Product Page De-mystified

Products Homepage

Products Homepage

Products Search, Top reviewer's list and latest products inserted on Products Homepage

Click to view the FS Products main page. Here you can see the featured items, as well as view the breakdowns of products by categories or by manufacturers. Also, you can view the latest products inserted into the database as well as the latest user reviews displayed on the right-hand-side column.

From here, you can ‘drill down’ to the category or platform that you are interested in. Or, you can use the “Product Search” product-specific feature, to help find a certain product you have in mind. Also, if you don’t see a game or hardware product in our database, you can also Submit it via our submit tool by clicking on “Submit it” near the search feature. Someone at FS will approve and/or edit your submission and give you credit once it is approved.

Let’s take an example of the category page such as this one which is category “Video Cards: ATI”. The top portion is the featured products in this category. Notice a light-blue bar below the featured products, this is the sub-category selector. You can ‘drill down’ further to find the cards you are looking for, such as Radeon 9600 series, or Radeon 9800XT and so forth.

Products Category / Sub-category view

Below the sub-category selector (if applicable), lies the listings of hardware in this particular category, giving you three random products from each manufacturer. You can click “View Remaining … “ link to view the rest of the products by the manufacturer.

Product Pages

Here are some examples of a product page: Hardware Product / Game Product.

The layout of the page is simple, the main content of the page is in the center column. The user reviews average is available on the top of the right-hand-side column. In the main column, a thumbnailed image of the product is visible. On the left side are links to FiringSquad articles and galleries, as well as the specifications and FiringSquad's summary or quick take.

Hardware Product page - rate, image and web reviews snippet

Bottom of Product page - Info Box, User Reviews and Gallery links

Game Product page - FS article link, summary and description on left

On the right are the product image (high-resolution version are usually available when clicking on the thumbnail), the web reviews snippet, and the "Info Box". The Info Box holds information about the product in question. The web reviews snippet shows a maximum of three web reviews that other sites have written about this product. To start to read some of those reviews, you can click on the blurbs and it will take you to a “Web Reviews Browser” where you can click through the set of reviews for a given product, all in a framed window.

Navigation bar

Below the product name and category display, is the navigation bar, similar to one found in the article pages, but is a little different. This is the best way to navigate to the pages related to this product. When available, this bar will have links to:

1. Product Info (current page)
2. FiringSquad Article
3. Web Reviews – a listing of all the online review articles related to this product
4. User Review – a listing of all user reviews ( it will display +User Review if there are no reviews yet
5. Image Gallery – a screenshot or photo gallery related to this product
6. Forum Thread – if a forum thread has been started for this specific product, this will be clickable

User Reviews

We feel that community is very important to our readers. The ability to write user reviews and comment on those reviews is a good way to get feedback and share your opinions. The product page will show the latest three user reviews, as well as the total number of reviews and average score between them. Here’s Doom 3’s product page. Clicking on to view the rest of the user reviews, will take you here, where you can browse all the user reviews as well as post comments on any of them. You can order the listings by date, author or user rating.

Product's User reviews

Web Reviews

If a product has web reviews attached to it, then the “Web Reviews” link will be clickable. You can view the list of web reviews all in one page, or read the reviews sequentially in our reviews browser, just by clicking on a blurb in any web review and then use the navigation button to traverse through. We collate reviews from hundreds of reputable online hardware and game review sites, to give you a comprehensive and un-biased average rating on a given product.

Furthermore, you can submit web reviews on a certain product. If you know another site has a review on a given product, you can submit it by clicking on “ADD+ WEB REVIEW”. You will need the URL, numerical rating and a text blurb from the review’s conclusion to use as the quote.

Product's Web reviews section

Web reviews browser - top frame lets users cycle through relevant reviews

Screenshots Links

When available, a screenshots gallery or a photo gallery (usually one from an article) will be linked from the product page. Here you can see close-up images of the hardware and also if a game is worth playing or not. We can never have too many screenshots!