We created a practical, step-by-step product review template so you can generate more affiliate income and win more readers with every post.
Product reviews are one of the most profitable types of content you can create. People searching for reviews are ready to buy and convert very well.
Here’s our detailed, step-by-step product review template that has helped us generate millions of dollars in affiliate conversions and has been successful even after all the Product Review and Reviews updates Google has released from 2021 to 2023.
I’ve also included some examples of great product reviews, some top tips for writing product reviews that convert, and an explanation of how to track how well your product reviews are converting.
A Simple Product Review Template That You Should Steal
How Did We Test This Template (& Why Trust Us?)
This product review template comes from our data on what works.
This data comes from our affiliate sites, with a combined million visitors per month, and our Lasso affiliate analytics platform, which helps affiliates track over 50 million page views monthly to optimize conversions.
We have also tested our Lasso displays based on product review page view data, so our recommendations here come from real-world data on what factors lead to conversions.
What Should A Product Review Template Include?
Here’s a simple structure you can steal when writing your following review, and you’ll be well on your way to writing a blog post that engages readers and converts them.
A good product review template should include the following:
- Title: that stands out and gets clicks.
- Intro: This establishes authority and builds rapport.
- Brief description of the product: quick run-down and a value judgment.
- The product affiliate display includes CTA, pros and cons, and the buy now button.
- The main product review: the in-depth description.
- FAQs: answer any objections or questions the reader has.
- Alternatives: recommend based on any weaknesses the product has.
- Conclusion: and another affiliate CTA.
A good product review blogger should help potential buyers with their purchasing decisions, so most importantly, you must gain readers’ trust. Of course, you can do that by showcasing features and benefits using real-life examples.
1. Write a title that stands out and gets clicks
Titles are crucial to successful product reviews. A good title:
- Gets clicks – and CTR is considered an SEO ranking factor.
- It shows your audience that you understand them.
- Is your keyword in the title for the ranking boost?
Also, include the main keyword in your product review title, preferably at the beginning. This is still a ranking factor and will help your product reviews rank higher.
It would help if you also tried to write a title that shows your audience you understand their needs so they trust you and pique their interest and curiosity, enticing them to click.
This requires understanding the pain point behind searching for this product. What are your readers worried about? This depends on the type of product.
For example, this investing app review keyword, “invest-engine review,” is a cheap solution designed to help beginner-income investors begin their investing journey.
The highest-ranking articles understand this and have written titles like:
- InvestEngine review – is it the cheapest investment platform?
- InvestEngine review: the best place to invest for free? (2023)
Both have the keyword right at the beginning, and one also includes the year to show that this review is relevant for 2023. I also recommend doing this.
If I were writing this review, I would write a title like:
- InvestEngine Review: cheap yet reliable for beginner investors?
- InvestEngine Review: still the best affordable investing app?
This combines the audience’s apparent interest in a low-cost investment platform and answers the pain point beginners may have about investing with the “reliable” part, as beginner investors may have worries about how safe their money is.
2. Intro: Establish authority, build rapport, and show you can be trusted
Your job in this intro is to instantly gain your reader’s trust, build rapport, and establish yourself as someone they can trust and should listen to.
One existing method for this is the SPEAR framework, which I use for writing my affiliate intros:
- S: Search Intent – immediately let the reader know they’re in the right place.
- P: Pain Points – understand readers’ needs that led them to search for this review.
- E: Expertise – show you’re an expert to be trusted (but without looking pushy or insecure).
- A: Audience – understand who is visiting this page and who is not, and tailor your language and style to this audience.
- R: Rapport – as well as being an expert, be likable and authentic. Build a bond with the reader.
Another critical part is empathizing with your readers and showing you understand their problems and needs. They’ll trust you to have the solution if you can vocalize their concern.
For example, suppose you’re writing a product review about a vacuum. In that case, you can start the review with a relatable story on a type of dirt you struggled to clean – which your audience also probably experiences. Then, when you show this product as the solution, they’ll trust you.
You can even include a “why you should trust us” section on your product reviews. This brief section highlights your expertise and reliability and that you’ve tested the product.
