To ride the gathering storm - GM Report
Quick report, to let you know what is going on.
Over the past week or so, I've been looking rather in depth at the Join process in our club. This was due to a few kinda important things that came to light. It's no surprise to any of us that the vast majority of our members who make it to knighthood are direct recruits, which is to say members who were asked by a friend to join. What is kinda shocking is how few non-recruited members make it that far.
Now, there's probably a couple reasons for that. Without an immediate guiding hand to help you through the process, it's easy to get lost. Terrifyingly easy. I've done this about a dozen times over the past week, just checking how it looks, seeing what's intuitive, what's easy, and really, what needs improving.
The first thing that stands out is the fact that we have about 600 or so unique website visits. EVERY DAY. Now, 92% or so of those are repeat visitors, which is to say 'members', in all likelihood. That still gives us about 50 people hitting our site on the daily that have never been here before.
That's some traffic that we need to capitalize on.
That's one of many reasons why I have (over the past few years, but especially the last few months) been encouraging people to post up bits of Star Wars news to the website. It not only keeps us up to speed, but it can help draw in more traffic.
The VERY first bit I did was to have Orv, schmexy gfxizing monster he is, orv us up a new 'join us' button. The old one was way too wordy, and the important part, the 'join us' part was way too small. That part is on the site now. Easy fix.
The next step is to streamline the join process. The first thing i noticed that a prospective member gets to see is a wall of text. Not very sexy. Kinda boring. They have to scroll down through all of that to even find the 'test of lore' link. As it turns out, that text was mostly a copy of the email that they get sent anyway. So I had James move the 'Take the Test of Lore' part higher on the page and upsize the font. This has already helped some people get the Test of Lore done.
The next part? Sexying the whole thing up. My staff and I have been working up a comic sort of thing that shows how a person finds the Brotherhood in character and works their way up. This resource can eventually get sliced up and used in the join process to help break up the scary walls of text that bore people to death.
Yes, we have made a bit more of a move to fiction-based in the DB, and that's an evolutionary thing. It's not like LucasArts is releasing new JK games every few years. But we can ease people into it, keep their attention longer and help them get into it a bit better, i think.
I'm also revisiting the 'grind path' discussion that was had a few months ago (and for a few years). Simply put, we need to do big changes, because what we're doing isn't good enough. We need to get a good number of new members into this club, to help make sure we're around long after all of us reading this have decided to retire.
On separate but related note, I wanted to give big kudos to the welcome wagon people. Under cloaked IPs and spoofed email addresses (and Justicar's knowledge), I was testing the rotation on the new member placement and figured I'd check to see how long the units would take to get in touch with the new members. I was thoroughly impressed with the results. The worst time I saw was about two hours. Not bad for requiring human intervention. The shortest time was Taldryan with a whopping Ten minute response time. Scholae was close behind with 13 minutes. That's great. Bloody great. As a result, I'm tossing Kierdagh and Koryn Dark Crosses, since these were the dudes that sent out the welcome wagon on those short times. Also, saw some promising and excited responses from people, trying to get these new members the info that they would have needed to get ranked up. Good stuff, from Scholae's 'New member's guide' PDF to Montresor's 'everybody welcome the new guy' email wagon.
That has been the focus for the past week and a half or so. Big moves coming in this field. Between a new streamlined join and journeyman experience and some big recruitment drive ideas Xantros is working toward, I am hopeful for a good crop of new members with the new films coming out.
And that's about all for tonight. Thanks again, everyone. Have fun.
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In regards to the SW news bit, oftentimes us regular member folk stumble across a news bit which we'd like to share but cant due to lack of newspage access. I don't know if this is possible, especially since the front page is already pretty busy with different links and all, but maybe have a part where it links to the subforum within which we can regularly post random SW news. That way regular members can post SW-related news and still have it linked to the main page.
The reason I suggest that link is because hardly anyone goes straight to the forums to see what's posted there; aside from the odd unit competition or run-on, the place is a ghost town.
That's a great idea. Socks, set that up!
Doesn't the forums draw traffic away from out main site? You draw attention to a facet of our club that maybe 5% of the club use when there is .not a run-on going on.
Focus on refining the join form (refining the wall of text you mentioned). Focus on highlighting the features of our club that make us different than any other online club; robes, lightsabers, character sheets. I can find a forum to role play on or get my Star Wars news from from wookipedia forums. You say you see the traffic we get, and it's probably accurate- people find the page on google or whatever, check the link and go "eh" because they have no idea WHAT we offer. It's the same argument we've had in the past- having the main page be for just DB-Unit related news, verses an RRS type feed, a blog, or a combination of those with a twitter feed to draw people in towards our main site.
