Tips for Retaining Visitors? (especially a new site)

Jesters8

Anyone want to share advice for getting visitors to register when they first join? Also, how did you all get your first users when your site was new?
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Truestar · Moderator

So far, only my five closest friends have joined. But the thing is, they are all a part of a wide range of communities, thus can help kind of "advertise" if you will. I started out simply by taking advantage of those awesome "advertisement" forums on a community. This community is going past 2000 members, so I'm sure my topic gets a lot of traffic.

As for a first-timer-user-going-to-register-too, I'm not sure. I know I registered as soon as I saw phpbbhacks, and communityadmins. Why? Because Patrick has done a great job with site content, and forum work. You can tell he's worked hard on these boards, and he's very professional. I don't see any spelling errors, his English is properly used, and the boards cover every aspect of what I need to discuss. Take this board for example, it's a site for board admins to hang and discuss administrating a community. Patrick has literally created forums to cover every aspect of that topic. This, with the above mentioned, made me join as soon as I saw it. That's only my user experience though, my admin viewpoint and having user register as soon as they visit the site, well, I haven't gotten there yet. Laughing

So far, I've tried a combination of things.

Language
1. I used proper grammar, spelling, and generally proper puncuation
2. I fix every spelling error possible (The "Did You Know?" modification needs a spelling adjustment when first installed)
I create a wide variety of discussion
1. I make sure my forum covers every worthy aspect of the topic
2. I also make sure my forum has at least on "off-topic" forum, where users can just chill
Clean Board- this is a mix of things really. I make sure the template is unique (which I actually need to work on), and the colors aren't conflicting. There isn't much advertisement, and the board has an overall "clean" feel to it
Have an awesome staff- Have a great staff that's willing to moderate efficiently and professionally, as well as create lots of new topics. Make sure you/they are friendly and active

That's really literally building a whole forum. But everything I've mentioned is what I personally have tried. I just need more advertisement. Smile

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Triumvirate · Posted: 2/24/2006, 11:30 pm Post subject:

People can argue about it of course, but in general, there are two ways (as far as I'm concerned) of how to get and keep members coming to your site.

The first is design, your design has to look "good". Now, that's of course subjective but as Truestar mentioned a "clean" feel and a "polished" look is what you are aiming for (I have yet to be able to explain it any better than that). The site/community doesn't necessarily have to look flashy and doesn't have to be graphic heavy (there is nothing particularly wrong with communities like that, other than perhaps loading times) but it should look (unfortunately that vague term again) "good".

I guess in essence the best way to achieve this is to have a reason for your design and the elements in it. The way to achieve this is to know your desired audience. For instance which would look better in the header; a large, gaudy graphic that looks really cool or a simpler, stylish graphic without all the "wow" factor. Well, either one is acceptable but in different instances. If I want a "professional" looking style I'd probably go with the more minimalistic graphic that is more elegant than eye-popping. But, if my community is based on something like car sound systems I might go with something flashier to attract the type of people I want.

Second is content. Content is, and will continue to be, king. If you have a good design and no content people may register when they first arrive but they won't stay. And, in a community part of having that content is for you, as the admin to be active and posting. Don't ever expect someone else to start a topic, go ahead and do it yourself and try to garner replies then, as people see your community grow they will be more likely to start discussions of there own, which spawns more discussions, and so on.

The problem is a lot of people want this all to happen overnight, and unfortunately it doesn't. Would I love it if the community I launched tomorrow (hypothetically, not actually) had 100 active users in the first day? Yeah that would be great but chances are I won't, maybe not for the first month, maybe not for several months, whatever it is, be patient and personally continue to contribute so that you have content that people want.

As far as directly getting users goes, advertise in multiple ways. Don't say: "Okay I have that SEO hack installed let's let that work it's magic", because it probably won't. Find similar sites and don't be afraid to e-mail the people in charge there, ask them if they are interested in affiliation or a link exchange of some kind. Since your site is a community for online gamers there is a huge opportunity just by talking with people you play with online as a way of advertising.

Anyway, a lot of that is repetition of Truestar's points which are all valid and also many are probably fairly simple, but many people can't seem to bridge the gap between saying and doing when it comes to the basic things.
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Mercury · Posted: 3/17/2006, 4:54 pm Post subject:

Content, content, content. People join a forum to be a participant of a community, not to get one going. Also, having content gives them a reason to check up on your forum often. If they leave for a while and come back only to see responses to forum games or other threads of insignificant contribution, they're probably not going to keep coming back even nearly as long as they would if you had debate or discussion threads with lots of lengthy and otherwise contributive posts being exchanged.
Eye candy. No matter how much content you have, having the basic template with no customizations gives a feeling of deja vu and blandness, and gives the potential member the impression (whether fair or not) that you're not one who cares much for effort. No matter what the politically correct may see, looks do matter, and if you do well to apply eye candy (through a custom template, features, and your own customizations), your potential members are more likely going to say something in their heads along the lines of "hey, cool" and join.
Navigation. You should make essentials easy to find. One shouldn't have to take more than several seconds to find your registration link. Your rules and FAQ should be easy to find. They should know where to post or what form to fill out to contact staff or otherwise get feedback without having to investigate. Your forums should be well organized with titles that are creative but not too deceptive, and the descriptions being helpful and grammatically sound would only help you.
First impression. If you have an introduction forum or sticky, utilize it. Encourage members to post custom intro messages and lead by example. Respones to one's intro really does play a large part to many new members whether they stay or not. If you choose to be really involved, respond to all the posts a new member makes, but don't just spam... ask good questions or type some things out you really mean about a subject raised by the post you're responding to. Depending on your forum's culture, you may drive people off even if you do this because it's not the type of community they want to be a part of. However, doing the previously stated things help lessen the likelihood.
Activity. Duh. As an administrator, regularly post content to keep members coming back and involved. If you handle the content part right, activity will likely remain at a decent level. This done, potential members are much more likely to become members.
Distractions. This may go hand and hand with my mention of features, and it is much more optional. Such a distraction is the shoutbox. My experience with the shoutbox tells me that it's another notable reason for members to keep coming back. People like to chat, and the shoutbox lets them chat away. This chatting with other members helps them to quickly better know each other and to start more discussions in the forum.

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