Getting People to Leave Product Reviews, When they've reached our site in search of reviews
-
We have a product review website that has been showing a steady increase in organic traffic. However we seem to be having a disconnect between what happens when a visitor arrives.
We essentially want a visitor coming to our website in search of a review, to LEAVE a review for another product they may have used...
Any suggestions on ways we might encourage this? We are kind of newbies at this!
-
Hi Sarah,
In general the site has good design and you're pushing user generated content in the form of the brag board, which I think is a good resource for building your community element.
People are hesitant to be the first to review unless they hate something. If you can afford it, I'd start by leaving lengthy reviews on products that have actually been used by your internal team. Use great grammar, shoot for longer form content, etc. Really set the tone that this is an awesome site for lengthy reviews.
Contests can be a good way to incentivize reviews, especially if you can partner up with a manufacturer for free or discounted product to give away. Do a recurring contest, and have all reviews count as an entry.
For your actual review form, try building out way more specific questions than just giving users a box. A good example of this is the questions that are asked of business owners signing up for Thumbtack.com. Rather than asking for a business description, they specifically as the business owners a number of targeted questions that really separates them from every other site online. You'll need to take the same creative approach to set yourself apart from other review websites. I'm thinking things such as "How did the product fit?" for clothing categories, or "Would you recommend this product to a friend who needed on as well?" Those are the types of questions that should elicit better quality of responses.
Hope that's helpful!
-
you could start with an incentive. (maybe thru email marketing or social) or maybe a run a contest.
It's really not that easy to get people to leave reviews unless it came from a targeted organic keyword (aka a superfan of the product that just wants to leave a review)
You could pick 2 of your top pages and do 1 test each to see what brings you the best results
-
Our website consists of user contributed reviews, and the reviews provided to those searching for them are free.. we aren't technically trying to monetize yet...
-
Hi Sarah, you have to be careful with this because you can't limit the user activity on your website if they didn't leave a review, there are so many review website they can go and read for free. You need to offer them something different.
Actually what you want to do is to have the best and accurate reviews. In that way you'll have satisfied users who in the future may consider to participate more in your website (like tripadvisor).
Also you want to be sure that someone leaving a review has really used the service/product. You don't want fake reviews or discussions among users in your website.
Then you can propose base features and some advanced features for highly participating users. Sorry to not leave you any idea on what to do, but I have a clearer idea on what you don't have to do.
You definitely need to understand your website+users and find a way to attract them and "monetize" them. Hope this helps.
-
Let's Say I come in searching for reviews for ABC Web Hosting. Why would I leave a review ? What's my reason to post a review on a random website ? Is there an incentive of doing that ? I would suggest you brainstorm as if you are the user. What attracts you the most ? Maybe building a community ? Giving them a value. Something.
Does that make sense ? Post or PM me your URL and I'd love to take a look.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Index Issue - Indexing pages that don't exhist
Hi All, I have noticed a weird issue when performing a search on Google to show me all the pages it is indexing of our site. site:www.one2create.co.uk It brings up most of our website pages but then is also brings up a few HTTPS urls (our site has not been converted to HTTPS yet) but also the URL path, Title, and Meta Description are from one of our clients websites (an Automotive Job site). When clicked they take you to a generic 404 server error page, not our branded 404 page. The site that it has taken the url, title and meta description from is on a different server completely so I don't see how it has even managed to get that information and linked it to our site? Has anyone seen anything like this before? And what is the best way to fix it? We have asked Google to re-index the site but still no luck.
Search Behavior | | Jvickery0 -
Google De-Indexed Our SIte for Branded Terms?
Hello all, As of 10am Pacific on September 12th, 2013, my team has noticed that our site, www.wirelessemporium.com, does not show up on the first 5 or 6 pages of SERPs for branded terms like "wireless emporium." We have not received any messages from Google via Webmaster Tools regarding this. Major activity that we've been doing to our site is updating content, meta tags, and h1 tags, along with removing/301 redirecting certain pages that did not meet Google quality guidelines. We've also been purging our backlink portfolio of toxic links and URLs, both manually and through the disavow tool. No blackhat has been done to this site for a very long time (more than 8 months now). One thing to note is that we did have a manual spam penalty placed on us back in July of 2012, it expired in early August of 2013 after a reconsideration request was submitted, and a 2nd manual spam penalty was placed on us again later that month. We are submitting a 2nd reconsideration request this Monday. Could this or the recent Panda update have anything to with this? We are very much in need of opinions as to why this is happening to our site. 5adbd14a31de3a78b998df94f0b6d2be
Search Behavior | | eugeneku0 -
What's the best way to redirect mobile site?
Hi, We have a mobile website using a sub-directory domain.com/m/whatever-page/. Our mobile is completely separate site from desktop version. What's the best way to handle the redirection from mobile visitors and those that are searching from mobile and see desktop version in the search result? Appreciate anyone's expert advise. Thanks,
Search Behavior | | DirectAsia.com
Willy0 -
Google Analytics Search Engine Optimisation Report
Hello, Quick question. How much data should be available within Google Analytics within the Search Engine Optimisation Reports? I was always of the impression it was 6 months, however the data available as of this date only extends back to January 1st 2013. Thanks,
Search Behavior | | HelloAlba0 -
Bounce Rate and Time on Site
What would be the best way to decrease bounce rate and increase time on site for a Real Estate Website?
Search Behavior | | bronxpad0 -
E-commerce SEO when products are shared between sites
We have a couple of e-commerce sites that sell the same product. One focuses more on a niche category of the products, while the others contains a wide variety of products. Will we be hit with a penalty from google if the product descriptions are the same? If so, how much of a difference in content does there need to be? There are only so many ways to describe the product and it is usually done in a couple sentences. The rest of the product description contains bullet points of the products and is the same for each product. We are also looking for a SEO company to work with and wondered if there are companies out there that specialize in e-commerce seo that can work with a small ($500 month) budget. I've looked through the recommended companies directory here, but it seems most have minimum retainers around $1000 a month. Also, what should I look for in an SEO company?
Search Behavior | | toomeycustoms0 -
How to test a site for usability with hundreds users and get genuine feedback?
My question is twofold; firstly is there a recommended company that I could use to get feedback on my site usability. Ideally I would like this company to arrange a focus group of a couple hundred people that fit into the right demographic and organise a report on the opinions of the group and the issues faced. Secondly an in-house understanding of usability Now I would like to think that when I review a site for usability I am not biased in any way. But I believe that if I look at the page that I have created or even collaborated on that I will always miss usability issues as I frankly think my/our creation is amazing. I'm interested to know how people rank and check their site usability and what factors rank highest in their assessments i.e. the tools you use and how you use them.
Search Behavior | | Stefan-Thorpe0 -
Forced Page Views and Search Engines?
I have a website that was built for the primary purpose of showing HTML 5 capabilities. With this, we have to create forced page views within analytics in order to receive any data about consumer behavior on the site. Are search engines viewing these forced page views as actual webpages? Does it even effect SEO efforts?
Search Behavior | | HughesDigital0