How To Keep Website Traffic

[DamagedShadows]

Hello everyone I am wondering if any of you have any advice on how to keep website traffic? I am looking to start my own website similar in functionality to facebook or a forums but I just started thinking the other day... How would I keep users on my website? Starting out a website no one will be own it except you and your staff so therefore users won't have anyone to talk too. Thus no reason to want to stay on the website.
So I am wondering if their is anything I can do to keep users on the website until it has a decent amount of traffic and users don't need me to interact etc constantly?

 

[fisicx]

Pay people to create content. Pay for adverts to generate traffic.

But step right back first and ask yourself if your new website does anything different to what’s already available. If there is no appreciable difference then why would anyone want to visit your site?

 

[DamagedShadows]

Pay people to create content. Pay for adverts to generate traffic.

But step right back first and ask yourself if your new website does anything different to what’s already available. If there is no appreciable difference then why would anyone want to visit your site?

I've considered paying people for content but not sure yet. As for ads I am doing that. And thankfully my website is being built to be different from anything out their.
Still wondering if their is any other methods I can use other then hiring someone to make content

 

[fisicx]

And thankfully my website is being built to be different from anything out their.

Has your market testing shown that people want something different?

 

[DamagedShadows]

Has your market testing shown that people want something different?

Yes it has

 

[DamagedShadows]

Starting the website though should me and my staff team create posts to hopefully draw people too to talk and to try and reply to their posts to hopefully keep them coming? Or is their a better way? At least until their is enough members where the conversations just sustain themselves

 

[TomJ83]

One thing you can do, I don't know how good it is though, is to hide posts from guests so they have to sign up to see the hidden posts. Could work initially so you can get a steady flow of people signing up to your forum. Also you can put some game elements to the forum to incentivize activity. For example you can introduce cool badges based on how many posts people have made. One badge for 30 posts, another badge for 100 posts etc.

 

[DamagedShadows]

One thing you can do, I don't know how good it is though, is to hide posts from guests so they have to sign up to see the hidden posts. Could work initially so you can get a steady flow of people signing up to your forum. Also you can put some game elements to the forum to incentivize activity. For example you can introduce cool badges based on how many posts people have made. One badge for 30 posts, another badge for 100 posts etc.

I may consider the hidding posts thing but the badges thing I'm already doing it was a great idea though

 

[fisicx]

No it's not a good idea at all. People will not sign up to see content - they will just go elsewhere.

And badges mean nothing at all so you can bin these.

If you want the forum to work you need to post content and keep doing this. And you need a core of people to reply to the posts to create conversations. It is hard work and most of the new members will either be spammers, self promoters or trolls. Maybe 1 in 10 will become a useful member. So to get 1000 contributing members you may well need 10,000 people joining. and that can take a long time to achieve.

 

[Scott@KarmaContent]

Like @fisicx said, the best and easiest way is to pay people. I know someone who has built a large and popular forum and it's an uphill battle. As far as I know, they:

• Invited hundreds and hundreds of people by private message on another forum that was in a similar space (quickly got them banned but did get a few users)
• Paid a number of people to create content for a few months
• Paid a few people with popular blogs that were in the same space or similar to post about the forum and join it.
• Had regular rewards in place such as make 50 good quality posts in the next 30 days and they'd get £xx paid to them via Paypal.

 

[TomJ83]

No it's not a good idea at all. People will not sign up to see content - they will just go elsewhere.

And badges mean nothing at all so you can bin these.

If you want the forum to work you need to post content and keep doing this. And you need a core of people to reply to the posts to create conversations. It is hard work and most of the new members will either be spammers, self promoters or trolls. Maybe 1 in 10 will become a useful member. So to get 1000 contributing members you may well need 10,000 people joining. and that can take a long time to achieve.

Of course it's very important that the forum is alive and that it's busy with conversations. But from a UX point of view, a gamified system with for example badges can improve the UX. It's not only important to get people to the forum but also to incentivize them to continue using the forum.

 

[fisicx]

And have the trophies on this site incentivised you?

I’ve used and moderated many fora over the years and trophies and badges have made zero difference on any of them. Unless the member is an excitable teenager.

 

[TomJ83]

You have plenty of experience in the forum world. No doubt about it. But how would it be able for you to measure if the gamification made an impact or not? The gamification features might have been there when you started moderating the forums Then it wouldn't be possible for you to make a comparison. Before vs after.. Or perhaps you were a moderator when the changes were introduced and you could notice that no change was made whatsoever.

