I recently followed up on the group of blogs pimping ReviewMe lately. I like a lot about what I see in the site. There are some decent blogs to consider getting a review from, although kind of shallow on the depth. Of course that is probably expected given the relative newness of the site. It’s quite obvious that the 1/2 off special on paid reviews that runs through the month is set up specifically to draw in both bloggers and reviewers, and I expect it will be pretty successful.

My question about whether it will work though has nothing to do with whether the purchasing of paid reviews will work (I expect that will work to draw in traffic). My question is about the underlying website. Jeez… the performance sucks (sporadically that is). Searches that never return! Never in internet terms to me means if I don’t see a page in under 15 seconds the site blows. If not in 30 seconds, the site sucks. Having a site that does e-commerce that blows or sucks is unacceptable. A once in a blue moon occurence is to be tolerated. I have been on the site several times now in the last couple days, and in at least 3 of those visits I had search result times that sucked and back-button issues that both blow and suck.

A lowly blog (like mine) put together with WordPress (like mine) can expect some response times that both blow and suck (even more so on a shared host). Please ReviewMe, throw an extra 512mb of ram at the issue. Or maybe upgrade to a real server. Do something! But please do not continue to try to run a site that takes my money (willingly I must say) on a server that performs like an overallocated shared host.

End note: For those that might think I should give them a break since the service is relatively new… get real. If you want to run a successful e-commerce site, you can’t afford to have people doubt your service. Not any portion of it, for any reason whatsoever.