Context
There are many social networks on the market, but there is no single place where people can read other people's opinions and rumors about creators, and where creators can better understand their reputation and the demands of their fans. Fan Reviews is similar to Trustpilot, but in the world of fans and creators.
There are two types of users:
Fans
The main audience. They search for creators using filters, read and write reviews, and participate in discussions and polls. Their main motivation is to find out other people's opinions and share their own.
Creators
Profiles exist as public pages (with the option to claim a page). Creators gain visibility through SEO-optimized pages, and creators who claim their profile can respond to reviews.
Challenge 1 - MVP
The first version had no clear answer to "why should I stay here?" Weak IA, no obvious action, and no hook for returning users.
The deeper issue was a classic cold start problem. A review platform needs content to attract users, and it needs readers to generate content. Without solving that loop, nothing else really matters.
First website version, before I joined
The main flow we needed:
User searches for a creator
Sees their profile
Reads reviews
Leaves one
Solutions
Key decision: use the existing database of 450K+ creator profiles as an SEO asset. Each profile became a page that Google could index. The hypothesis: when fans search "username + tiktok" or "username + instagram", Fan Reviews site should show up on page 1.
To make that work, we added a Bio tab to every profile with structured content: bio, social links, and FAQ. This wasn't a UX improvement for existing users. It was a way to turn a static database into an organic acquisition channel.
A creator page with 3 main tabs. The most visited page.
The first version of the search results page. The purpose of this page is to quickly find the creator within a database of 450K accounts.
Iterations of the homepage, testing different approaches - from focusing on headlines to focusing on quick search.
Challenge 2
The SEO strategy worked - the site began to receive traffic from Google, reaching 1 million visits per month within a year. But the data revealed a problem: the average session duration was about 20 seconds, and Pages/Visit was 1.4. Users came from Google to the creator's page and left.
People were landing on creator pages from Google and leaving. Most of them were just looking for basic info about a creator and had no intention to write a review.
Solutions
Creator page
The creator page was getting most of the traffic, so that's where we focused.
- Added an explainer video near the top of the page. A lot of people landing from Google had no idea what Fan Reviews was. The video answered that question before they bounced.
- Added a contextual prompt with an example of what to write a review about. Writing from scratch is hard. Showing an example lowers that barrier a lot.
- On mobile, moved the "Write a Review" button to a fixed bar at the bottom of the screen. Before that change, the button was easy to miss.
- Renamed the "Discussions" tab to "Posts" and added photo/video uploads.
The idea here: reacting to a photo or video is a much lower-effort action than writing a text review from scratch. Media content also makes the page feel more alive for new visitors.
Home page
Old homepage
The old homepage had a hero section with a headline and a search bar. Clean, but static.
There was no proof that real people were actually using the platform.
New home - latest reviews feed
The goal was simple: show activity, not describe it. A new visitor landing on the homepage can immediately see that real people are writing real reviews right now. That's more convincing than any headline.
At this stage, I suggested to the client that we refine the visual design of the components a bit, making them cleaner and more compact.
Also, advertising accounts had already been set up to ensure stable monetization of the product for future growth.
The feed's main screens. The next step is to work on the reactions, create unique emojis, and animate them to grab users' attention.
Global chat
We also added a global chat that's accessible from any page on the site. Users can filter conversations by category to find discussions that match their interests.
Simple logic: if someone lands on the site and sees active conversations happening right now, they have a reason to stick around. It makes the platform feel alive.
Improved search
With a database of over 500K creator profiles, the search function needs to be functional.
- Added the ability to search by username from popular social networks, such as a creator's Instagram or OnlyFans handle (this data is in the database). This is a unique feature compared to competitors; it provides a lot of control in searching, especially for creators who aren't super popular.
- Added search by Badges - a powerful search feature. These are tags like "Polite," "Replies to DMs," and "Active Daily," which creators receive from fans through reviews. When a user leaves a review, they select badges for the creator in addition to the text and rating. These badges accumulate and build the creator's reputation, which other fans can use to search and filter.
By selecting "Badges" in the search, users get a specific list of creators.
This creates a closed loop:
Reviews
Badges
Search by badges
New reviews
Browse creators
In addition to the search feature, there is a directory page where users can view all creators using filters that were expanded after MVP 1.
Messages
This one stayed at the concept stage. The idea was to combine DMs and category-based chats in one place. We decided the implementation cost was too high relative to what it would actually add.
Results
- Acquisition: 1M monthly visits, driven by the SEO strategy of turning 500K+ static profiles into indexed pages.
- Engagement: Session duration grew from ~20 to ~45 seconds after the engagement-focused redesign. (Unfortunately, the site's performance is low, this metric could improve significantly with faster page load).
- Scope: Over 3 years, I designed the full product: search, creator catalog, reviews, posts, polls, global chat, creator profiles (web and mobile).
What I would improve
- The site runs very slowly at times, which is a critical issue;
- The lack of A/B testing and user surveys meant that we released products as ready-made packages and lost the ability to gather accurate data. We knew that something was working, but we didn't understand exactly what.
- I would have created an onboarding system for fans and creators;
- I've improved the interaction between the "Reviews" and "Posts" tabs on the creator's page, and I'd like to improve the synchronization of content from these tabs with the feed. This needs to be simplified;
- I'd like to focus more on a specific category rather than covering everything;