Writing a review of a product or service you use is an excellent way to provide value to your readers, show off your expertise and earn affiliate commissions.
Many affiliate marketers use this strategy as one of their main income streams.
That’s why we already included a complete Review page set in Thrive Landing Pages. But sometimes you might want to write a review blog post instead of using a landing page.
In this video tutorial, you’ll discover how to create gorgeous looking, high converting review blog posts with Thrive Content Builder.
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Update
Thrive Content Builder and Thrive Landing pages have been replaced by Thrive Architect, which now has 268 pre-designed page templates and you can preview them all in our landing pages gallery.
Copy The Best
Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, you should look at what’s already working and get inspiration.
That’s exactly what we did. We used the article “How To Write Product Reviews That Sell & Convert” from Authority Hacker to show you the layout of a high converting product review blog post, because these guys know how to write reviews that sell!
In this tutorial you’ll discover:
- How to create a summary box with conversion focused elements such as star ratings, icons and an animated call to action button.
- How to add a table of contents in your review post to help your readers get the important information they are looking for.
- How to embed responsive videos and adjust the size to fit your layout.
Create It Only Once
Creating this kind of layout takes a bit of time at first, but once you are happy with the design of the summary box, you can save the whole thing as a template and use it over and over again.
Step 1: Click to select the content box
Step 2: Click on the “Save content template” button, situated in the upper right corner
Step 3: Give your content template a name and click “Save”
Step 4: Your content template is now available in Thrive Content Builder under the “Content Templates” menu.
Using the content templates will save you tons of time and help you to keep the overall look of your website consistent.
Use Content Blocks to Build Blog Posts Faster
We added the Content Block feature to the Thrive editor to help you build your affiliate review pages faster with fewer editing steps. You can select from several pre-designed template blocks that are 100% customizable to meet your website's unique needs.
Read more about this new feature in this post.
Now It’s Your Turn
I hope you liked this tutorial and as always, if you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment below.
Does this create schema stars in search results?
No Joe, these stars are only visual elements for the visitors.
Hi, Hanne
Nice article. Thrive package certainly makes everything easier.
The front-end builder is very interactive and is a must for someone with no or less coding knowledge.
Thanks Tauqir
Great post Hanne. It would be great if Thrive Themes let us be an affiliate to their awesome products, but currently they have closed their program to new members.
Hi Patrick,
We’re changing our whole affiliate program that’s why it is not available right now.
Hello Hanne,
This presentation is an excellent tutorial.
Thanks,
Art
Thank you Art, happy you liked the tutorial.
Any way to make the Table of Contents have the “Jump to” links in Google results?
I would love this as well!
Hey Owen, sorry not sure I understand what you want to accomplish…
The table of contents is a listing of headings on the page.
Google will still list this as one page (that doesn’t change with the table of contents).
To be able to have the different parts of the review listed, you would need to create them on separate pages.
What I meant is something like this: http://www.screencast.com/t/5ZLH8kCLC
Table of Content Plus is able to do that, but it ruins the layout of my posts in TCB. It helps improve CTR in Google search results, as well as schema stars like what Joe mentioned.
Hopefully you can bring this up to the developers!
Ok I see. This is not something we are currently working on though.
I realy liked this tutorial 🙂 I’m a fan, and I’m always looking forward for your e-mails!
Thank you Erik!
Excellent tutorial! Thank you. I will use this for my next review.
Glad you found this useful John!
Hi Hanne, this is a great tutorial. Thank you very much. And thanks for the hint to authorityhacker.com I found a view great ideas for my texts.
You’re welcome Christian, their information is solid!
I always enjoy your tutorials. Whenever I create a blog post and try to edit it with Thrive Content Builder, I am not able to edit anything I wrote in WordPress. I also can only drag elements over and drop them at the beginning of my blog post, not anywhere else. What am I doing wrong?
Hi John,
TCB can not edit WordPress content. You have to create the entire post in Content Builder (you can simply ignore the wp editor from now on!)
I submitted a support ticket with this same question yesterday, so thanks for answering on behalf of support, albeit indirectly 🙂 I’m new to Thrive and the Content Builder and didn’t realise the entire post had to be in CB rather than the WordPress editor.
Also, thanks for a very informative and well presented tutorial Hanne. Easy to follow for a newcomer. It really illustrated the Content Builder’s potential when used with excellent content.
Happy I could help Steven.
I think you’ll also love the other “from scratch” tutorials such as this one for a simple lead generation landing page, this one for a high converting home page and this one to learn to change every detail you like.
I was wondering the same as Joe. In the forums I found one the ThriveTheme support guys answering this question with NO it does not but it’s an open point. Not sure if anything has changed ever since.
I like the style and design, how you did it, Hanne. However, the Schema was the reason why I still use a 3rd party plugin that creates it.
Hi Thomas,
I see what you mean. This has not changed for the moment.
Hi, I have spent quite a bit of money buying plugins that are supposed to make converting reviews. I am having problems converting visitors with my high ranking reviews. I didn’t realise Visual Editor could do reviews like this. I have a lot of work ahead of me, redoing all 50 of my reviews. I am so glad I bought Thrive content builder. The table of contents is so easy to do. Thanks for the video.
Hi Billy,
Hope this will help you. A plugin alone will not help your reviews convert though. Content Builder will help you present it in a way that every element is there to help you convert visitors but it is still the information IN the review that will convince (or not) the visitors.
I suggest you check out the article from Authority Hackers I refer to. This will help you to show what points you have to address to convince your visitors to buy the product.
