Modern Insider – Online Marketing Blog

I’m sitting in the airport right now on my way to Las Vegas for DEMA, the annual Scuba Diving industry convention. My involvement in the dive industry started in the very late 90s when I, along with 2 partners, launched ScubaBoard.Com, a forum community, as a part of a large dive network. At that time communities were a new concept for most people and certainly something the dive industry, like many others, was struggling to understand. Still, we were late starters compared to other sites and faced fairly strong competition with both “basement startups” and major publishing companies already running successful forums. Just a few years later ScubaBoard was the largest diving community online and has since gone on to become the most visited site in the industry. So how did we do it? Features.

I’m sitting in the airport right now on my way to Las Vegas for DEMA, the annual Scuba Diving industry convention. My involvement in the dive industry started in the very late 90s when I, along with 2 partners, launched ScubaBoard.Com, a forum community, as a part of a large dive network. At that time communities were a new concept for most people and certainly something the dive industry, like many others, was struggling to understand. Still, we were late starters compared to other sites and faced fairly strong competition with both “basement startups” and major publishing companies already running successful forums. Just a few years later ScubaBoard was the largest diving community online and has since gone on to become the most visited site in the industry. So how did we do it? Features.

If you run a forum chances are you use a boxed software package. On the “low” end [cost wise] there are programs like vBulletin, phpBB and Invision Board and a host of others. Moving up the ladder you get enterprise platforms like Jive. Regardless of the software you use or are considering odds are the features are about the same. You have forums and subforums, threads and posts, user profiles, private messages and a plethora of other minor features all designed to make your forum match those of everyone else. Lately more social tools have been added as well as some ajax for easier usability but the end goal is still the same – show discussion forums in the same way other sites do.

The truth is most forums are the same because most software is the same. As much as the public has embraced the idea of communities, businesses and the software companies behind them still struggle to understand them so what you see are limited innovations coming primarily from the low end market. This has lead to a “what fits everyone” approach as opposed to a richer development process. In more than 10 years working with forums I’ve seen almost no true research or development to figure out what should go next, mostly its guesses by developers copied by other software companies and called “new”.

This is a tremendous negative to forum owners as there’s constantly need to innovate on your own but it’s also a tremendous benefit as not everyone has every tool available. The successful sites you see out there tend to be the ones that find or develop tools and utilities that fit their niche and move beyond “the box.”

So what kind of features can you add? They say the sky is limitless and they’re right but there are a few places to start so let’s begin there.

Features that plugin (the obvious ones).

• Photo Galleries. This is probably the most common feature you see on forums today, so much so that it’s begun to be included with a few of the forum packages. What makes photo galleries worth mentioning isn’t their inclusion, that should be evident, but rather their possible inclusion. Unfortunately a lot of forums treat photo galleries as separate entities from their discussions. Links are sparse, photos rarely appear in threads and there’s little correlation between the two applications. Any community with photos, be it a dive site with dive photos or a model building site with projects, can benefit from a well integrated gallery. Showing photos in user profiles, making it easy to include them in posts, having a good category, comment and display interface all helps encourage participation and keeps people on the site rather than wandering off to Flickr or the likes.
• Wikis. Wikipedia made them famous but more and more sites are beginning to add their own focused around a niche. The benefit of a wiki should be clear; you can sum up a common question, explain an item and really build an endless amount of content with the help of your users. Again, integration is the key to success. Don’t simply run a wiki, include it. One wiki software tool I know of integrates directly into forum structure allowing forums to be headlined with wiki links. Pretty sweet when you think about it – someone comes with a question about the topic, sees a link that answers it and can jump back and forth between major topics and discussions.
• Blogs. This is a toss up feature that can go either way. Some sites offer blogs to users as a means of journaling while others use blogs to update their users about the site or report on a tradeshow [like I'm about to be doing]. The first type is really ideal for letting users discuss in more lengthy activities like travel focused sites and less beneficial for small topic discussions like a cell phone site, although it’s always possible for someone to make a blog on almost any topic. All that’s needed is a way to name the blog, create entries and ideally search and categorize them.

  Corporate or as they should be called “owner” blogs on forum sites are an interesting way to update the membership about ongoing events or the inner workings of the site and since the site is ultimately controlled by the user (if they don’t like it, they leave) they’re a great way to lend to some back and forth discussion and suggestions.
  Done right blogs don’t even require separate software [although it's generally nicer]. Simply using the right style and layout can turn a forum into a corporate blog. For user blogs you’ll need something a bit more robust but fundamentally the idea is the same as a post only with a longer intro and less back and forth discussion thereafter.

• Classifieds. Almost every forum I visit has some level of bartering but when that goes from a few posts to a full blown mini-eBay it’s time to look for ways to let people make better exchanges. At the lowest level forums can be restructured to show open and closed offers. Thread prefixes help to keep things orderly [and should be something people can order off of] and some sort of rating system helps establish credibility. For the larger and more utilized marketplace putting in a full blown mini-classifieds system can have huge advantages especially if it has a good way of providing search results and automated updates.

  As with most of the other easy features getting a classifieds system isn’t so much the issue as making it fit well. Tools that require the user to leave the forum area tend to fail versus those that are integrated, work with existing profiles and show up as a forum, as a part of the profile as an integrated offering.

