Retaining new members

[FlyingJesus]

As you may well know if you've been hanging around the feedback section this week, there's been talk of forum membership declining and ways to improve on that. Had some fairly heated discussion about how to bring in new members, but frankly after looking through some of the stats I don't think that's the true issue - rather, it's more important that we give the new members we're already getting something to talk about so they stick around. Thought it best to make a new thread rather than posting all this in the current one as it's not really the same topic.
I'd say we're still #1 by far in terms of membership and traffic, so I don't see that as the biggest issue we face. Let's have a look see -


http://www.statsaholic.com/clubhabbo.net+habboxforum.com
(What the hell happened in January/February?)
Tried getting post per day stats for both but CH isn't on any other stats site I could find, not that I looked very hard, and I cba going through their member pages unless I really have to.

As for us...
4 new members today so far, 12 yesterday. Of those 16 only 5 posted at all, three of whom only posted once and the most having 4 posts. Only 15 of this month's 233 new members have gone over 10 posts while 157 of them haven't posted a single thing.



Looking at the first and last bars on each of these (ie: today and this time last year) we can see that membership isn't actually all that different but post count has massively decreased.

Clearly we have enough people joining but need much more to keep new members not only interested, but also comfortable. I'll be the first to admit to not being the most welcoming of people (not just because I don't spam up the welcome threads with a generic smiley post) but to a new member on a forum of this size I'm sure it can be quite daunting in general.

I haven't really got a solution that I can think of right now so I'm just laying out the foundation and you lot can hopefully build something on it. Got to be a group effort really, this is about the community so it's not something that can easily be sorted out just by tweaking the forum settings and other technical stuff so if you have a plan get involved

[Nixt]

Excellent post, Thomas. It's nice to see some cold hard facts that reflect what problems we are having. You're right though, it is difficult to think of ways we can retain these members that don't seem to be posting. I agree that community is an issue in the fact that certain members aren't so welcoming. I can't really think how we might solve this though! See, we can all comment on what's going wrong but it is very difficult to provide solutions. I will most certainly have a think about it though and see what I can come up with.

[nvrspk4]

Hey,

Its a good point you made, and I like that you are going with facts that are in short supply.

But I'm curious about your new member things...because vBulletin doesn't agree. Maybe its broken but from the user registration in AdminCP this is what I get for the past few days:



I agree we have a problem with engaging new users in the community. I think it has a lot to do with the exclusive attitude a lot of our users have. I'm sure you've seen posts where people's points were considered valueless based on their join date (comments about rl things or Habbo things, not Habbox things because they have a point in that instance.) Also our community quite frankly isn't very tolerant of noobs.

The people who com on here typin lyk dis get laughed at. HabboxForum is very unique in that was in that our members tend to communicate legibly (plenty of people use chatspeak but do it deliberately, almost satirically.) We were ALL noobs at one point and typed like that - the difference is people were more understanding about it back then than they are now.

Another issue I think we're having is just that we're not drawing as many Habbo users in. That's just something we need to work on with our departments, drawing more users in.

Keeping them is also an issue but we need to change the community attitude for that, and that's something that is unlikely to be successful when done from a management level.

[e5]

Reason post count decreases is because we get told off for posting pointlessly for tinyyyyyyy little things tbh

[FlyingJesus]

But I'm curious about your new member things...because vBulletin doesn't agree. Maybe its broken but from the user registration in AdminCP this is what I get for the past few days:

Is that the figures you get for how many people have signed up on those days? Mine were just from the members list sorted by join date, so maybe a lot have already been banned or something Not sure, but you're right that doesn't seem to match up

The people who com on here typin lyk dis get laughed at. HabboxForum is very unique in that was in that our members tend to communicate legibly (plenty of people use chatspeak but do it deliberately, almost satirically.) We were ALL noobs at one point and typed like that - the difference is people were more understanding about it back then than they are now.

