What factors make a review site successful?

Hey guys,

I'm in the process of building an (authority) review site in my niche and looking for some pointers. I was hoping people could share the factors that they have found make a review site successful. So far I have:

- Star ratings for factors such as: cost, ease of use, durability etc
- Clearly state advantages and disadvantages
- Have the best products labelled as "Editor's choice" or similar
- Have a unique description of the product for SEO reasons
- Encourage users to submit their own reviews in a comment section beneath each product
- To start with, submit made up reviews (or steal them from elsewhere and rewrite) to give the impression the site is larger than it is

Any others? Thanks!

I would make a few bogus comments over time on most of your posts as when people start to come no-one wants to be the first to comment and makes your site seem more interactive.
Also you might want to not put any aff links in(or cloak them) until its got a good amount of visitors( & then still cloak)
Which platform are you using? I've found WP to be good.
Hope it works out for you though,

-Sam

Thanks for the advice Sam! I am using WP, yes - after doing some research I think I will continue to use it no matter how big the site gets too. I will definitely cloak links but that's an interesting point about waiting till I have a good amount of visitors before inserting them - will have to think about that as I had planned to have them in from the start.

Anyone else have any other suggestions? Cheers!

Just keep adding quality content. The comments are a good idea. I also recommend not making your reviews look like a sales pitch. You have to at least mention the cons of the product your are promoting, or it will just look pike a gateway page to your affiliate network.

Yeah also if you are leaning towards promoting one superior product over them all remember to mention the other products in the same way or it gets obvious.

Start with a VERY small niche, and just create really, really good reviews with lots of pictures. Make very clear how to subscribe/follow on twitter, and interact with your followers/readers. Even just a small, active following of 10 people can generate enough comments and content to make the site appear active,

Thanks for all the tips guys (and thanks to the troll that gave me negative rep). Looking to get my site designed shortly so exciting times! Some other ideas I've thought of:

- Have an article/blog area where I can post How-to guides and similar to reduce bounce rate, increase traffic and go up in the SERPs
- Run polls on the homepage to increase user involvement
- Include features such as "Top Editor Rated Products in this Category" and "Top User Rated Products in this Category"

I got a lot of my ideas for the site layout from Googling "review sites" and analysing the sites' designs. I recommend doing this to anyone else in a similar position!

One thing to consider is also the fact that you want to make your website look informative - so, not all your articles should be "reviews" and not all articles should have affiliate links. You should also include a personal "touch" - tell your readers who you are, what you are doing, why you are doing what you are doing (many webmaster see "About us" pages as unnecessary, but I believe that with the right approach, you can present yourself as an authority there).