Before the holidays we had an open house at our office. During the event we invited our attendees to tell us how HomeStars has helped and changed their businesses, as well as how they deal with bad reviews, when they happen. From landscapers and electricians to appliance repair and self storage, here’s what they had to say:
Want to showcase your HomeStars reviews on your Facebook page? There is a way to embed your reviews right into a tab on your Facebook page like in the photo below.
Want to know how? There’s a bit of complexity, but if you walk your way through it slowly, it’s not that tough. Follow the steps below carefully and you too can display your reviews right in your fan page like we have above.
Step 1: Installing the Facebook Developer Application
The first step in creating an application in Facebook is to install the Facebook Developer application.
If this is the first time you’ve installed the Developer Application, you will see the Request for Permission dialog show below:
Click the Allow button to proceed.
Step 2: Creating an iFrame application
Now that you have the Developer App installed, click on the Create New App button.
Call your application in the App Display Name “HomeStars Reviews” (the name displayed to users) and then call the App Namespace homestars-reviews. Then tick the “I agree to Facebook Platform Policies” box; then click the Continue button.
On the next screen, enter the security phrase as displayed and then click Submit.
There are a lot of options you do at this point for other applications, but in this post, we are going to focus on the basics needed to get your HomeStars widget up and running.
Step 3: The Settings Tab
This is where you do the basic set up for your app.
First thing is to notice the “edit icon” below the App Secret. This is the icon that will appear to the left of your tab’s name in your page navigation. This is where we’ll need to put a 16×16 pixels HomeStars logo (pictured below) which you can download by clicking here.
Look in your downloads folder for a file called “HomeStars16.png” and upload that file to the app page from that link. If you don’t insert this icon, don’t worry. Your tab will simply have a generic Facebook-tab icon, which is fine. (But don’t you just want a HomeStars logo?)
Basic info:
Here’s what you need to fill in in the next fields:
App Display Name: HomeStars Reviews
App Namespace: homestars-reviews
Contact Email: your own email address
App Domain: http://homestars.com
Category: Other
Ignore the Cloud Services section. It’s for the Facebook Hosting Service.
Step 4: Setting up the page tab
For the purposes of this tutorial, you will select “Page Tab” from the various integration options. It’s the last one listed but once you’ve saved your changes it will be listed first (as in the above example).
Page Tab Name: HomeStars Reviews
Page Tab URL: If you already have a widget, use the link only provided to you. If not, contact us and get your custom URL. (Premium Listed Companies Only) – in our case the URL was http://homestars.com/widgets/reviews/homestars/large
Secure Page Tab URL: Same as the URL above but with HTTPS instead of HTTP;
Page Tab Edit URL: You can leave this one blank.
When you’ve entered all the info above, remember to hit save changes.
Step 5: Your Done! Make sure it works.
Head back to your fan page on Facebook and look on the sidebar for the reviews tab. Click on it and the reviews tab should show up. You can edit the order of those tabs by clicking the edit button below and dragging the reviews tab to where you want it to be.
On Wednesday we hosted our first HomeStars 101 Session with great success! Held at our new office space at 49 Spadina in Toronto, Shannon lead a small group of ten contractors through the ins and outs of managing their listing, responding to reviews, using the project messaging system, and tips for how to get the most out of their listing on HomeStars.
Feedback from the session was extremely positive and we would like to thank all those who attended.
We hope to hold more of these events throughout Canada so stay tuned to your newsletters and local event pages see when the next session will be held near you.
Check out the event page and our Facebook page for more photos from the session.
In January we added another tab called Projects. The purpose is to allow you to manage your contacts and projects all in one area on the site. At this point thousands of projects have been created and added to the site by our users. Have you used this feature on the site yet? If you have, leave a comment below with your feedback. For those of you that have not yet used this feature: read on friend! There is something for any size project and at the very least it can help you save your searches.
Create a new project:
Tabs: When you are on the site you can click the Projects tab. If you are not logged in you will be prompted to log in or register. If you are logged in you can access the same start page through your HomeOwner dashboard. Whatever you choose you are going to end up the in the same place and there will be an option to start a project.
Search: If you are searching the site and you have looked at a few listings, a banner like the one below will appear and ask you if you want to start a project and save your search results. It will also show you the last few listings you have looked at to show you how saving search results can be helpful. Again, you will see the blue ‘start a project’ button like the picture above.
Plus: You might notice the little blue plus signs next to all company names on the site This is the third way you could start a project. Again whether or not you are logged in you will see these plus signs. If you click on the plus sign you will be asked if you would like to start a project. Once a project is stared you also use this plus sign to add a company to a project.
Getting Your Project Started:
Regardless of which method above you use, you will be brought to this screen. It’s pretty straight forward and self explanatory, This is where you fill in the rough ideas about your project and it’s just for your reference. Save that project and you are ready to start searching your heart out, adding companies as you go using the blue plus sign, or visit your dashboard to take a closer look at the features of the tool.
Managing Your Project:
Whether you have started adding companies to your project or not, you can always click the My Projects tab to check in on their progress in your Dashboard. If you have added some companies to the project then you will see them listed there. Take a closer look at the photo here below:
Here you can see the links to all of the companies you have added to your project. I have two companies added to my Alarm project. The star icon to the right of their name shows their rating and will lead you to their listing; the dollar sign icon allows you to add the quote you were given by that company. The next icon is a phone and gives you that companies contact info. The envelope will let you send a secure message to the company about your project through our messaging system. The company will not receive your email address but you will be notified through your email when a response has come in. And the last icon, the pad and pen, lets you make notes about your thoughts or comments for each company.
From here on in the whole process is pretty straight forward in terms of adding, organizing, and contacting companies.
There is another feature, the sidebar to the right, that allows you to print the info from your project if you prefer to keep a paper record. You can post a question to our forum, add helpful links from the web for future reference in your project, and a list of other projects you might have.
For Companies:
You may have already started to receive messages from Homeowners contacting you about projects. You receive email notifications but you can also keep track of, and respond to, any messages through your Company Dash under the Project tab as featured above. You will also receive email notifications through regular email. Please remember to not respond directly to the emails you receive. There is a link in the email and you have to click the link (see the image below) to respond though HomeStars. Alternatively you can just do it though your Company Dash the choice is yours.
We have a lot of questions on how to edit a HomeStars review. It’s quite easy. Homeowners are free to edit any review at any time. So if your contractors has come back and made things right, don’t forget to tell the world about it online.
Just sign in, go to your dashboard, click on the review and edit away. Don’t forget to hit submit too!
We recently added a great feature for companies to ask their clients to write a review. The tool is right now available to both Premium and Claimed companies on the site.
If you know the email of your clients our website will automatically sent a pre-written letter to them (or you can edit the letter yourself if you’d like) asking them to write about the great work your company has done for them.
I’ve posted a little demo on the new feature here:
Today’s screencast is on how to respond to a review someone has written about your company. You can do this no matter whether you are a paying, premium customer or have a basic listing. Just claim your listing and you can interact with your customers.