This. It's also the reason I have (and still do) oppose opening a siloed blog site. If it's going to help the main site at all it has to tie in with the main page.
I personally (despite having news post access) have withheld from post star wars news on the site because I was afraid I'd be stepping on someone elses shoes, thinking that it was still someone specifics job to post random tid bits (the old site used to have a message telling you to forward that sort of news to the HRLD or someone, I don't remember now.)
Addressing the "we don't have access to post" issue, could we add an option for people to write up a post and submit it, but instead of it going direct to the news page it just has to get a quick "okay" from someone with news post access, just to check for formatting and that it isn't a double up, etc.
Another suggestion I would like to add: Perhaps we can create two small buttons after the rolling news banner, one that filters the newsfeed with Brotherhood reports, and one that filters by the usual Star Wars tidbits (set to reports by default.) I'm also a fan of Solari's idea, though like many other members, I would prefer to be able to filter out the 'important' stuff.
One of the main things I brought up in our Advertising Campaign entry was bringing back a Splash page to make life easy on a first time visitor.
Right now, what's the first thing you see...? This news post. Not really selling that we're this kickass Star Wars gaming and roleplaying club. And if my attention span lasts a few more seconds... er... I see this graphic of some angry dude... er... attention span dropping... er.... whatever, back to Google, didn't even spot the little "Join" hidden somewhere away up there in the top corner.
There's where I feel an entrance page would be more inviting, as currently the News is super interesting for us but not all that exciting for some dude who just happened across us by happenstance on Google and whose first impression just wants to be how super awesome all the cool stuff we do is.
My thought was that the people without news access would post to the forum, and then someone with the access would post it to the news site, not just leave it to live on the forums.
Might be a good way to sort out a new method for earning dss or such.
I do like the idea of having a 'db' and 'sw' news switch.
I agree with Vexatus that a moderately graphic heavy splash page for new visitors would possibly draw more people to join. We have a lot of cool graphics already, the comics, and the new comic stuff coming from Orv. Might be more enticing for people to stubble across us from a web search. Heck if there are any animators out there that may work too with the join process. Might be cool to have a video with join details in it. Just a thought.
1) Windos: If you see star wars news - just post it.
2) I Windos' idea of everyone having news access, just moderate it (with everyone that has access to post news as moderator)
3) Goat is spot on. I think a relatively quick first step would be to bring back a shiny splash page so that darkjedibrotherhood.com directs to that page rather than the news page.
As an alternative until another fix is offered, why don't leaders visit their unit mailers and drop a head's up and let their members know if they spot something, to just sling a link up the chain and allow their leaders to post it? Negligible amount of work for good returns.
The first step is to not have some DC members get upset when others post SW news that they think is "there's" to post...some people have gotten offended for posting news that they felt was part of their job description. In this day and age, better to open things up and have an active news page, rather than keeping it contained to one person. You know what's then good? Using reports to consolidate all of those news and info links that have been posted, in case anyone missed them the first time around. Ta da :P
Anyway, I agree about the splash page. Don't go overboard with things, but a well-designed initial splash page, which perhaps has links to an "About Us" page (that needs to be just about perfect) and the main page.
I've been toying with the idea of a 'Stuff we saw this week' news post that gathers all of the links and news bits members find over the week (I have a growing list from IRC and my own discovery), and having a board especially for that would be perfect for consolidating it all. Having a link to the main page for it would be great in theory, though I worry about adding clutter to the brand new layout that is supposed to support simplicity and be mobile-friendly.
I think Wally and Solari are right on the money about keeping the attention on the main website though. In searching for a new forum system I had considered a nice portal that could allow for blogs and such but eventually I scrapped the idea because it would detract from the main site and history has given us a painful lesson in sub-sites; mainly that they rarely work out.
I do think that if we are doing a social media campaign that it should be promoted on the main page somehow. Other sites highlight their tweets and such but relinking the same stuff that's on the main page is a waste, or linking to other websites like starwars.com articles would again take folks away from the db site. Maybe just the social media icons and links would suffice.
Also I'd like to suggest a multiple choice box or text field for the join form so that new members can specify where they heard about the DB, i.e. Twitter, FB, an RPG forum etc. since they might not come directly from those sites and be recorded in web analytics.
A News/Report Tab is a great solution.
I like the idea of a splash page for non-logged in members, and no splash once you've signed up/logged in. I thought that was an out-of-date webdesign concept/was frowned upon with the emphasis on more streamlined/minimalist design that's been popping up lately. Do we risk coming off as too lame (i guess?) for having it? I personally don't think so, but I like a lot of lame/dorky things.
