Tutorial: How did I increase engagement on my site?

[MapleOne]

On our site we call Threads Topics so keep that in mind before reading this post

I have found a way to increase traffic and thread participation and it seems to be working well. Have you noticed when someone is not logged in they see all active threads when they click New Posts but when logged in you see only New Posts. The problem with that is that members automatically mark the post read and come back to the same page NEW POSTS page and if they don't see anything new or of interest they click away from the site. Often they don't see the other threads that may have skipped inadvertently so engagement suffers.

On our site New Posts is called Active Topics (showing the last 30 days) and once in you have to click a secondary link called SHOW UNREAD to filter out the unread.

Yes I know it will get criticized by some here but I have found engagement has gone up quite a bit since that change was made so the proof is in the pudding.




Another change made is a search forum that shows the last years Topics (threads) that have had no answer or no engagement. The Yellow icon stays active all the time regardless if you have marked everything as read and the hope is that members click on a topic to reduce the number of unanswered topics (threads).

Does it work? Well all I can tell you the number of Topics (161) is substantially lower than the number I started with.






Another thing I did was remove the YOU MUST REGISTER TO POST link and replace it with a generic posting box when a guest reads a thread. They can type a response and will get a register screen when they click reply.

I find guests find this more instinctual and I had the highest monthly registrations to date since implementing this.


--------------------------------------------------

The site is running the standard skin but is highly modified, my object was and remains keeping the site as clean and clutter free as possible.

Any feed back post here, you can visit at DN.ca

Feel free to try out some of the features and setting, you will probably discover a lot of other unique new things.

 

[MapleOne]

I also simplified search quite a bit using Andy's add-ons but I added a direct message toggle switch where you can toggle back and forth between searching posts or direct messages. That button changes once clicked.

I use Andy's search because it searches down to 3 letters and because we talk about domains so a domain.ca has to be searchable with the dot and all that was done out of the box with Andy's search and the stock search did not do that for me.

 

[MapleOne]

Custom footer with tons of Quick Links

 

[MapleOne]

More quick links

 

[MapleOne]

Secondary setting links

 

[MapleOne]

Notice how all those links are tightly grouped together to make clicking them super easy

 

[MapleOne]

Direct message inbox with Inbox Navigation

 

[MapleOne]

Feel free to borrow any ideas, or fool around within the site.

I will try to answer any questions in how I achieved the look.

Please keep in mind the site is highly specialized to a small target audience so we will never have thousands of members but it attracts exactly the right like minded crowd which is in the same industry.

 

[Itworx4me]

I have been wanting to do this to my forum for a long time. Do the sponsors rotate?

 

[MapleOne]

I don't have enough to rotate but it's easily done with a script. I have them on the main index page as well.