How to set up a review system in your course platform

It's a no-brainer that reviews are wonderful parts of businesses. This is why OnlineCourseHost has introduced a review system into the platform, to help both course creators and students connect better and ensure quality feedback.

Whether you're looking to leave feedback for a course you've completed or read reviews to make informed decisions, our review system is designed to be intuitive and valuable for every client, and student.

To set up your review system, login to your platform => click Admin => General Settings => scroll down to Reviews => and click Manage Reviews.

On the next page, you will be shown a list of your courses, and the number of reviews (both pending and approved) that have been sent in by your students, per course.

Admin Review Settings

For a website with no prior reviews, here is the screen you will get, so you need to click Settings to set up your review system.

On the next page after clicking Settings, you can set up your Review Pop-up Message, and Message After Review.

Review Pop-up Message: This is the message that your students will get when they are about to leave a review.

Message: This is a prompt to your students to leave reviews for you. This box is editable.
Placeholder Text: This is more like a text to cajole your students to leave reviews, and it is also editable.
Review Text Box: This is a default message that appears inside the review box, and it is also editable.

Note: You can decide to make the review text optional, by ticking the "Make the review text optional" box. This way, students can submit a review by rating alone, without writing a text.

While filling out in this information, you can preview the settings you are making or have made by the side. Afterward, click Save.

Message After Review: This is the message that your students will get after they have submitted their reviews.

After filling in the pop-up messages, scroll down the screen to fill in the message and caption boxes for the after review messages. This also has a Preview page by the side.

Afterward, scroll up the page, and click Save.

Enable/Disable Reviews

After updating your review settings, go back to the initial review page, and enable reviews for all your courses by clicking the box before each course.

Clicking the Enable All button will enable reviews for all the courses in your platform, and the Disable All button will disable reviews for all the courses on the platform.

On this same page, you can also see the total number of reviews (pending and approved) you have per course, and the ratings that have been given to each course.

How do I review a course?

After all this has been set up, you can then go to your courses to leave a review, and see the interface as a student. To leave a review, login to your platform => click Courses => View Course.

Your reviews will be shown to students in three different sections of your course page: the top menu of your course sales page, before the description on your course sales page, and inside your course player (at the top and underneath each lesson).

Please note that to leave a review, the rating stars button is compulsory, so the "Submit Review" button will be not be enabled if the rating star has not been selected. Also, you can choose to click the "I will do it later" button if you do not want to leave a review yet.

Course Reviews List screen

After your students have left you reviews, you will need to approve or disapprove the reviews before they can be shown to other students on your course sales page.

To do this, login to your platform => click Admin => General Settings => scroll down to Reviews => Set Up Reviews => click Reviews in front of each course.

Note: Courses with pending reviews will display the number of pending reviews on the course title.

On the next page, you will get a list of all the reviews you have gotten on your course, both approved and unapproved ones.

The Approve All button will approve all the reviews on the page, but to approve one review at a time, you need to click the Approved button in front of each review.

The Edit button will take you to a page where you can answer the review:

The Review Text box displays the current review from your student, which you can edit as a course creator. However, we recommend that you only use this box to correct simple grammatical errors, not change the review entirely.
The Write Answer box displays the current answer to the review and the admin can edit/add a reply to the review.

The Status is where you can approve/unapprove a review.
The Save button saves your all your changes on that screen.

Manage Reviews Screen

To manage your reviews without going to the Admin dashboard, login to your website => click Courses => Edit Course => Landing Page => and scroll down to Manage Reviews.

The three buttons under this screen have different functions. When clicked:

The Hide the reviews from the course page button will hide the reviews screen from every area it once showed.
The Stop collecting reviews button will display all the reviews that have been received so far, but students will no longer be prompted to leave a review.

The Minimum number of reviews before displaying the reviews section filter will hide the total reviews and stars collected on a course, if the minimum that has been set up is more than the total reviews collected.

Notes

Disabling and enabling the review system for a course will need the browser to refresh before it can take effect.
A user can only add one review to a course. If the user has already submitted a review, the user can review the course again, but the old review will be overwritten by the new review sent in.
The total reviews, overall ratings, and number of pending reviews are updated every day through a batch job that runs by 9 am GMT. Therefore, inconsistent ratings, total reviews, etc., will be re-calculated daily.

For cloned courses, reviews received on original courses will not be displayed on the cloned versions.
Your students get a pop-up to review your course when they proceed to the last lesson in every section of your course, if they have not reviewed the course yet. This means they will receive three pop-ups if your course is divided into three sections.
Minimum number of reviews: When enabled, this is the total number of reviews a course should receive before reviews and course rating are displayed on the Course Sales page. The minimum number of reviews required before displaying the reviews on the course sales page can be set per course at the Edit Course Landing Page.