This has always been one of the biggest problems I've seen in the community. I know for a fact that when I first joined I typed like that satirically as you said because that was the done thing at the time, but even then when everyone was doing it you still got the odd smartmouth posting "try typing in English I can't understand you" in every thread, and especially as the users here are getting older now I think that's often what happens because people want to look mature when possible. Just a human flaw really

Keeping them is also an issue but we need to change the community attitude for that, and that's something that is unlikely to be successful when done from a management level.

You mentioned earlier the problem of the way we have this "exclusive attitude", and I'd entirely agree but think maybe we could use that to help the situation. In the forum's history there have been plenty of secular activity from the old spam crew and the Runescape fanatics who used to invade each other's area every now and then to KKK and whatever various rivals have sprung up and all the other more general divides (new spam, tech kids, Habbo players, graphics... just basically divides based on where you spend most of your time here). What I'd suggest is something that's come up before but not been implemented - more groups that people can actually join.
Currently we only have pixel artists and IT crowd as public member groups, which doesn't really do a lot for bringing people together as far as I know because they're rather too general. I'm not at all suggesting the system CH have where anyone can make any stupid group like "we like food", but allowing people to apply for having a group of like-minded friends could be to the benefit of the community. Of course, it sounds like it would just further ostracise new members who aren't part of a group, but the reality is that people like being accepted and like being part of something, so even a "new members" group could be made so they at least can get to know the users that are going to grow to be their peers, and when they're no longer so new they'll have whatever friends they've made there to make a new group (or stick around to welcome the even newer people if they so wish).

The truth of humanity is that no matter how much you try to be individual and promote individuality, we always look for a way to connect with others and it feels good when you do. HxSS is a popular and very successful example of this - the teams are still up on group memberships page btw - so a community driven group system could if left unabused and properly managed help strengthen the forum's sense of belonging

[Ekalb]

Could go for some good competitions like back in the old days...

[Inseriousity.]

Could go for some good competitions like back in the old days...

If you could go into further detail, maybe we would.

I agree there are various cliques (spam, forum, graphics, all the ones flyingjesus mentioned basically) in the forum and it is normally very hard for a newbie to get into these. As the average age of Habbox increases, topics are becoming more and more for the older community. Would a Year 7-9 really want to post in a topic on Personal Statements, for example?

[The Professor]

Yeah, there are a lot of underutilised featues that VB introduced in that update ages ago (I remember the groups thing and there was some social networking stuff that we never bothered to implement). People just need more reason to come and try and get into the exclusive community (I don't think that's a bad thing at all btw, you always have to earn your place in a group by making the effort to get on with the people you want to join in with), and in the era of social networking where facebook has everything and its dog, expecting people to just come for a text based forum is very old style thinking. Its all about the extras!

[Jordy]

After reading FlyingJesus/Nvrspk4's posts I've had a little thought on it. Pretty much all Habboxforum members sign up as Habbo users, past and present. Almost everyone signed up to Habboxforum cause of the Habbo related forums and that still seems to be the case.

The negativity in the Habbo related forums could be an issue with older members tending to take the piss out of others because of things like addiction, taking it too seriously and needing to get a life. It's mainly the people who no longer play Habbo going into the Habbo related forums to jeer at these people.

I've brought it up in the past how this goes on but it was always pretty much ignored but I'd certainly look into that. The forums source of new members is Habbo, so make sure the Habbo sections are all good and entertaining for them and regulate all the petty arguments and things there which could be off-putting to the newer members. And once you've sorted the Habbo related sections, they'll slowly role into the other sections therefore keeping the forum sustainable.

[Grig]

Hey,

Its a good point you made, and I like that you are going with facts that are in short supply.

But I'm curious about your new member things...because vBulletin doesn't agree. Maybe its broken but from the user registration in AdminCP this is what I get for the past few days:

Just to clarify on the issue of the 13th of October was a challenge for the HabboxLive team to get referals, thus the sudden spike in members during this day, so no, nothing was broken!

As for the issue of getting new members to stay, it is difficult to say why they sign up and don't stay in the first place, maybe that is a thing to find out before we start jumping to conclusions? Maybe more promotion of the real life sections could do, as most people would think well this is a Habbo fansite forum, I might as well go to somewhere else that specialises in real life disucssion.