Converting forum guests to members, suggestions please?

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Fergal

Madly Diligent
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At anyone time, my business forum generally has about 10 times more guests than members on the site. This ratio is quite high, other business forums often have an average of about 4 guests, for every member online. Having guests on the forum is great and most welcome. However, it would be great if more of them joined and became members.

Do you have any suggested improvements that we could make to encourage these guests to register?

Do you notice anything about the site that might be discouraging guests from joining?

Thanks!
 
I'd usually have an incentive available to make them join. Such ideas can include "register to remove these ads" or "register and you can participate in our contest" etc.

Nevertheless, there will always be guests browsing the forum, even if its the smallest amount. Sometimes these "guests" are just search engine bots.
 
Another thing I notice is that you have almost 40,000 posts and over 17,000 members. That's a lot of members that haven't posted or have only made one or two posts. On my old forum, I had over 40k posts, but only 450 members... It looks like the people that join your forum are mostly lurkers. That should be addressed.
 
The total of guests online can be quite inaccurate. Some forum softwares count search bots as guests, some softwares detect more search bots compared to others and also alot of guests are bots trying to sign up or post. They can also be lesser known search bots or general troublesome bots aswell. I would say about half to 3 quarters of the guests (if not more) are bots that you don't want to sign up. Also different sites have different online listings also. Some show users active over the past 5 minutes while some show users online over the past 2 hours. Basically what i am getting at is to not look too much into the number of guests and compare it to guests on other similar forums.

There are of course going to be be real guests that visit throughout the day and i just think the best things is content. You need to give the users something they will want to read and want to make them return. If it makes them want to return then they are more then likely going to set up an account. Once they set up an account you are in touch with them so to speak. You can give them little nudges with mass emails or mass PM's and that can get them active. Basically good content = more users = more people you can contact in order to keep activity going. Good content is something that takes time also. You can't just sit down and type a load of stuff and be done with it. It has got to come from users aswell and that will come over time as you slowly build activity.
 
In truth there isn't much you can do... I doubt many of them could be convinced to join and leave after viewing the index page.

If you have Analytics it would be worth checking where the majority of your traffic comes from.
 
Thanks Shotgun, I do like the register for the contest idea.

DarkRaven, we get quite a few members who join, make a few posts, get their business questions answered and then don't return or help others with their business questions. However a lot of those "members" are spammers who have been banned. I don't know why, but business forum seem to attract a lot more spammers than other types of forums.

Thanks Fowler, you make a lot of great points there. We have a lot of good content on the site and will continue to build that as much as we can.

Sbfc when you mention "where the majority of your traffic comes from" are you talking about geographically or otherwise?
 
I believe business forums attract spammers because they think because you discuss business, you will automatically buy diet pills, viagra, etc.

Check to see how many hits are from bots.
 
Fergal said:
Sbfc when you mention "where the majority of your traffic comes from" are you talking about geographically or otherwise?
Click to expand...

I meant from Search Engines/FP etc but if you can view them geographically, then that could be useful as well 😛
 
@Fergal
I am struggling with the same problem as well. i have around 100 guests but not many registrants.

btw, your logo is very good. nice job.
 
agentmanningctu maybe they're right 🙂

Thanks Sbfc, understanding and looking through stats and logs is something I need to become better at.

saintsinner, hopefully your contests will help you with that, I've replied to your contest thread.
 
I agree with what's been said above. My forum's guest count is REALLY inaccurate. If you look it says like 600 something but in reality I know it's a lot less, according to forum topsite I actually have fewer unique hits now than last year. Last year our guest thing usually only said 300 daily. I think a more accurate gauge is members logged on and daily number of posts.
 
Maybe a nice little register image under a notice? On the forumhome area, A lot of vBulletin built forums do this and it lists some features you get when you register.
 
Here is a sarcastic answer for you...
To turn guests into members, give them a big button
that says come inside and make it pink. Then they click it and it turns them into a member.
To do this you need to get some milk and some CoCo-Pops then mix them all together and then
eat it, it then turns you into a super hero which lets you do this.

But now for a proper answer, I would suggest having some competitions that don't require
much participation so things that don't involve real cash or something. Also I think having some
cool features like a chatbox, or a reputation/cash system would be fun and have like a shop so
users can buy permissions or something? I would suggest just having things that give the users
something to do. Also try start getting some discussion going in general chat related things rather
then business. I know that's what your forum is about but more people will join knowing that the
discussions not be as serious all the time. I hope this helps you out 🙂
 
Under Reaction said:
Here is a sarcastic answer for you...
To turn guests into members, give them a big button
that says come inside and make it pink. Then they click it and it turns them into a member.
To do this you need to get some milk and some CoCo-Pops then mix them all together and then
eat it, it then turns you into a super hero which lets you do this.

But now for a proper answer, I would suggest having some competitions that don't require
much participation so things that don't involve real cash or something. Also I think having some
cool features like a chatbox, or a reputation/cash system would be fun and have like a shop so
users can buy permissions or something? I would suggest just having things that give the users
something to do. Also try start getting some discussion going in general chat related things rather
then business. I know that's what your forum is about but more people will join knowing that the
discussions not be as serious all the time. I hope this helps you out 🙂
Click to expand...

:lol: @ your sarcastic answer, but I like your real answer though. And I agree, the more time you spend in general chat, the more that people who don't know anything about business forums will want to join in as well.
 
Well, as Fowler mentioned the best of them could be Bot's or Spiders, but try and have a page when guest's visit either have an option were you would reccommend them registering and what you offer and then staff and members reccommendations to joining the forum or they can skip but you know that they will regret it. Just a suggestion.
 
I have a similar problem Fergal. At some times, I can have 100 guests online. Granted a lot are bots but there are a few real people too. I don't think you want to force them to join such as having banner ads which disappear upon registration. There's no point in having a member which doesn't post. I've got 9,000 of those which I am going to delete soon once I warn the members. 40,000 posts and 1,000 members looks more impressive than 40,000 posts and 17,000 members. With 17,000 posts you are expected to be getting like 3,000+ posts a day, which clearly isn;t happening. Same with my forum, 10,000 members you would expect over 2,000 posts a day but it doesn't work like that. You just have to hope that a guest sees something they like and that they will oin because of it.
 
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