App: over 30,000 records and running smoothly!
• BBQ Restaurant Reviews: reviews and photos of some of the best barbecue restaurants in the country. You can almost smell the mesquite smoking on this site

We’re ready to help you launch your Review App too - contact us to discuss your plans!