Visual Recommend 1.1.0 Review - Overall Rating: 4 ½ out of 5 Stars
This is a trimmed down Full Review of Visual Recommend which includes images and more review notes and that full review is being made available to the Bernard by the end of this week.
VISUAL RECOMMEND REVIEW v 1.1.0
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In the era of massive competition for eyeballs, one of the most important features that is a must to add to a content rich site is a Viral Recommend or Invite Friend feature, especially a social networking site that depends on user-created content or articles and stories submitted by citizen editors to perfect a single article, and increase the article content for greater visibility and peer review.
For Joomla, there have been a few attempts at providing an easy to Invite or recommend to friends solution, and while some of them will do in a pinch, none have come even close to what Bernard Gilley has come up with, especially with his introduction of v 1.1.0 of Visual Recommend Viral marketing and viral advertising referral extension.
INSTALLATION & CONFIG SETUP - 5 out of 5 Stars
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Visual Recommend is easy to install, and once you set it up, it is invaluable at assisting site developers with viral marketing techniques that can and will produce rapid increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses but with positive results.
The increase in popularity of a site can often be through word-of-mouth delivery of recommends for site content and with the addition of Visual Recommend Component to your Joomla site, the spread of your content can be enhanced online and you can harness the social networking effect of the Internet through friend to friend recommendations, and this can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly.
I have been creating a number of social networking sites these past few months, and recently introduced a Casual GamingCenter Solution to one of my sites, and by installing the latest version of Visual Recommend, I have already been able to see a definite increase in site visitors and content recommendations by members encouraging their contacts to view the casual game content on my site. By implementing a stealth marketing campaign with VR I have already increased the visibility of the 770 Casual Games that I offer to site members and visitors and it's only been 3 days since I added everything. Without VR the task would be a challenge.
FEATURES & SUPPORT for VR v1.1.0 – 4.5 out of 5 Stars
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From the feature list above, you will see there is a huge list of features included in this invaluable Joomla extension. And the developer (Bernard Gilley of Visualclinic.fr) has put some thought and a more than a usable set of initial features into VR, especially for a v 1.1.0 and donation type extension.
The Back-end Control Panel and setup features and configuration are simple to use, and are well designed. The General settings are easy to configure, and you can set the maximum set of email recommends from 1 to 10 if you want. You can set features such as visitors or only Registered users; the ability to have a user custom message; popup window width and height settings; and the ability to add Google Adsense ads. You can also set the Section of your site to display or not display the Recommend articles… feature. And you can set the Mail settings; Mail Subject; Mail Message Body and use the Available tags to customize the message body: {sender_name},{friend_name},{sitename}{title_content_url}{custom_field_by_user}.
There are some things that can definitely be improved with VR, such as the padding and layout of the recommend form (popup window), and I have noticed that I get some stray nrn characters in text messages. But since this is just the first release update at v1.1.0, I expect that Bernard will be making steady improvements to this already fantastic extension. My wish is for Plaxo Address features such as the one that is used in AJAX PlaxoInvite CB Plugin, where the person that is recommending can import users' email from their mail accounts (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo mail, Outlook or Outlook Express etc) using Plaxo's free Address Book Access Widget. If this capability was added, plus cool buttons that you could choose or ad in the back-end to enhance the visibility of the Recommend article... link as a button instead of just text, this would be a dream come true marketing assistant and member reward for assistance extension.
REWARDS YOUR SITE MEMBERS FOR THEIR RECOMMENDS
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And to help you reward your site members for their recommends, and positive referral rates, Bernard has included a statistics tracking features to keep you informed on who is assisting you with your article and content marketing. There is a feature that allows you to set the Awards (number of points) for registered users only to keep track of the Points by sent mail, and the Points on the number of positive recommends. This will enable you to track your members article recommends and reward them for assisting you in your marketing efforts.
As an exercise I placed Recommend articles... link on some of my new articles and reviews of new casual Games, and within hours there were 48 unique visitors recommending the site articles to others using the VR’s Recommend articles... link. And I believe that My site will gain more recommends when I add the new button I believe I will get an above average recommendation rate of members, however, when new casual games are reviewed, they are definitely an item that many people will recommend to friends, especially if they are fun to play.
Here's a conservative prediction of what putting the Visual Recommend articles link on a site might do for you.
* Assuming a 5% click-through-rate and referral rate using a Recommend articles link,
* Assuming that 50% of the recommendation recipients click-through to see the site,
* Your site could experience a traffic increase of 2.5% per month from this method.
By offering incentives to your members, the number might increase significantly.
And you might want to consider making a standard line of Visible text and/or a Reward encouragement icon (image) and some intro text at the bottom of each article above the Recommend article... link to encourage readers to click the Recommend article... link to send it to friends, because it gives the visitor something to do after they finishing reading.
SUPPORT and FEEDBACK
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I recently asked some questions of the developer, and Bernard has been fantastic in his responses, even though I try my best not to ask him unless I really need the help figuring something out. After asking a list of 5 questions a day ago, Bernard gave me the answers I needed right away, and now I can add an attractive and compelling colored button to match my templates Add Comment button to increase the visibility of the Recommend article... feature that sits just below my content articles, and this will definitely help increase the click through rates for those might consider recommending my article content pages to their friends.
NEW SUPPORT - FEEDBACK FORUMS ON VISUALCLINIC.FR
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And now that Bernard has implemented a his new Forums at Visualclinic.fr, users of VR will be able to share ideas and get feedback on how to improve VR, and provide each other with support, which will free up Bernard to focus on new features. NOTE!) - I will post the full review later this week on the VC forums.
How well does the Visual Recommend system work?
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As far as features, it is the best solution available!!!
As far as what it will do for you, I think a lot depends upon your site. Do you have good content that impresses people? If so, a Recommend articles… link makes it easy for visitors to tell their friends. You can probably expect that if you have the VR link on our site for several months and the effect will probably be very noticeable. I have found that the placement of the link will make a big difference in the amount of recommendations you’ll get. Visual Recommend makes it very simple, with just one form, to recommend the site to our potential readers, new visitors and customers. I plan to implement a prize offer to encourage my site readers to recommend articles to friends.
Who wouldn’t want an Ipod, just for their recommendation?
On a word of caution! Some people find Recommend features and especially viral tools distracting and annoying. So if you experience some comments back from site visitors that they feel the recommendation emails they received were a bit 'in your face' in terms of invading their email space, then you might want to make sure you are being careful as to the use of the VR feature. This is where Common Sense Needs to Be More Common! This tool is a great addition for any site owner, but don't abuse it. Learn how to use it properly and it will be invaluable for you and your site.
In conclusion, by adding Visual Recommend capabilities to your site(s) you'll get A HIGHER referral rate using their Recommend articles… link, rather than any other Invite extension, or nothing at all, and I believe if you opt for adding an attractive Recommend Articles button, YOUR Referral RATE will be HIGHER yet, especially if you have a strong content site, your traffic will probably see some serious growth over time.
I highly RECOMMEND VR from Visualclinic.fr!!!
RandyMac
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