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2 Lessons Learned From Ugly Forum Software

Posted on May 7, 2014 by Mike W.

Earlier this week we compared ugly forum software to the way web directories looked in 1996. To recap, web directories (i.e., early search engines) used a top-down system of categories to organize websites. Some forum platforms still use this design.

Looking back on the way Yahoo used to be, we can see why this approach proved to be ineffective: the Web is too vast and changes too quickly be broken into simple categories.

Eighteen years is a long time. Web design principles have evolved during and we are proud to incorporate some of these advancements into Ninja Post. Today, media companies like Yahoo, Twitter, and YouTube recognize the importance of showing trending content to users. We also know that search engines emphasize keyword searches that return results based on relevancy.

The takeaways with regards to forum software design are as follows:

  1. Emphasize trending content on the main page of your forum.
  2. Allow users to quickly and effectively search and filter threads.

The image below illustrates how these concepts are embedded into the Ninja Post community platform.

forum_software_trending_and_search.png

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Ugly Forum Software Resembles Yahoo In 1996 (LOL!)

Posted on May 5, 2014 by Mike W.

When a user lands on the main page of a forum he or she wants to know what’s hot right now. That’s why we are baffled by forum platforms that insist on showing a list of sub-forums instead. This hierarchical, top-down format reminds us of the way “search directories” initially tried to organize the information across the web.

You can see that the forum platform pictured below divides everything into countless sub forums. This is eerily similar to the screen cap from Yahoo that dates back to the mid-1990s.

When the forum/sub forum paradigm is put in this context, it looks ugly. It also looks ineffective compared to modern approaches for organizing large volumes of information. If you agree there is a better way, we’d love to hear from you.

Yahoo – 1996

Forum with sub-forums – 2014

Posted in Forum Architecture & Design | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Forum Software That Supports Mobile Devices And Creates Habits

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Mike W.

In this day and age when 50% of forum traffic comes from users on mobile phones or tablets, every forum should have a fancy icon that users can add to the home screen on their phone. Kind of like a badge of honor users can add to their mobile device. We are happy to report that we have begun rolling out this functionality for our clients.

One of our goals is to create habits among users. When they’re bored and take out their phone, we want them to see what’s happening on their favorite forum! Requiring users to open the web browser on their phone and then navigate to the forum is a cumbersome process and one we want to avoid. After all, one key to creating new a habit is to make sure the habit easy to adopt and we’re mindful of that fact.

Getting users to add a sweet icon to their phone reinforces the “Hey, when you’re bored come see us!” habit and it acknowledges the dramatic shift from desktop to mobile.

Add shortcut from Ninja Post forum to phone in iOS

forum software that supports mobile shortcut 1

forum software that supports mobile shortcut 2

forum software that supports mobile shortcut3

Posted in Forum Architecture & Design | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Does A “Daily Digest” Email Make Sense For Forum Communities?

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Mike W.

As a follow up to Thursday’s post about forums and email alerts, we offer some thoughts on the practice of sending “daily digests” that summarize content from your forum from the previous day. On the plus side, daily alerts are a way to keep users engaged (especially those lazy lurkers) and get them in the habit of thinking about the site. On the other hand, many users find daily email alerts to be overwhelming. If not right away, then eventually the daily crush just gets to be too much.

Generally speaking, we think users should have the option to select the types of alerts they prefer. Subscribing to alerts for a particular thread is just one example that shows how alerts should be sent on a case-by-case basis. In terms of sending “daily digests” there are three factors to consider:

  1. Volume. Is there enough activity to warrant a daily email summary or does it make more sense to simply subscribe to all threads as they are posted.
  2. Private or Public. Is the forum is for internal use (e.g., a company-only forum) or is it a public forum? The email alert settings for organizations can be a little more aggressive than for a public forum because the content is work-related. However, it’s still best to let users choose how they manage email notifications.
  3. User Behavior. Ideally, email alerts are customized on a user-by-user basis according to their interests, demographics, etc. For example, a male from Colorado might be interested in different topics than a female from Florida and email alerts should account for such differences.

In summary, as long as the content is both fresh and relevant to the user it makes sense to send summary alerts. If not on a daily basis, then 1-2 times per week seems to make the most sense. Sending a monthly newsletter is a nice touch but we do wonder if the frequency is too low to get users in the habit of returning to the forum.

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Your Forum Community And Two Kinds Of Email Alerts

Posted on April 24, 2014 by Mike W.

Email alerts from forum communities come in different shapes and sizes. Or to put it more accurately, email alerts can be short bursts that are sent instantly or they can be a bit longer and contain a summary of hot content from the day, week, or month.

1. Examples of instantaneous alerts are:

  • When someone adds a new thread to the community.
  • When someone replies to a thread you’re participating in.

2. Examples of summary alerts are:

  • A monthly newsletter.
  • A daily digest.

Sending too many emails causes users to unsubscribe and disengage completely. If you don’t send enough emails, users will forget your forum exists. It’s necessary to strike the proper balance. We have found that it’s crucial to let users choose how they consume content like email alerts because each user will have a different preference.

In any case, we believe email alerts are opportunities to encourage users to participate. Sometimes users need an extra nudge to share their $0.02. Our goal is to inspire more activity and spicing up the email alerts with an ask or a trigger is an easy but often overlooked way to get users to contribute to the forum.

