User reviews - should I incentivise?

[baldidiot]

My site (in sig) offers user reviews with comments and ratings, but I've found people don't seem to want to write them

I originally had the star ratings all over the site (next to the brands name), but as nobody was rating them I removed it and now the user reviews and ratings are only really found within the main review for the casino (or poker room, bingo site etc...) which I know isn't helping.

So my question is... are user reviews viable for online gambling products? And what would be the best way to encourage users to get rating? I mean have a few, but it's not many... say 8 - 10 in the 9 months

Would incentivising work? Eg: holding a prize draw for users who write reviews?

I'm very interested to hear from anyone who has had any experience with user reviews!

[Webzcas]

Several bigger sites have a facility for visitors to leave reviews, but even these are commented on few and far between.

I would expect you would need a lot of traffic for the facility to become viable and even then, the facility would have to be used by several people, before others are tempted to chime in.

Very similar to starting a forum. You could have all the traffic in the world passing through, but unless you have a good core number of active members posting frequently, new visitors would be less inclined to sign up and join the fray. I speak from experience

[baldidiot]

That's pretty much what I've found so far

Thanks for the input.