Users’ feedback is a crucial item for improving site’ experience and enhancing the visibility of the site’s activity. Improving user experience is a challenge since not everyone is keen on writing emails, or leaving lengthy reviews. This especially refers to pages which do not have review/contact info placed on clearly visible strategic places on the site. On the other hand, the more evaluations a site’s experience, post, or product has, the more likely it is to attract more customers.

By default, any website owner who cares about maintaining customers, and obtaining more users, must care about their users’ satisfaction.

WordPress has developed a plugin for this purpose called Yasr – Yet Another Starts Rating.

What is Yasr

Yasr – Yet Another Stars Rating is a plugin developed to add SEO-friendly users’ reviews to website posts, pages, and CPT. An additional plus is a fact that it does not affect the speed of the site.

It was developed about five years ago, and it has since been upgraded, overhauled and improved, based on the users’ reviews and feedback.

All news related to the plugin can be found on the official site.

Features

The plugin enables the users the ability to vote, and the admin configures it by pasting the shortcode where they want the stars to appear.

In case that the site already has the new Gutenberg editor, the admin simply clicks on the “+” icon to add a block and searches for Yasr Visitor Votes. This also applies to Yasr Overall Rating. Yasr has a list of supported caching plugins that are available here.

The plugin is configured in the following aspects

General Settings

The admin chooses auto-insert options – whether they want to use it, it the ratings refer to overall/author rating or visitor votes (or both) if it will be displayed before/after a post, the size of the stars. It is also possible to exclude pages.

There is also an option to show overall rating in archive page. If this option is enabled, “Overall Rating” will be shown not only in the single article or page but also in pages like Home Page, category pages or archives. Custom text can also be inserted to show before/after stars.

Stats for visitor votes can be displayed, and the admin also can choose whether anybody or only logged in users can vote.

Rich snippet options are configured here – whether to use review rating or aggregate rating. The admin also selects the default item type for all posts or pages – product, place, recipe, or blog posting. In the case of the blog posting, even for just one post or page, it is necessary to input publisher name, and logo Url. The demo page for Overall Rating and Visitor Rating is available here, and the demo page for Rankings is available here.

Multi Sets

Multi Sets allow inserting a rate for each aspect about the product / local business/anything that is being reviewed. It is possible to create up to 99 different Multi Set and each one can contain up to 9 different fields. Once it is saved, the rates can be inserted while typing the article in the box below the editor. There is also the option to show average. If no is selected, the “Average” row will not be displayed. This can be overridden in the single multi set by using the parameter “show_average”. The demo page for Multi Sets is available here.

Aspect and Styles

Here the admin adjusts the style options – starts set, or upload custom icons, color scheme, and Custom CSS styles. CSS styles can be written to override the default ones; however, the box provided for this input should be left blank in case the person configuring the plugin isn’t sure in what they are doing.

How Does It Work

In addition to the Free package, the plugin is also available in Pro, and Platinum packages.

Free Package comes with unlimited votes, ratings, multi-criteria rating, and rich snippet support.

Pro package can be bought for 1, 5 or an unlimited number of sites, and it costs 4.99$ per month. In addition to free features (listed above), it comes with 20+ ready to use themes, an option to upload your theme and dedicate forum support.

Platinum package has all features listed in free and pro package, with the addition of Skype support and direct email support. It is billed annually, and costs 9.99$ per month.

Costs, caveats, etc.

Any site owner who cares about improving the user experience with their website must be aware that the only way to do this is to gather data about user satisfaction. There is no better and simpler way than by simple star rating. Stats such as this one promote familiarity and loyalty, which lead to more customers and improved overall experience.

For new users, it might be wise to try the free version before committing to buying Pro or Premium packages.