Solari's idea works well. Any member can submit a ticket, just like a medal or competition, and it goes to a queue. Xantros (most likely, and of course GM, DGM, Voice, HRLD and what ever other DCers are responsible enough to do so) could then just press an approval button that would let it go through to the site. We should have this step in place to make sure members posts are well written, don't have broken links, and look presentable.
This "switch" concept would keep traffic regulate traffic to our site while also keeping those who want the information and those who just want to know about club reports have the choice.
I think a front page with a focus on marketing (for logged-out users) is a phenomenal idea. Something visually stunning with a prominent CTA (Call to action) that baits someone to join.
Once you are logged in, our front page should have the content that we need as members...but also become more interesting. Getting someone to sign-up isn't the only place we need to make an impact. Once we've enticed someone to sign-up, we need to keep them here. Our news waterfall page needs a redesign to make it more visually impressive. Our news waterfall is intimidating - there's too much text and not enough visual oomph. There's a few things that need some love:
Our About page needs to move back out of the Wiki and onto the main site and updated.
I'm a fan of the gigaom.com option!
+1 to everything Orv said.
Ohh. All ideas from Goat's "i'm lovin' it" campaign document :D
I should sue you all for copyright thingies!!!!!!!!!!!! ;)
That. Or just have a link on the news/main site which goes directly to the specific subforum, possibly titled "Latest SW News" or somesuch.
Or that.
Or both: one would liven up the forums and draw more communication to that part of our site, while the other is flashier and shows visitors to the site that we do in fact keep track of SW, and not just live in our own little world.
What might work nicely is 'categories' for news posts. So, say, DC reports, Clouse reports, general SW news posts, etc. You could choose what categories you wanted on your main page feed, perhaps, and non-logged-in members would have specific categories we wanted people to see on it.
I think I read the word "Animators" around here somewhere. I have a few neat 3D and 2D assets I can piece together in After Effects and Premiere Pro (If you need an example of a quick animation I did for the Crusades, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tswfx7A6QX8 (This was pieced together from scratch in a week.) If its at all possible to add a video player in the splash screen (Such as an embed from Youtube,) I would be all for it. I have a 3D DJB logo around somewhere that I could animate in After Effects for our purposes. Contact me if you want to share ideas.
Orv, I love most of your three suggestions, but I'm on the fence with the third one (Excerpt of the article.) If its really well done as to not appear cumbersome, I have no problem with it. The gigaom.com option is pretty awesome.
Orv's ideas about having more images is definitely something I think would brighten up and make the front page more inviting. Vaar's point about "categories" is interesting too, and makes me think about how a lot of news pages have the news itemised into various tabs that you'd open to get the focus on, e.g. [Insert Clouse], but with the main feed containing the stories that are trending and seen as most interesting for a wide audience to want to read.
Marick's point about making it different for logged in/non-logged in is very much what I imagined the modern "splash" approach, yeah. When I was putting that Advertising Campaign thingy together, I had actually had in mind one of the previous www.swtor.com layouts, where if you weren't logged in, you got a big flashy page with all the sales pitch and trailers and sweet ass stuff to entice you to part with your money and sign up. Whereas if you were already a member, you went straight to the news feed with the latest patch information and stuff that as an existing player you'd be interested in, rather than the subscription options.
I like Orv's image/story example, with a lead in to the article.
We mentioned earlier doing a Weekly Rollup News Post. I like this idea, but it only works if people visit the News Page and read it. Couldn't we just automate an email to send a listing of all the News to each of the Unit Mailing Lists? Or send it to all registered members and allow an "Opt-Out" option in the Admin Menu? Reaching out to people with what we're doing as a Club might be just what we need to push someone who signed up, but never really got involved, to come back and give it a shot. News summaries straight to an email is convenient too, and the News Intros let people see if something in the article might be interesting to them.
Oh, those sound cool Val, yeah. Like the sorta thing you often get from TOR to entice you to come back and try out all the cool stuff you've been missing.
If they could be made a bit graphical that'd be nice too (though I assume too hard to do weekly) but it'd have been pretty sweet during something like the Crusade or the GJW to have had an email, say, each month advertising all the fun stuff going on the way an MMO does a roundup email about all its recent patch add-ons.
I like the idea of a toggle between brotherhood and star wars news, but I have mixed feelings with categories. If we kept these to a minimum, I would be in support of the idea. The last thing I would want to see is confusion between which news post fits in which category, where it might end up in the wrong location.