Over the years, I’ve been involved with many websites. Not just the design & development, but also the creation of content and communities after launch. This has been by way of forums to instigate discussion and feedback. So I like to think I’ve got a bit of experience with building communities.
So now I’m going to tell you a story.
For the last couple of years, I’ve been an active member of a certain forum (car-related). It’s a small; but lively community with lots of banter & a relaxed atmosphere. Eventually, a problem arose with the database and the forum software needed to be re-installed / re-instated. However, the admin of the forum decided to go one step further and install a ‘social hub’ instead of just a forum. This hub comes complete with a gallery, a ‘micro-blog’ just like twitter, profile pages just like facebook and other features which I am sure would be useful – just not in this instance.
Immediately, the forum became a lot more complex. Different login locations, different features & different working practices. This change made some of the users confused. What made it worse is that the forum & website was then relocated to a new URL and the old forum was locked, but left on-line for posterity.
This broke the connection between the last 4 years of community and effectively meant starting afresh. You couldn’t make an effective search through the past 4 years of archives, you couldn’t continue with active posts nor could you keep your username / profile & post count. Everyone had to re-register.
Some of the users (myself included) expressed our concern on the current direction of the forum and the inclusion of the social side of things which unfortunately seemed to fall on deaf ears.
So what happened? Several users from the old forum decided to start again with a new forum – and just a forum. No Twitter knock-offs, no Facebook copies, no superfluous services & features that no-one will use. Hence, a new competitor was born.
And ultimately, in a niche market, one small community has divided itself and one decision to expand the feature set has bred competition.
Let’s not forget without users, your site has nothing. There’s no good building a service if no one will use it. Would Fedex still be running if no one used their service? Would McDonalds still be open if no one ate at their restaurants?
So listen to what your users want. you are after all, building your website for them to use.
Previously: The Unprofessional Approach
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