Reviews (UK Centric)

Hey friends,

I created something but I would love to get your feedback and even some ideas from you on how I can improve it further / what extra features I can add.

The way it currently works is:
You (a business owner wanting reviews) sign up at my site, giving your business name and choosing which platforms you want a review on.
You request a business to review and one is allocated to you.
You review them (Google, FB, TrustPilot, Yell, TrustATrader, Tripadvisor.. I might add Yelp but not sure it's popular in the UK) and then click DONE
As you make more reviews, you climb up the review queue. You're review queue location is shown in your user dashboard.
You are both reviewer and reviewee in different review transactions but the counter-party is not someone you have reviewed or been reviewed by.

So it's like a review exchange but there are some extra features like:
I manually authorise each user when they join, in the hope to ensure everyone is a legit, UK based user.
When you review someone, they will not be matched to review you - so no reciprocal reviews. One way only.
For privacy, I added 'decoy' businesses so when you review someone, you don't know for sure, they are a member of the site.
You can't get a list of all the members, you only get to see the business you are reviewing.
To limit abuse and to make reviews look natural, you can only review 2 per day and you can only receive 1 review per day (limits can be amended on request).

It currently has a 5 day (5 review) trial period after which users are expected to pay.

I'd love to hear your feedback and ideas! Especially how I can get more users.

Just wanted to share a quick warning for anyone thinking of buying reviews to boost their Google Maps profile.





A while ago, I was contacted by a bunch of people offering “cheap” reviews — like $1 or $2 each — but they all seemed super sketchy. Most were using fake accounts, names that didn’t match the location, and broken English. You could tell they weren’t anywhere near my business. Google even removed a few of the reviews, and I started worrying about getting penalized.





But here’s the scary part: when I told some of them I didn’t want to continue, or that I wasn’t happy with the results, they started leaving 1-star reviews on my business profile as revenge. I had to go through the whole process of reporting and explaining to Google — super stressful and a waste of time.





Thankfully, I ended up finding someone who actually offers high-quality, geolocated reviews from real people near my business. They’re more expensive, yes, but 100% worth it. No bots, no shady accounts, and everything feels way more natural and safe. The reviews have been sticking and I haven’t had any issues.





If you’re a business owner trying to improve your online reputation, be really careful who you work with. Cheap reviews might sound tempting, but they can backfire badly.





Just my experience — hope it helps someone avoid the same mess.

Hi Rateflow,

Thanks for your comment, and whilst it's good advice to be careful where you get your reviews, it's only loosely relevant to my post.

Before anyone can use my system, I personally manually verify their account. This includes checking (as best I can) they are the owner of a UK based business that is willing to give quality reviews, to receive quality reviews. They are not being paid and they will not be offended by someone declining an offer because there is not offer between reviewer and reviewee.

Furthermore, because I use decoy businesses it is not easy to know if the business name you see (to refer) is actually registered on my site.

So, interesting and important comment for 'review buyers' but not a concern for users of https://www.reviewsystem.co.uk

Cheers