Features that are specific (the hard[er] to get ones):

• Member Search Tools. Whether it’s to plan a dive, meet up and cheer for the team, or talk shop, finding other members is probably one of the most common themes between sites. However most sites leave users to ask for locals when of course few people check back to see these requests. A strong member locator can help people connect up, extend their network and thus build a strong reason to return to the site. This can be done using maps, straight text search tools or a combination of the two.

  Think about it, would you rather post a request for a member with a shared interest, wait a few days for replies and contact each other or just click a few fields and find people instantly.

• Directories & Databases. Regardless of what type of site you have there’s probably a reason to create a directory be it of places, of products, of hikes, quests, ideas, recipes, etc… If done right directories allow users to create volumes of content and information which is extremely useful for search, for visitors looking to get ideas about a topic and for other members. Integrate the directory back to the forum with contributions showing up in profiles, reviews showing up in forums and you have an easy to use way of making for a much easier user experience.

  Relying in forums to act as directories is a problem most forums have – problem is threads get old, don’t tend to have many search fields and the same topic comes up over and over. With the help of a directory information is easier to sort through and gets used. Simple.

• Group Tools. Many of the forums out there have strong subgroups sometimes external to the forum (i.e. topic clubs) and sometimes included. Regardless of the nature of the group the experience tends to be pretty poor – users to go a subforum and talk with likeminded members in the same interface with the same links. Simply applying a customized skin (cobranding) to various group forums is a huge step in giving them an identity that remains clear. Member badges, group identification and group lists are all directly features that likely exist with little or no technical change but directly extend the experience even further.

  Of course this can go further and should. Why not create specialty calendars for groups with the fields and elements they need? How about letting group leaders send out email updates and newsletters? Creating custom registration pages for the group is also a no brainer as is landing pages, welcome greetings. Everything your site has or should have can be customized to a group to help its identity and use remain strong which in turn boosts that of the overall site.

• Portal Pages. Nothing is worse than launching features no one uses but often times no one uses them because no one can find them. Once you find your site becoming cluttered with forums, blogs, wikis, photos and all the other features you’ve decided on it’s time to get into portals and micro-portals.

  The initial portal most sites turn to is simply a homepage gateway which pulls in content from different features and helps users find the area they want to explore next. As your forum grows however it may be useful to build subportals around specific forum topics. These become part of the navigation structure so rather than clicking straight to a discussion list in your forum, users are transitioned to areas pulling together other relevant content information. The more you have the more necessary this becomes especially if systems live outside of the forum which is typical for photo galleries, directories and the like.

  Think about it, when you go to a discussion site how often to you click off a forum to try other features if they aren’t part of the content stream? If instead of going from discussion to discussion you went to areas pulling content in would that change? You bet.

• News Feeds. Facebook made this one popular although it’s something you can find on any number of sites and something many forums would truly benefit from. News feeds have two major draws, first they help users sift through the massive amounts of content your site probably has and follow the events they started, participated in or were linked to through a connection. Secondly a news feed can bring in events from outside the immediate forum world which, like with a portal, helps push adoption of all those features you added.

  What can a news feed include? For starters there’s the basics like when a post is made by a buddy, a thread is responded to, a new private message is sent and so forth. You can also include reviews of places the user has favorited, photo uploads & comments, new members in the area, group updates and on and on.

• All the other things that fit your site. Again that sky is endless, your site should determine your feature set and you should develop features to extend the site. The goal of features is not to replace members or content, nothing can do that. Rather features give your members something to use and places to add content be it photos to a gallery, listings in a directory or whatever else you chose to add. As you develop more content and people find more interesting tools, more users talk about your site, more referrals are made, people come and it all grows.

Whatever you add be sure it makes sense for your audience and niche. Adding a game portal may seem like a good way to get more activity but what’s the actual value? How does it help your site get more niche visitors? This is no different than deciding your forum topics and content areas; if you allow a small off-focus area you may do fine but if your site is 50% random conversations is it really on point? Do new members really want to participate, to use those tools and will the old ones stay around or find other, more focused sites to spend their time at? Activity is not the only goal, relevancy and value count too.

The second consideration point should really be from your users. Whether you come up with an idea from your own brain or from user suggestions it needs to be user tested. One of the great things about forums is the availability of opinions. Ask your moderators, as your super users, poll people and get feedback. Drive innovation from usage (analytics), from comments (feedback) and from your own brain, not just one source. And don’t settle for inferior, your users won’t. If you can’t develop it well, don’t do it. As much as we want to have every tool our competitors have, when you simply copy or clone a tool in a second rate manner people won’t be happy.

ScubaBoard beat other sites because it embraced the transition from classic threaded discussions to linear forums first. We continued to grow by adding photo galleries before others, by making the software we plugged in fit the layout, fit the experience. We embedded elements directly into the forums to promote usage and remove things that didn’t get used. Not everything was a dead on fit but it was innovation, it was features that mattered and people used them enough to return to the community, register and use that. Features aren’t all about being your activity; they’re about helping to support it. Not everyone wants to post to a discussion but they may want to share a photo, review a business in a directory or on and on. The more options you have, the more people there are with a reason to use and return to your site.

Remember, sites that stagnate and fail to innovate are sites that die. It doesn’t matter if you’re big… just as Yahoo!

Next week I’ll address two major challenges with features you already have that impact your conversion rates [registrations] and retention rates [page views] as well as suggest ways to fix them.