According to the poll held on the aheadWorks Facebook page the most asked-for extension this week is Product Questions.

Starting from today till November 06, 2011 you can get all new Product Questions 20% OFF!

Updated Extensions

Encourage your customers to interact with you and use a professional approach to handle their product-related questions with the Product Questions extension. Today we’d like to release version 1.4.2 with the following new features: Product Questions tab is added on the Product Information page ‘Back to the product page’ link is added on the product questions page The following bugs have been fixed in Product Questions v.1.4.2: ‘Do you find this question helpful? Yes/No’ string is visible if a customer voted Broken ‘Sign up’ and ‘Login’ links on the Product Questions page Missing strings to FR and DE locale are added Incorrect link to admin area in notifications Incorrect Reply-To in notifications repaired Date time in PQ backend grid depends on interface locale Try the extension demo on the Product Questions Magento extension page.

If you are running a Magento store then you know how much content enhances the credibility of your store. The Advanced Reviews module enlarges the functionality of a native Magento solution, encourages customers to submit product reviews thus making e-commerce site owners benefit from user-generated content. The following bugs have been fixed in Advanced Reviews v.2.1: Filter by pros and cons works incorrectly Incorrect code for long date type Helpfulness link is displayed after voting Helpfulness link is displayed for guests if the option ‘Guests can’t rate helpfulness’ turned to ‘Yes’ Find more information about this Magento module on the Advanced Reviews page.

Today we released the 2.0 version of this Magento extension with a bulk of new features implemented:

• Spam protection
  Now you shouldn’t worry about spam in your reviews as the spam protection has been added to the “Write Your Own Review” form as well as to the Abuse and Helpfulness links.
• Order status for posting reviews
  You can specify order’s status to allow customers to post reviews if “Only those who bought the product can review it” is enabled.



• Reviews management via AJAX in frontend
  No additional page reloads are required. All your site visitors’ actions – reviews sorting, filtering, etc. – are performed via AJAX.
• Additional variables for default email template
  New variables are available for usage in your templates – nickname, product name, review text, review id, and review URL. Make your notifications more personal and informative.
• Reviews summary block with reviews statistic
  A quantitative and percentage analysis of the product ratings results ca be represented in a reviews statistic block in the frontend.



• RSS feed for reviews
  This new ability allows you and your site visitors to follow new reviews easily, comfortably, and efficiently.
• SEO-friendly
  The URLs to reviews pages have become more SEO-friendly. Moreover, there is more information in the review page title since the 2.0 version.

The following bugs have been fixed in Advanced Reviews v.2.0:

• CSS problems
• Pros and Cons can’t be disabled
• Multiple abuse reports by one user
• Posting review without actually buying the product
• Incorrect formatting in email templates
• Incorrect processing of reviews shared to multiple store views
• Creating 2 tickets in HDU for 1 review
• Links to reviews disappear if AR is disabled
• Pros&Cons disappeared from Write Your Own Review form if rating is disabled

Please find the extension demo on the Advanced Reviews page.

Now you can enrich your Product pages content with as many automatically displayed customer reviews as you want. The additional settings tab allows you to specify whether reviews with the highest rating, the latest or the most helpful ones will be shown.

Lack of the notifications when new reviews appear? The new version of Advanced Reviews implies the Help Desk Ultimate extension integration. Now every time a new review appears, the “Approve new review” ticket is created.

Moreover, with the ‘email notification of new reviews’ option you will receive notifications on your e-mail addresses. Thus you and your support team will be always in touch with the situation!

The following bugs have been fixed in Advanced Reviews v.1.1:

• “Show Ordering” option isn’t applied
• Incorrect total number of Pros and Cons in backend
• “See more/fever Pros/Cons” doesn’t work in IE6, IE7
• Incorrect Advanced Reviews disabling
• Advanced Reviews permissions missed in User Roles tree in backend
• Pros & Cons disappear from “Add a review” form when Rating disabled
• Underscore symbols in Social Share block in IE
• Invalid link to full review
• Deprecated Prototype notation
• Sorting doesn’t work for Pros and Cons on the Reviews form

Please visit the Advanced Reviews page to get more information about this aheadWorks extension.

Please visit the Advanced Reviews page to download the User Guide.

New Extensions

Minimum Advertised Price

The minimum price set by the manufacturer isn’t the bottom line any more! With the Minimum Advertised Price extension by aheadWorks you can sell products at the price you want.

Suppliers and retailers quite often stipulate the lowest price an item is allowed to be advertised at. But sometimes in-store prices can be really lower than allowed by the suppliers, but may not be displayed in online advertising. The Minimum Advertised Price extension helps you to escape the conflicts with the manufacturers and sell products at the prices you wish.

Minimum Advertised Price adds a special Check Price button instead of the product price. Having clicked this button, you add an item to the shopping cart, and only then the required price becomes visible.

Some features are:

• Fast loading AJAX layer
• Completely configurable layer text, images and buttons
• Configurable independent category/search/product page views
• Supports direct HTML embedding
• Fully customizable buttons and actions
• Ability to include any content that Magento CMS can involve
• 100% meets Minimum Advertised Price implementation standards
• Comes with detailed setup and configuration documentation

To learn the whole list of Minimum Advertised Price features please visit the extension page.

Advanced Reviews

A highly customizable Magento review system – Advanced Reviews by aheadWorks Co. – significantly improves the functionality and importance of this one of the most powerful online marketing tools.

According to Avenue A/Razorfish “Digital Consumer Behavior Study”, a review is #1 resource for product research. 86% of the consumers read online reviews before making purchasing decisions. The Advanced Reviews extension enlarges the functionality of native Magento solution.