Here’s an example from a Wirecutter article on the best USB battery packs:
Also, add any product review photos in the intro to show your readers you’re legit and did accurate testing.
Another option is the PAS intro formula, which you can see here:
3. Summary of the product review
This section and section 4 are the most essential parts of any product review. If done correctly, these sections account for up to 50% of your affiliate conversions.
Most people don’t want to read the whole article. They want the essential information in a bite-size summary to know whether it’s right for them.
Here’s another example from Wirecutter:
In this summary section, highlight:
- Which type of person this product best suits – and who it’s NOT for
- The key reasons why you should or should not buy the product
- The main features that your audience cares about
Be specific about these. For example, is it great for beginners, those on a budget, Mac users, left-handers, football fans, heavy-duty professionals, or any other specific audience? The more detailed, the better your conversions will be.
You can include pros and cons here or in the affiliate display in section 4, and your rating is out of 5. The star rating and pros and cons can be added to the schema with the Lasso WordPress plugin to appear in the search results.
Here’s an example of the pros and cons from a review of Robinhood:
Don’t lose momentum mentioning every spec or factor – focus on only the main things leading to conversions.
Make it easy to skim and follow up with section 4: a beautiful affiliate display that gets you clicks and sales.
4. Affiliate display for conversions
The intro and product summary sections aim to achieve one thing: to warm the reader up so that when you allow them to buy, they buy!
However, most sites still use text links for their affiliate links or use out-of-date tools that don’t look good.
At Lasso, we’ve tested our affiliate displays across over 100 million affiliate page views that our 8,000 customers receive.
As a result, we’ve worked out exactly what drives clicks and sales and have built that into our displays.
Here’s an example summary box display for Grammarly, created with Lasso:
Our displays convert better than any alternatives. For example, Jared Bauman, host of the Niche Pursuits podcast, increased his affiliate earnings by 88% after switching from AAWP to Lasso.
To increase clicks and conversions, you can easily add:
- Pros and cons
- Product ratings (star rating out of 5)
- Multiple seller options (or have the second button be a link to a review or product comparison)
- Button text and color are designed to convert
- Price (yes, this can increase the buyer intent of your clicks if you show this)
- Another brief product description highlighting the main reasons to buy or a feature list
- Automatically add an affiliate disclosure.
5. The product review: how it works, main product’s features, and show your real-life testing
This is the central part of your product review. An easy way to structure this is to have subheadings for each main feature or comparison point to review in detail.
Pick these sections based on what buyers consider essential – these parts lead to affiliate sales. An example of a PC product review might be:
- Speed: RAM, graphics card, etc
- Audio quality
- Resolution
- Storage
- Software
- Available accessories you can buy
- Any extra features that come with it
Then, for each section, show how the product solves real-life issues. Take the reader through the story of how a problem you had was solved by one of the particular product features.
Place the reader in the story solving these scenarios, and write in the most visual, precise language possible.
Adding supporting images and, ideally, even videos showing these specifics and how they helped you is essential.
Most importantly, keep mentioning the types of people who would most benefit from this – the more you state the segments of people who are reading, the more confident they will be that this product is for them.
For example, if you’re testing and reviewing a lawnmower, showing a “before and after” section showing how much better your garden looks, or even how much better it seems versus when testing an alternative lawnmower, is very compelling.
It doesn’t need to be all positive, either. Often, the product won’t be great at some things. By showing these, you build trust and prevent people from buying a product that isn’t right for them.
For the areas in which the product isn’t strong, recommend an alternative product that excels in that area. Include an affiliate link so you still earn from these conversions.
Let’s use another example, like mountaineering tents. Before purchasing, buyers consider capacity, weight, number of poles, and price.
Here’s another example from NerdWallet.
A good example comes from the software services review site G2.com. There’s a section where it asks users, “What problems are you solving with the product?”
6. Add FAQs that help curious buyers
FAQs come in several forms, including the product’s website, Google’s “People Also Ask,” or Google’s “Searches Related To.”
The product and a quick Google search tell you these are common questions. Adding them to your review helps to get in front of any concerns your readers might have.
Let’s use surfboards as an example. If you’re writing a review about Firewire surfboards, you’d want to visit the brand’s website and use Google’s People Also Ask.
