The UX for Internet review sites is bad

The user experience with most review sites is horrible. Examples I have gripes with are IMDb, Goodreads, and Fragrantica.

I’ve found the sites generally lagging and aethestically unpleasing. Pages load slowly. Here are also site-specific gripes off the top of my head:

• IMDb: Basic features like the ability to distinguish between movies and TV shows within a watchlist are missing. Adding a show to a custom watchlist is unavailable from the show page. Adding shows on the stadnard watchlist page require jumping to an edit view instead of a direct add even while the search bar + dropdown is already there. No ability to review individual seasons – say you hated the last season of Game of Thrones but liked most of the others; perfect use case.
• Goodreads: Could use better SEO; I’ve noticed on occassion the site will appear at the bottom of first page of search results. Since Amazon owns Goodreads, integration between Amazon reviews and Goodreads reviews would be helpful for the buyer.
• Fragrantica: Looks like it belongs in the 1990s. The direct purchase link – typically eBay – below the individual fragrance image doesn’t fit with the color scheme of the rest of the page. No ability for individual reviewers to display scores by attribute. Moderation speed to approve new products is slow (learned through user feedback). Troll reviews lacking detail or reviews for unreleased products. Inability to reply to reviews and/or automatically create a new thread in the Forum page.

I don’t have own a Yelp account nor have I spoken with core users so I can’t speak to the usability there.

The takeaway of this is how strong network effects are. A fresh competitor simply can’t offer the same depth of reviews as these sites. The advantage here is a self-perpetuating moat strong enough for the owner to ignore most else, to my mild chagrin.