Helpful – Article Feedback Plugin for WordPress

Major company websites use a “Was this helpful?” feature at the end of articles and help pages to understand how well the users receive their content. But how do you implement this functionality in a WordPress site?

The “Helpful” plugin offers a ready-to-use solution to implement this feature to your WordPress site.

Specifically, the plugin provides the functionalities to generate the survey on the front-end, a back-end dashboard to monitor the feedback received, data export capabilities, and a new dedicated block editor sidebar. In addition, we also included 92 customization options to adapt the front-end layout and plugin behavior based on your specific needs.

Features

MONITOR THE RECEIVED FEEDBACK FROM A DEDICATED DASHBOARD

Discover the performance of the articles with the tools provided in the plugin dashboard.

Feature of the plugin dashboard:

• Filter & Sort the Feedback Data: Easily find posts that need to be improved by filtering and sorting the feedback data based on custom criteria.
• Custom Indicators: Quickly understand the performances of the articles with the provided PFR indicator. This indicator measures the positive feedback ratio.
• Post Types Configuration: Apply a custom configuration to monitor only the statistics of specific post types. For example, in a typical scenario where the “Was this helpful?” form is used to understand how helpful the documentation/help pages are for your users, you can monitor the changes only to these pages.

EXPORT THE FEEDBACK DATA

You can export two different reports with feedback data. Specifically:

• Single Post Data: This is a report with the single feedback received by a post. Here you can find the feedback date, the rating received, and the optional comment left by the user.
• Cumulative Posts Data: This report includes a list of all the posts where the “Was this helpful?” form is applied. For each article are available statistics like the number of positive and negative feedback received and indicators used to determine the article’s performance.

COLLECT COMMENTS FROM THE USERS

In addition to the positive or negative rating, you can optionally receive an extended textual comment from the user. This feature can be used to know what the users liked/disliked about an article.

From the plugin options, you can also modify the behavior of this feature by configuring:

• The maximum number of characters allows in a user comment.
• The scenario on which the plugin should display the comment form to the user. The available options are: Always, After a positive feedback, After a negative feedback, Never.

NEW EDITOR SIDEBAR SECTION

The plugin adds the “Helpful” section in the sidebar of the post editor. Here you can:

• Enable or disable the form on a per-post basis
• Monitor the number of feedback received by the edited post

FRONT-END LAYOUT CUSTOMIZATIONS

Apply the “Was This Helpful?” Form in Custom Positions

You can position the form alternatively at the end of the article (this is the default approach and the most common solution used on the web) or at the beginning of the article.

Show the Ratings on the Front-End

You can optionally display the number of received feedback in the feedback buttons displayed on the front-end.

Customize the Buttons

You can customize the aspect of the feedback buttons based on your preference and the website style. The possibilities are:

• Normal text buttons
• High-quality SVG Icons
• Buttons with high-quality SVG icons

Layout Customizations

Select a side-by-side or stacked layout for the “Was this helpful?” form. In addition, configure paddings, margins, and borders of the elements.

Typography Customizations

You can apply the typographic style of your website to the elements generated by the helpful plugin with dedicated Typography and Color options.

Text Customizations

You can configure the text displayed in the front-end form with dedicated plugin options. Use this feature to translate the layout in your language or to match the tone and voice of your brand.

Select Your Favorite Button Icons

Select between multiple dynamic SVG for the feedback buttons icons. Note that you can also recolor these icons based on your preferences with the color options available in the plugin settings.

Additional Options for Advanced Users

RESET THE FEEDBACK

You can, at any time, reset the database with the feedback received by the users. Consider using this feature after applying significant changes to your website content.

LIMIT THE FEEDBACK SUBMISSIONS OF THE SAME USER

The plugin can optionally limit the number of ratings that a single user can submit to the same post. The following two technical solutions are adopted:

• Using Cookies: You can optionally prevent multiple submissions of the same user by storing a “Submitted” cookie in the browser. The cookie duration can be defined with a dedicated option.
• By Saving the IP Address of the User in a Database: The plugin can optionally prevent multiple submissions from the same user by saving its IP address in a database.

USER CAPABILITIES

Configure which WordPress user roles can access the plugin’s menus and functionalities.

SUPPORT FOR LARGE WEBSITE

The plugin can handle a “Was this helpful?” form applied to over 100k articles. From the plugin options, you can configure the maximum number of posts displayed in the dashboard and other technical parameters used to perform the post analysis.

TRANSLATION READY

The plugin is translation-ready. You can translate it with translation plugins like WPML, Loco Translate, etc., or with translation editors software like Poedit.