Here’s what we get:
These can help shape the outline of your post as you figure out what’s important.
Here’s an example of using FAQs in your review:
However, these are not always accurate for what your readers want to know. If you understand your audience, you’ll know what kinds of questions your readers have to create the most helpful FAQs within your product reviews possible.
If you have writer’s block, AI can also be helpful here.
Using AI to generate FAQ ideas
AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude can be handy in providing FAQs for your product review content.
Here’s a prompt I sometimes use to identify anything I may have missed:
“You’re an interested customer looking to buy a {insert product here}. Before feeling comfortable buying, what questions might you have that you want answered?”
If these FAQs are too generic, you can use this prompt to find lesser-known questions:
“You’re an interested customer looking to buy a {insert product here}. What are some less common and unconventional questions you might have before buying?”
These questions are often far more specific and can surface some great topics for your product review. Answer questions like this, and you’ll give readers all the essential information they need to purchase, giving you better conversions.
Ask your audience questions they have
Another easy way to get great FAQs is to write your review and then send it out to your email subscribers and social media followers, asking for feedback and questions they have.
You might think something is obvious, but your audience doesn’t. Based on this, you can improve your articles and add FAQs for all the information that needs better explanation.
7. Recommend alternative products that match the weaknesses of the product
If the reader has made it to this section without clicking or buying, the product probably wasn’t a good fit for them.
But this doesn’t mean they aren’t prepared to buy something.
The key to writing a high-converting alternatives section is not recommending similar, generic products.
Instead, recommend specific alternatives that are good for a particular use.
For example, your product review might be about a lawn mower that is the best under $50. An alternative could be a more premium option that’s best for cutting thicker, longer grass or one that can do another specific use far better.
A time-saver is to recommend multiple alternatives based on the pros and cons.
Find an alternative product that excels in this area for each of the cons. If the two cons of a product review are that it’s small and expensive, then you can recommend alternatives that are larger and cheap.
This is an excellent way of turning unconverted traffic into affiliate clicks.
You can display alternative products as grids using our plugin, Lasso:
8. Conclusion and re-sell at the end
To conclude your product review, summarize your opinion, why it’s great, who it’s best for, and then you can include another affiliate display CTA to try and get the conversion.
For example, if you’re still reading this, you haven’t converted and bought Lasso yet! So, I’d have a conclusion here, tell you why you should buy it to skyrocket your affiliate income, and then have another display such as this one below:
Another trick is to include internal links to articles on your site that you think the reader would be interested in if they haven’t clicked any of the affiliate links in this product review.
Usually, this involves moving slightly higher up the buyer funnel and linking to middle-of-funnel content. For example, in a product review for a lawnmower, you might link to articles for:
- How much does a lawnmower cost?
- Types of lawnmowers
- Factors to consider when buying a lawnmower
How To Write a Product Review: 6 Extra Tips
While these tips don’t fall into a specific product review template, they’re essential to high-converting and high-ranking articles.
1. Make it easy to scan and read
Don’t write long blocks of paragraphs. They’ll scare your readers off, and they’ll miss the crucial points you make that lead to conversions.
You can make your reviews super easy to scan and read by:
- Bulleted lists or tables for specs and pros and cons
- Short paragraphs with bold text for the main takeaways
- Use affiliate displays like Lasso that grab attention
2. Cover the negatives, not just the positives
The best reviews are balanced, authentic, and honest. They don’t just tell you the good parts to make the sale, but also the downsides that could put readers off.
Good reviews don’t just tell you who the product is for, but also the bad parts that show the reader that it’s not for them.
If you’re too scared of losing the sale, you’ll never make the sale. By being balanced and truthful, you build trust, which often leads to more sales.
This also meets Google’s Review guidelines, including:
- “Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something based on your original research.“
- “Cover comparable things to consider, or explain which might be best for certain uses or circumstances.“
3. Show empathy
Writing with a friendly voice, being honest and likable, and focusing on helping readers by being honest will also help you make more money.
Mention any problems you had during the test or any mistakes you made in an “Oops! Don’t do what I did!” self-deprecating and likable way. This makes you more accurate.