Thanks for this great tutorial! I don’t think I’ve ever used the event manager in TCB before. Somehow I completely overlooked it! Always discovering new things with this plugin 🙂
Hi Priscilla, happy to hear!
I find tutorials like this extremely helpful. I may or may not ever have any need to create a review like this, but by closely watching how the page was built I learn a lot about how to use the Content Builder tools. For example, using a content container, resizing an image before upload, etc.
When I was in grad school we used to joke that after many years and tons of money we were confused at a higher level.
I have been frustrated for many years that my lack of coding skills meant I could not build web pages that matched my vision. Now that the Content builder provides the tools to do that I find I don’t really know when/where/how to use the design elements optimally 🙁
This kind of tutorial really helps grow my ability to actually use TCB effectively.
Hi Paul,
I’m so happy you pointed that out!
In the end, the building blocks are often the same and I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it!
Awesome Review Hanne! I thought this template would be in the pack…but no biggie, ill make it myself! Thanks again for the video!
Thanks 🙂
Thank you very nicely presented,
it’s interesting to note by dragging the Table of Contents to the page, the label resolved is Quick Navigation. I never would have guessed, but a useful method of making quick navigation anchors on the same page.
Hi John, indeed Quick navigation = Table of contents elements a bit confusing I admit but still a cool element to use!
Great Training Hanne, just one question. If I will create review using blog post with TCB how can I create excerpt or insert read more tag?
Hi Jan, the “read more” tag is situated in the text element between the link element and the paragraph element. It’s the button with the 3 dots on it. When you click on this you will see a “read more” tag in your article.
As Joe mentioned it would be awesome, if you could add the schema.org markup. Also I think it would be great to be able to edit the anchor links for the table of contents element so that it’s a speaking URL e.g. thrivethemes.com/article.html#comparison instead of thrivethemes.com/article.html#tab-con-6 or something like that. As for the workflow I would suggest that you make it possible to edit this in the Hx element itself and you could use the content of the Hx element for the url per default like wordpress is doing it for the URLs.
Outstanding. I learn more with each tutorial. You folks are one of the few groups I really look forward to getting mail from. Bravo and Keep up the good work!
You’re welcome Bob!
thanks for this awesome video Hanne!
Thanks Dennis
Really love this product. Couldn’t be without it as my blog posts now look great every time. Thanks also for this video as I did pick up a couple of new tips!
Mission accomplished 🙂 Thanks Sue
Hi Hanne,
Thanks for this post. I think i will put this to action on my site. But I have a question about the image size. You say that I must trim my images to the exact pixels that I’m using on my website. But how about hd screens? Like the MacBook retina display? I am used to place each image with twice as much pixels than needed, to keep my images crisp and sharp. Is that also your advise to do? Or am I doing something wrong? Please let me know how you think about tis issue. Great thanks again.
Hi Richard,
Interesting point, although I think you have to decide what’s most important to you (and this will depend on your market).
Retina screens are still only used by a small percentage of people online.
I would suggest not slowing down your website for this small % of users, but if you think that for your market this is important (eg you’re talking to designers) you should include bigger images.
You could still use custom coding to show the high res only for retina users but again might be not worth the trouble 🙂
Yes, very informative and helpful tutorial. I really hope to see more of this in the future.
I picked Quick navigation, Star Ratings and Icons for use in my next page.
Thank you and keep on the good work.
Happy you got some specific elements out of this one Karsten!
That was really useful. Could you do more tutorials like this?
Hi Gary,
Thanks for your comment.
Do you have something specific in mind that you would like us to show you?
Thoroughly enjoyed your video Hanne! I hope it finds its way into the “Knowledge Base” on the Thrive Themes site so we can refer to it again if need be.
Thanks.
Hi Grant,
We’re working hard to make our knowledge base as practical as possible. You’ll soon see new improvements.
This is one of the best blogs and training that a business could listen to. Thanks Sue Berry
Thansk Sue, means a lot!
Hi,
I’m nit picking here but shouldn’t the X icon actually be a X instead of a + ?
What I think we really need is another icon to be added to the styled list which is the + just rotated at a 45 degree angle.
It would be nice to see that every visitor can understand the universal cross sign (especially if it’s in red). I guess an additional stylized list element could be incorporated into TCB in very little coding time.
Please look into it.
PS: Great tutorial. I have done this on my site too 🙂
Hi Pullkit,
We’re working on improving the visual editor and more options for styled list is for sure one of the features!
Hi Hanne,
I am enjoyed your article and I am implementing the template content on my site. I do have a problem thought; I have downloaded the IcoMoon web app free master and uploaded it to my media library but I can’t use any of the icons…help!!!
Hi Johnny, post this in support and our guys will resolve with you. https://www.thrivethemes.com/forums
Hanne, this is another fantastic blog post! I never used Navigation on Blog posts. After your presentation, there’s no more excuses to start. 🙂 Thank you!
Thanks Irena 🙂
Great post!
This post especially help my job a lot!
Thank you!
Tony
Glad you found it useful Tony!
Greate articles,
This post provided me with useful information and helped my work a lot.
Thank you!
Thanks Eric
Hey Hanne. I just spent 4 hours going through you excellent tutorial and building my first Thrive template for reviews. I loved this so much! I’ve had Thrive for 3 years and only now am I realising how many cool things it can do. Brilliant video, thank you so much 🙂
Happy this was helpful! Sorry you only discovered it now 😉