Getting People to Leave Product Reviews, When they've reached our site in search of reviews

[Sarah_Frantz]

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!

[KaneJamison]

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!

[DennisSeymour]

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

[Sarah_Frantz]

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...

[mememax]

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.

[NakulGoyal]

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.