 

[fisicx]

The gamification features might have been there when you started moderating the forums Then it wouldn't be possible for you to make a comparison. Before vs after.. Or perhaps you were a moderator when the changes were introduced and you could notice that no change was made whatsoever.

I've been there before and after badges and trophies were introduced and I've seen the analytics. Nobody cares. It makes zero difference if you have the things or you don't.

 

[DamagedShadows]

No it's not a good idea at all. People will not sign up to see content - they will just go elsewhere.

And badges mean nothing at all so you can bin these.

If you want the forum to work you need to post content and keep doing this. And you need a core of people to reply to the posts to create conversations. It is hard work and most of the new members will either be spammers, self promoters or trolls. Maybe 1 in 10 will become a useful member. So to get 1000 contributing members you may well need 10,000 people joining. and that can take a long time to achieve.

I'm still doing the badges thing xD and I'll definitely try posting content

 

[TomJ83]

In the beginning you could visit different forums in the same niche and look at what topics and discussions are hot. Then you could start new threads based on what's popular. The reason I suggest this is that you can't always expect your members to create interesting threads.

 

[DamagedShadows]

In the beginning you could visit different forums in the same niche and look at what topics and discussions are hot. Then you could start new threads based on what's popular. The reason I suggest this is that you can't always expect your members to create interesting threads.

That's not a bad idea

 

[fisicx]

It’s a pointless idea, all you are doing is replicating an existing topic, one that will already be indexed and ranked.

Similar or complementary threads may work but it’s still going to take a long time to any sort of traction.

 

[TomJ83]

Why is it pointless? He should deliver what people want and taking inspiration from what's popular and what people actually want shouldn't be seen as pointless. As with the ranking, the other threads will certainly have a higher ranking but does it mean that OP won't be ranked and won't be seen as an alternative in the search results? Then it's a thing beyond just ranking. When people are already on his forum, wouldn't it be good if there is interesting threads and discussions?

 

[fisicx]

It’s pointless because the thread are popular on that forum with their specific members.

A new forum with a different set of members will have a different set of criteria.

So while you might get some ideas about forum structures and topics the new forum needs to be different.

As an example. There are successful forums for game titles. Creating a new forum with the same game titles and topics just isn’t going to work as it adds no value.

 

[TomJ83]

If you copy/replicate everything from the other forum then it's pointless because as you say the thread is popular on that particular forum with their specific members. But to take inspiration from something and see what's popular or not, and then create something out of it, that shouldn't be seen as pointless.

 

[DamagedShadows]

I'm going to give it a shot atleast, not saying I'll remake it exact but I will look and see what I can get inspiration from maybe create something similar yet unique. Though if anyone has a different or better idea feel free to share it maybe something can replace this idea entirely or maybe tweak it a bit

 

[fisicx]

Until you tell us more about forum, the type of content and the target member it’s difficult to offer the right sort of advice.

 

[TomJ83]

I mentioned earlier on this thread that you could hide some content so people have to sign up to see the content. I'm not sure if that will actually bring you more posts, it might give you more members however. But the question is how likely it will be for them to actually write posts rather than just read what they were looking for. Another suggestion is to allow guest posting. Then you remove barriers from people so it becomes easier for them to make posts on your forum. This could be exploited by spammers who will spread links to sites where they flog their stuff, but if it becomes an issue then you can disable the feature rather than excluding the suggestion altogether.

 

[DamagedShadows]

I mentioned earlier on this thread that you could hide some content so people have to sign up to see the content. I'm not sure if that will actually bring you more posts, it might give you more members however. But the question is how likely it will be for them to actually write posts rather than just read what they were looking for. Another suggestion is to allow guest posting. Then you remove barriers from people so it becomes easier for them to make posts on your forum. This could be exploited by spammers who will spread links to sites where they flog their stuff, but if it becomes an issue then you can disable the feature rather than excluding the suggestion altogether.

I'm going to do what this site does and not allow posting of links till an x amount of time/posts. Where your idea does sound like a good idea their would be a bunch of issues with this unfortunately. Really I'm just trying to figure out how to keep users on cuz when they hop on the site and their isn't anyone to talk too really chances are they will just leave I would think. I'm also adding in minigames to hopefully help with this

 

[DamagedShadows]

You can create new updates and features within your site

That's kinda obvious but not at all what I'm getting at, thanks though

 

[Alexander Sadlier]

Pay for clicks from Google?

 

[Zoe Williams]

Hey!

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