Posted in Misc. Forum Discussion | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Three Embarrassing Things About Legacy Forums

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Mike W.

Most won’t admit it, but many site owners are embarrassed by the image projected by their community platform. We can’t count how many times we’ve seen a beautifully designed site with an ugly forum. While working hard to correct this problem, we identified three of the most embarrassing things about legacy forum platforms:

  1. Design of the forum page is not in sync with the main site.
  2. Forum navigation does not match the main site.
  3. Impossible to return to main site.

legacy_forum_problems

Unfortunately, most site owners have become disenfranchised and have come to accept the status quo. We’re here to say it doesn’t have to be that way; that there’s hope and a light at the end of the tunnel.

Our goal with Ninja Post is to fix that perception by correcting the flaws outlined above to create a more engaging community experience; something site owners can be proud of.

If you are the type of community manager that takes pride in your work and strives to improve then we should talk more.

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Why Some Timestamps Are More Unsightly Than Tramp Stamps

Posted on April 13, 2014 by Mike W.

One puzzling aspect of certain legacy forum platforms is their use of “verbose” timestamps. Often times the landing page for the legacy platform shows the actual date and time of the last post for each category. Or when viewing a list of threads, we are shown a list of dates and times that do not account for the user’s timezone.

Besides being unbelievably tacky (much like a tramp stamp), this data is not particularly helpful because most people can’t calculate date differentials in their heads. Just look at the examples below. It’s almost impossible to know how long ago that content was posted.


forum_timestamp_example1

forum_timestamp_example2

We know that popularity and decay are what drives interest in a given thread. When users are unable to quickly determine a thread’s decay (i.e., how fresh the thread is) the platform becomes more confusing because the raw data is, well, raw.

Our wish to avoid this confusion explains why we indicate the content age in terms of minutes, hours, or days ago.

This approach allows users to quickly grasp the freshness and relevancy of the content, as show in the screen cap below.


forum_timestamp_example3

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Forum Communities And The Magic Number

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Mike W.

GORE-TEX, the maker of water resistant jackets and outerwear, famously caps the number of employees per factory at 150, even if that means building two factories right next door. The company adopted this policy because they discovered that when the factory gets too big, people working for the company become much less likely to work hard and help each other out. When that happens morale goes down, and so do profits.

Research by anthropologist Robin Dunbar supports this rationale. Dunbar correlated brain size of different primates with the size of their social groups and extrapolated these results to humans. His research indicates that 150 represents a “magic number” for humans and the number of meaningful relationships they can maintain at one time.

We have spent many years studying online communities and believe Dunbar’s number is applicable to online communities as well. If a group is too small there isn’t much interaction. But as the group hits the critical mass of more than 100 visits per day, activity starts to pick up. As traffic exceeds 200, 300, 400, or more visits per day then it becomes necessary to institute more restrictive rules.

A bigger forum is usually better because it benefits from the network effect but there is something to be said about small, close-knit communities. Benefits from the network effect typically offset the loss of intimacy but we also note that engagement on a per user basis tends to drop as a forum grows in size. Our experience suggests smaller communities have more camaraderie and users offer each other more support. We doubt that Dunbar would be surprised.

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Community Building: Knocking Down Silos And Connecting Fragments

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Mike W.

People within the same organization tend to face similar problems but may not know the best method to resolve such problems or how similar problems were resolved in the past. Chances are that an employee in one department knows how to help an employee in a different department but is unaware that a fellow employee needs help. This situation is problematic because the knowledge is there but there is no way to convey it.

It seems that communities tend to be fractured in two ways:

  1. Divided into silos. Departments do not communicate well with one another.
  2. Broken into fragments. Individuals are unable to communicate with one another.

You can think of silos as isolation at the department level and fragments as isolation at the personal level. Recognizing the opportunity to better connect both departments and individuals is the first step to building a better connected community.

We previously described Ninja Post as a “round table” for your organization. We like this analogy because our platform dissolves barriers between departments and connects individuals across organizations.

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Why Site Owners Look To Ninja Post #FOMO #Fun

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Mike W.

If there was one similarity shared by our clients it would probably be that they used to suffer from FOMO (that is, the fear of missing out) in one way or another.

Site owners feared missing out on an opportunity to help their users help one another and/or feared missing an opportunity to improve their site traffic, revenue, etc. That fear finally got the best of them because there is nothing worse than “what might have been.” So glad we could cure it.

Specifically, site owners turned to us when they were:

  • Frustrated that their current system is not used or well-liked by their users.
  • Facing limitations of a legacy platform that does not support rich media like photos or provide an experience optimized for mobile.
  • Continually embarrassed by the image projected by their current platform.
  • Too busy managing their main site to grow or monetize their forum community.
  • Unable to find a truly integrated solution that works with existing user accounts on their main site.
  • In need of peace of mind regarding potential attacks from spammers, trolls, or abusive users.

We cannot be all things for all people. But when it comes to the above-mentioned subject areas we are confident we can help site owners. Still, it seems like there’s something missing from the equation.

When we press our clients to find out why they really turn to us, they add that in addition to helping them solve problems, we make community engagement fun. That’s the way it should be. If it’s not fun, why bother?

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