Features:

• Possibility to restrict adding reviews to logged in customers only
• Review helpfulness rating
• Helpfulness voting can be restricted to logged in customers only
• Configurable ability to allow adding reviews to customers who bought the reviewed product only
• Social bookmarks bar for sharing reviews
• Report abuse feature – let your visitors inform you about inappropriate reviews
• Pros and Cons list configurable by admin, can be set up per store
• Customer-defined Pros and Cons
• “Would you recommend this product to a friend?” block

To observe the whole list of features please visit the Advanced Reviews page.

Updated Extensions

Please don’t forget to check complete changelog on the product pages.

Refer a Friend

The buzz marketing module Refer a Friend stimulates your customers to invite their friends to your shop. The customers, who referred a certain number of friends, get a % or flat rate discount. You can set any conditions and if they are met, the rule is triggered and the referrer is qualified for a discount. Both sides win – the customer gets a discount and the store owner gains more clients and more benefit.

Current version: 1.2.1
Upgrade: recommended from any previous versions
Upgrade cost: free for all versions
What’s new:
   + Discount usage limit
   + Limitation per rule execution
   * HTTPS links in secure customer areas
   * IE8 behavior
   * Invitation without being logged in
   * Storecode fix in some multistore configurations
   * Some strings weren’t available for translation
   * Under some circumstances, referrer could not add products to cart
   * Priority works more obviously

Find more information on the product page.

Z-Blocks

Z-Blocks extension allows creating unlimited number of static blocks and content items.

Current version: 2.0.3
Upgrade: recommended from any previous versions
Upgrade cost: free for all versions
What’s new:
   + ‘Show in subcategories’ block option added
   * ACL fix
   * Product with empty category page crash fix
   * SQLSTATE[42S02]: Base table or view not found: 1146 MySQL error fix
   * Product More Views page crash fix

To observe Z-Blocks features please visit the extension page.

AJAX Cart Pro

AJAX Cart Pro extension removes annoying page reloads on add to cart and delete from cart user actions. Items are added instantly with animation effects.

Current version: 1.4.5
Upgrade: recommended from any previous versions
Upgrade cost: free for all versions
What’s new:
   + Cross operation of “www.domain” and “domain” support
   + Default, blank and modern themes support
   + Easy custom configuration (custom.js)
   * More stable work
   * Out of stock products fixed
   * IE6 is not supported any more

To observe AJAX Cart Pro features please visit the extension page.

RSS Reader

RSS Reader is the software for organizing and displaying RSS feeds. This data exchange solution was thoroughly adapted by aheadWorks Co. for Magento-based stores. Now you can install RSS Reader onto your online store and display the news interesting for your visitors.

Current version: 1.2.0
Upgrade: recommended from any previous versions
Upgrade cost: free for all versions
What’s new:
   * Magento caching enabled fix

Find more information on the RSS Reader page.

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That was a brief review of our new and updated modules. We are always happy to get all kinds of feedback. If you need a new feature in our product – just let us know – it has good chances to be implemented.

Thank you for being with us and good luck to your business,
Sincerely yours,
aheadWorks Magento department

A lot of reputable companies conducted a series of researches to find out the customers’ attitude to reviews: according to Kudzu.com survey 86% of the customers are searching for reviews before making purchasing decisions and 90% of those who read reviews left by unknown consumers consider the comments to be trustworthy. But in spite of the large amount of statistical information proving the reviews usefulness, the fear of negative comment is one of the most serious barriers for store owners who are afraid to allow customers to add a review.

We consider negative comments quite valuable: 48% of those who read reviews are looking for what could be wrong with a product — warned is armed. People want to make sure that these shortcomings are not so essential for them and don’t really spoil the whole impression of the product. If customers don’t find negative reviews in your store, they will go to the other place and purchase there.

Negative comments reduce returns to the store. People may be misinformed about a product and after the purchase they become upset and return it. If they knew about the shortcomings earlier, they would approach to product choice more consciously.
The Advanced Reviews extension allows consumers to point out the advantages of the product as well as its shortcomings in the specified fields. Not everyone is a perfect writer, but everybody can tick the required properties of the product off. This opportunity creates more detailed and correct picture of the costumer’s opinion about the product. The Pros and Cons fields sum the review up and express the customer’s impression in few words. Consumers can select product properties from the list as well as add any others by themselves. It is also possible to sort comments by any Pros and Cons in Customer reviews page.

“Would you recommend this product to a friend?” field defines the level of how much the customer is satisfied with the purchase. The customer may select no Pros and Cons, may not enter any extraordinary comment but for somebody the answer to this question can mean much more than tumid words as no one would recommend bad things to a friend.

Those consumers who read reviews can express their opinion about this or that comment – they can either complain to the store administrator of some incorrect review in the “Inappropriate review? Report it” field or evaluate the helpfulness of the review answering “Yes” or “No” in the “Do you find this review to be helpful?” field.

Features:

• Possibility to restrict adding reviews to logged in customers only
• Review helpfulness rating
• Helpfulness voting can be restricted to logged in customers only
• Configurable ability to allow adding reviews to customers who bought the reviewed product only
• Social bookmarks bar for sharing reviews
• Report abuse feature – let your visitors inform you about inappropriate reviews
• Pros and Cons list configurable by admin, can be set up per store
• Customer-defined Pros and Cons
• “Would you recommend this product to a friend?” block
• “All my reviews” feature displaying all reviews of a logged in customer
• Sorting (both directions are applicable): by date, by average rating or by helpfulness
• Easy-to-use interface
• Easy 2-minutes installation
• Meets Magento programming practices for most versions and customizations compatibility

Product page: http://ecommerce.aheadworks.com/extensions/advanced-reviews.html