Have we lost momentum?

[dons]

Been a member for quite some time. New site is driving me away! Having said that I run a bbq forum that one of my techie buddies said needed to be upgraded. Upgrade completed and participation is down 80%. Think the developers of these forum platforms have gone too far! Not sure what I can add to make it better other than, I liked the old formats better Sometimes new and improved is not "new and improved".

Sorry for the negative post!

 

[bcavalli]

No offense taken.   Change is difficult fo most people and it takes time to adjust.  If you have been following the announcements we have a brand new site in development.  It's nearly completed and being tested.  A lot of time and energy has into it with all the functions that have been requested.  I appreciate your input.  

The other aspect is we are a nonprofit organization who assists others in a lot of ways.  Not all visitors are registered users or paid members who can post on our site (you must be a registered user to create a post).  Most of our traffic come from people across the Country seeking information about our hobby.  Here is a screen shot of our current traffic since Sept 2nd at 11am when we installed our tracking software.

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[elfloyd]

You need to charge up your iPad!

 

[bcavalli]

Lol.

 

[roberthu526]

To be honest I almost didn't want to come back because of the new forum. I think there are still places to be fixed but at least it serves the very basic purpose.

hope it gets better and better.

 

[elfloyd]

Visits and visitors apparently remain strong, but new content and posts seem to be very low. I counted 23 posts in the past 24 hours. I know it's Sunday, but this probably holds true to most days. How do we tackle this aspect and motivate engagement from current members?

 

[bcavalli]

We have a third party developer working on customizing a new formatted site. It took about a week to locate the right team and the design is theurs. They are going to customized it to fit our needs. They are already working on it so Im really excited to get it complteed asap. I think this will alleviate all the issues we have and will really help with activity. Since we changed over the past month+ we have picked up 38 new paid members and over 500 registered users.

 

[danh]

I think the tapatalk issue seems pretty real. People want their phone to alert them of updates and stuff like that. I've never used it before so I don't know. I tend to prefer all of my forums on my laptop as opposed to my phone. I sit at a desk all day though, so that's fine.



Otherwise, I really think the issues are just it's not the same as it used to be. It's definitely not. For me, I am certain that as I keep using the site I'll become more and more comfortable with it.



Why is the last 30 days the same as 365? I guess because that's just for this site? Can you get the total for the last 365 days that the old site was up?

 

[bcavalli]

We started tracking the data on Sept 2nd so it only includes infomation after that date.   The design being put together will really help those who like the look and feel of vbulletin and xenoforo.  Its being custom designed in CSS.  With reply to email now added, those who prefer to not be on the site constantly to respond to pivate messages and posts can now just respond in the email notification they receive.  It will automatically create the post or message on the site.  

 

[seth the wine guy]

This tracker is a big downgrade from before. I liked the Google Analytics info that could be pulled from the admin panel. It told the REAL story. How long people were staying in the site rather than just a "hit" or "visit". Post interactions, thread creations, and on and on. (Proabably more info than people want to know!) I could view and compare history going back as long as the site had been up and see what events were going on with the club at that time to see the site activity connections.

It was an invaluable tool to understand member behaviors and actions based off decisions made for the club or understanding how different promotional efforts were working or not working.

But, bottom line is, with no new content being created, site hits period will continue to decline with old threads and info becoming less relevant. Hot topic of MH vs LED from a few years ago isn't now...

I also think Facebook has simply replaced what this site used to do, but, only better. I can have a reef discussion with Sanjay, Kevin Cohen, and couple facilitators of the country's top public reef aquariums in the same thread on a given day. Or, I can try and comb through info from come and go hobbyist.

I applaud your efforts Brett. You had to try SOMETHING to try and get things going. Website seemed the logical first stop...

 

[Adam]

Thanks for a nice more impartial post Seth!

We still have Googe Analytics although I'm not sure it's working properly since the whole site was moved to https. The developer will be updating the page with Google soon. The backend of the site does give a lot of the same info but not as in depth as Google. We did make the switch to the new site prematurely but once that happened it was very hard to go back.

The issues faced by us have been a little unprecedented. Since you were involved with the board there has been a lot of information not passed on. I'm not sure exactly the where, when, why and who. It seems to be accumulative from board to board over the last several years. We have pretty much had to build everything from scratch. From the nonprofit status, gmail accts, taxes, insurance, web hosting... there were redundancies in the companies were were paying too.

Now the website. To say it's been challenging is an understatement. We will be rolling out the updated format in the upcoming week. I think we will get 95% of what everybody wants. There will be a few things that we can't do at this time. Tapatalk is a big one we won't have. Quoting posts will be a little different but I think everything else will be covered. There's no doubt there are some deficiencies with WordPress in comparison to traditional forums but there are also a whole new world of things we can do that the other platforms can't do. People will be able to directly link their Facebook feeds directly into their acct here. Sponsors will be able to have their own stores, also linked to their Facebook page. With the loss of Tapatalk we do have something that will fill a little of that void. When your subscribed to a thread and get an email alert for a responce to that thread you can reply to it directly from the email you get and it will be posted on the site.

I know people are frustrated and most don't like change but we're right on the cusp of getting this where we all want it. I'm sure there will be those that will not be happy no matter what we do but I think we'll have something much more up to date and serviceable than where we came from. Once the update is live we will continue to add new features and functionality trying to make the best user experience we can.

Brett has been working tirelessly to get all this done and I'm not sure where we'd be without him. Not many people have the time to devote to the club that has does.

Thanks again for your post!

(Please excuse any typos as this is from my phone )

 

[bcavalli]

Thanks Seth.  Your comments are very much appreciated.  As Adam said google analytics will give us all data you described and much more.  I just post little tiny snippet of the tracking we have now.  its really incredibly useful information.  Were very excited about the new upgrade coming this week.   Its a huge update to what we currently use and we will have our ARC facebook page running live on our site.  We have so much potential and am very excited to get our sponsor stores up and running.