Community: Improve your registration & posting rates in 4 simple steps - 3.0x & 3.5x

[Ted S]

This article and its associated code was last updated on May 28th, 2006. This modification now works as a vb product plugin.

The out of the box vBulletin style does not have a robust method of informing users about their current activity status or user level. As a result, guests entering on a page other than the homepage (which is most often the case) have no idea what a forum is about. Additionally, there is no visible status indicator for users making it hard for users to know their account status. Unactivated users may be uncertain why they can’t post, and new members may not be certain where to start.

To help solve these problems I have created a 4-part set of conditionals to better introduce members to your community while pushing them to register, activate or post. The default templates are just that, default – I highly encourage you to tweak the language and functions to meet the needs of your actual community environment.

Modifications/ Instructions:
Template edits: 2
Plugins: 1 (adds 4 phrases and 1 template)

This template hack should take under 15 minutes to implement and customize.

About the versions:
- The default version of this plugin adds messages near the top of the page in the most visible place possible.
- The vbSEO version of this plugin incorporates a minor change to the welcome headers and pushes them down into the navbar area.

Both versions have the same options and configuration settings.

Details on how it all works:
Step One: Turning lurkers into Members
After looking at my own referral statistics it was evident that almost all of my traffic was coming in through subpages from Google or other search engines. This raised an immediate concern as I realized that vBulletin 3.5 only contains a welcome message on the forum homepage. While it may be evident to any forum admin what a forum is about and why you should register I would imagine that a lot of users in a non-technical area might have no clue what my site was about or how they could join. Therefore it seemed important to move the welcome message to every page and to customize it to speak out about the exact community the user was visiting.

Step Two: Making Users Confirm their Account
Just because a user isn't confirmed doesn't mean they don't want to use your site; often time a user signs up with the wrong email address, forgets to confirm or their spam filter blocks the welcome email. Whatever the reason I found that many registered users were coming back to my site, logging in but not doing anything because they simply didn't know what was wrong with their accounts. Going off the header I had created for lurkers/ new users I added another snippet of code to inform unconfirmed users that they were indeed unconfirmed and to give them a link to get their confirmation codes and another link directly to support if they ran into problems.

Step Three: Get non-posting users to post
Another chronic problem faced by many forums is insuring users post after registering. Looking at other forums that I have personally registered for I began to realize that many new users, especially former lurkers would complete the registration process but not post because of the hurtles involved in getting into the board (registering, confirming). As a way to combat this part of the problem I added a third and final header for users with no posts. This header reminds the user about the forum and entices them to go to the intro & greets forum where they can post directly and get involved in the community.

Step Four: Getting inactive users to become more active
Because many members post once or twice and then go off and merely "lurk" I decide it would be wise to add a fourth and final welcome header to remind these users to come back and make another post. While not as powerful of a message this is certainly helpful in keeping your posting rate up and since it only appears after 14 days of inactivity most users should not have a problem with the message.

The results:
Since speculation is really nothing more than a guess, the real value of welcome headers only became evident after I evaluated a complete month worth of statistics. In just thirty days my own forum increased posting rates by over 3,500 posts a month. New user registration went up by over 250 users which translated into nearly 10 new users a day. User activity went up 50% and my welcome/ intro & greets forum has exploded from 10 posts a day to pages of post every day. Skip forward around a year and many sites have begun running their own version of welcome headers with fantastic results. For my own site, daily user activity has risen by well over 250% to more than 2,500 users per day, registrations have increased by more than 60%, and retention it at an all time high. In all areas that the welcome headers targeted we have seen remarkable improvements both in our short term and the long term growth goals.

But enough about why, give it a shot and please let me know how your results turn out.

Update: 05/28/06 - Updated instructions and added vbSEO version
Update: 11/22/05 - Remove excess html tags causing xhtml validation issues
Troubleshooting / FAQ:

Q: What versions of vBulletin does this code work with?

A: This code has been tested on 3.5. There is a 3.0.x version which I can provide if requested.

Q: Does this work with other forum programs like phpbb or ib?

A: Yes and no. This hack is for vBulletin only but there are ported versions for other programs, search this forum to find them.

Q: I am uncertain what to remove from the forumhome template:

A: All you need to remove from the forum home template is the current welcome block well commented and located at the top of the file. Using the internal template searching tool you should be able to easily locate and remove the code.

Q: I don't see any messages?

A: Be sure you have placed the code $welcomeheaders in your header template.

Special thanks to Jugo at vbulletin.org for providing the vB 3.5 product plugin.

These instructions apply to vBulletin 3.5 only, other forum systems may have their own template systems.

[Ted S]

For anyone using the older version of this article (3 steps) I highly recommend you remove the template changes and switch to this version as it's both easier to maintain and has more features.

[KeithMcL]

Thanks for the update Ted. I plan on implementing these changes over the coming days. Hopefully they'll help as much on my forums as they did on yours

[Sniper]

thanks for the update! will make the changes soon!

[Kristy]

Now that's what I call a "post"

[Scribbller]

Great article there Ted, Ill try and implement this on IPB

[wizard1974uk]

Great article ted I'll implement these ideas on any future projects.

[Ted S]

Scribbller,
If you find a way to do it please let us know for the rest of the IPB community!

[Sniper]

You've missed out the welcome_ads phrase! which should include the advert code...

[DaveMo]

Great article, and lots to think about and/or implement! Thanks.

[Quincy Wisdom]

Hey there. Thank you so much for this!

It works like a charm! I just need to tweak a couple things, but I really think this is going to help, as less than 5% of my guests enter in through the main page.

Thank you so much!

[Sniper]

this had strange effect on my forums, as new users tend to post a thread in the Introduction forums with their computer problems!

[dcallan]

Nice article, but how could I implement something like this but keep the first_visit message in the same place as it is.

[Ted S]

Dcallan,
Do you simply want to place the ads differently or do you want to leave the first_visit message so it is completely unchanged and only appears on forumhome?

[biggazillakilla]

Can't say for sure, but after implementing this code, my registrations and posts are way up. I've done a few extra promotions (such as emailing my 50,000 subscribers and giving away free prizes), but I've also gotten 1,000 new registrants in less than three weeks (since I've added this code). Coincidence? Probably not. I think the friendly, customized prompts really help.

[Ted S]

biggazillakilla thats awesome!

[KeithMcL]

Were the 50,000 subscribers already forum members?

[biggazillakilla]

Quote:

Originally Posted by KeithMcL Were the 50,000 subscribers already forum members?

Whew, no. I've been building that list for years, since I started my site. My forum's only two years old, and I've got only 11,000 forum members.

[KeithMcL]

So emailing the 50,000 people on your list might have created the 1,000 new registrations and not the changes?

[biggazillakilla]

It's possible, of course. But in the past when I've sent out newsletters to my subscribers, I haven't gotten such a spike in new registrations. Furthermore, now one month later, I'm still getting new subscribers at a pretty good clip.

Again, I'm really just speculating.