Empathise with the reader’s problems that led to them searching for this product as the solution. This forms the R within the SPEAR framework – rapport.
4. Use plenty of images
Nothing builds trust as well as real product photos and videos of you interacting with the product, testing and measuring it in specific situations they would use it in, and showing “before and after.”
For example, here’s a Wirecutter photo within their article on the best phone editing apps, showing a before and after touching the photo up:
There are a lot of product review sites that fake their images, and you can tell they aren’t actual pictures. The more visuals you have, the more apparent it is that you’re legit and to be trusted.
5. Write in first person
I highly recommend writing in the first person, highlighting your personal experience.
This builds the most trust and rapport with your audience and signals to search engines that this is an honest product review, not just an analysis of the specs or a re-written Amazon product description masquerading as a product review.
So, using language like:
- “During my test, I found that…”
- “I found that X feature was…”
Mentioning aspects that only a natural product reviewer would know is also a great way to show legitimacy.
One of the points in Google’s Review guidelines is:
“When recommending something as the best overall or the best for a certain purpose, include why you consider it the best, with first-hand supporting evidence.”
As well as your first-hand supporting evidence, write in the first person to match this.
6. Also show other reviews of people who like the product
As well as giving your own opinion, you can further help your readers by including reviews others have written. Even if they disagree with you, this gives the reader a more comprehensive view of the product to make the best decision.
This could be other total product reviews or reviews left on any third-party review aggregator like Amazon, G2, or Google.
This also partially meets another of Google’s review guidelines:
“Include links to other useful resources (your own or from other sites) to help a reader make a decision.”
Link to any other reviews you’ve used, or add screenshots.
Excellent Product Review Examples To Take Inspiration From
1. Up The Gains – Personal Finance Reviews
This is an example from Up The Gains’ review of Wealthify, an investment app. Up The Gains is one of the fastest-growing UK personal finance sites.
The topic is YMYL, and getting someone to invest money is no easy task. There’s a far higher trust barrier needed than for standard products.
Up The Gains tackles this with clear author bios and images, detailing the author’s expertise and immediately building trust before the article starts.
Then, the introduction immediately gives a value judgment; the following paragraphs explain who it’s for (beginner investors).
Then, the affiliate display for conversions includes the main selling points to trigger the person to buy, the social proof with the star rating, the banner for who it’s best for, and the button to accept.
A couple of things I would change are:
- The intro of “I like the way Wealthify operates” is good from a personable, rapport-building point of view but could be made more explicit. Google might not be able to read this as a definitive value judgment, which could prevent you from getting a featured snippet, and human readers may want more details than this.
- The button can be changed to a contrasting color to get more attention and clicks.
2. RetroDodo – Gaming Product Review
Another example of a product review is RetroDodo’s Powkiddy RGB20S review, a retro handheld console.
The review starts with a video – a compelling show of social proof.
Then there’s a box to buy the product, but this comes before any information that further drives home the product’s main selling points.
This can work if a high percentage of people are watching the video before, but if they are not, this could come too early – before the reader has been warmed up to buy.
A few things that could increase conversions are giving a more precise opinion on whether the reader should buy the product in the intro summary, stating more clearly who would suit it and who would not suit it, and naming the website the reader will be taken to if they click the “Buy Here” button.
However, the review does an excellent job of showing expertise and that the review is in-depth, authentic, and to be trusted.
How To Track Product Review Performance
While this template and extra tips give you everything you need to write product reviews that convert, tracking the performance of your affiliate links is essential to maximize your affiliate income.
The easiest way to track your product review affiliate links is to use Lasso Performance.
This automatically generates unique SubIDs on every affiliate link on your website so they can be tracked individually to measure their performance.
From there, you can see how much revenue every product review page on your site earns, the revenue, CTR (click-through rate), EPC (earning per click), and more data about each link on each page.
Here’s an example from one of my product reviews:
This data allows you to optimize and tweak your pages to maximize conversion rates and revenues.
The best part is it just takes a few minutes to set up and a single JavaScript snippet.
We’ve helped thousands of websites double their affiliate incomes (or more!) with all the tools you need – do you want to be next?