reviews - what makes a review send traffic?

Webmaster Discussion
,
#1

from time to time, i hear from a webmaster who knows i wrote his/her site’s review and wants to know why it was rated as it was. they feel strongly that if their site had higher ratings, they’d sell more.

after years of writing reviews for guys who let me know what sites did and didn’t sell, i can safely say that the overall site rating rarely means a thing - and as far as i can figure, the other ratings don’t mean that much, either. i mean, sure - on some review sites with top sites listed somewhere, the front page listing does drive some extra traffic to the review.

but the bottom line is a site’s niche, site name - yes, site name can have an impact on how many clicks a site gets - description of content and review’s writing style. the review style can definitely have an impact - cutesy reviews or overenthusiastic reviews that sell like marketing text sell poorly, and while a reviewer’s recommendation to visit or not visit the site can have an impact, i’ve written a number of reviewers that don’t recommend visiting the site that send tons of traffic.

one more thing that can make a difference is branding. a well-known site can get more clicks from a review than its counterpart - sometimes a lot more clicks, even if the counterpart site has the same quality and amount of content and the same features plus the same enthusiastic recommendation from the reviewer.

after that, to a large degree it’s up to the tour to make the sales. while a fairly bad tour can make sales, i’ve seen some sites with wonderful content that couldn’t average one sale in 2000 clicks, the same clicks that convert other sites at 1:200.

#2

Re: reviews - what makes a review send traffic?

Isn’t sales/marketing fascinating and so complex?

I’ve heard of so many reasons people join sites, other then content. It’s amazing how fickle and peculiar people can be or how spontaneous and thoughtless they can be.

I’ve heard of people signing up for sites based on the text of the review, the thumbnail image, the length of the review, and sometimes the rating. Even bad reviews with a thumbnail that peeks the curiosity can cause them to click, and purchase a membership.

I’ve heard of people joining sites based mostly on who referred them, the culture of the site, the style of the site, the text of the descriptions and the content, to name a few. Sometimes it’s all of the above, other times it’s just one reason. For these same reasons people don’t join sites. go figure

#3

Re: reviews - what makes a review send traffic?

true - there’s a lot involved. i’ve had the shapes of thumbs on the referring galleries make a difference of up to 50%, which puzzles me to this day. i mean, if the galleries interested the surfers enough to click, why would the shape of the thumbs on the gallery that sent them affect sales on the tour?

i’ve often seen fresh text on a tour make a difference of anywhere from 10% to 50%.

i’ve seen text on tgp galleries make massive differences - the difference of 1:300 and 1:1400.

you would think that content and the look and layout of the tour would be the most important things for sales, but somehow many things about the referring pages seem to matter.