Managing Vendor Ratings

In a Multivendor X-Cart store, customers can give detailed categorized ratings of their orders to let other customers know about their experience. Because orders are tied to specific vendors, the order ratings provided by the customers are used to calculate vendor ratings. Basically, by rating their order, a customer rates the vendor from which the products in the order were sourced. The rating is done in the following categories:

• Item description (whether the item received is as described);
• Communication;
• (if applicable) Shipping Speed.

In each of the above named categories, the customer’s experience is specified as a rating of one to five stars. The rating info provided by different cutomers for a vendor is summed up, and the resulting rating summary is shown in the Customer area (provided that the store administrator has enabled the display of this kind of data to customers).

• Vendor Reviews: Multivendor-specific Configuration
• Vendor Ratings: Customer Experience
• Vendor Ratings: Multivendor Store Administrator Experience
• Vendor Reviews: Vendor Experience

Vendor Reviews: Multivendor-specific Configuration

In the section Appearance of the Multi-vendor settings page, the settings that require the attention of the store administrator are as follows:

• Base vendor rating on: This setting has effect on the way vendor ratings are formed.

  If it is set to “detailed categorized rating”, customers are allowed to rate their experience purchasing from vendors, and a vendor rating is formed of the star ratings provided by customers evaluating the purchase from the following viewpoints:

  • whether the item they received is as described;
  • whether the communication with the vendor was problem-free;
  • whether the shipping speed was fast enough.

    In case Multivendor addon is configured to use “Warehouse” mode, a vendor’s shipping speed may not be rated because in this mode the vendor is not responsible for the shipping of items to the buyer.

  If the setting “Base vendor rating on” is adjusted to “product rating”, a vendor rating is formed as a result of aggregation of ratings given by customers to the products of this vendor.

  The “Base vendor rating on” can be adjusted to “product rating” only if the Product Reviews addons is installed and enabled.

  We recommend using the “detailed categorized rating” option for tangible goods and the “product rating” option - for digital goods.

• Show vendor rating: This setting becomes available only if the Product Reviews addon is installed and enabled. The setting has effect on whether the rating of a vendor should be shown on the vendor page in the Customer area and in the vendor information block on the page listing the vendor’s products in the Customer area. If this setting is enabled, the vendor rating is shown and can be viewed by customers. If the setting is disabled, the rating is collected but not shown in the Customer area.

Vendor Ratings: Customer Experience

Customers can leave feedback about their experience purchasing items from a vendor by rating their order.

A customer can rate an order as soon as the fulfillment status of this order is switched to “Delivered”. If the change of order status to “Delivered” is done by the store staff, an email notification is sent to the customer inviting them to rate their order.

As an alternative, the customer can set the “Delivered” status for their order by themselves using the Confirm delivery button:

Once the delivery of an order has been confirmed by the customer, they are prompted to rate the order. The customer can choose to do it straight away, or rate the order later. In any case, the customer will be able to access the Rate order page at any time later (even after they have already rated the order) via the Rate order link on the order list:

The Rate order page looks similar to the following:

Vendor Ratings: Multivendor Store Administrator Experience

The store administrator can view and manage (edit or delete) vendor ratings via the Vendor ratings section (Users > Vendor ratings):

The filter at the top of the section can be used to filter/search for reviews by vendor profile, customer name or date range.

Also the store administrator can manage the email notification “Customer has rated the order” that is sent to a vendor.

More info on managing email notifications is available in the Managing Multi-vendor Email Notifications section of this manual.

Vendor Reviews: Vendor Experience

Vendors with appropriate permissions can view their own rating information in the section Order ratings (Orders > Order ratings):

If necessary, they can filter/search for specific ratings by customer name or date range. They cannot, however, edit or delete any ratings that have been provided by customers with regard to their orders.