Community Strategy Insights

The latest insights on community strategy, technology, and value by FeverBee’s founder, Richard Millington

Don’t Waste Real Estate On Newcomers

Richard Millington
Richard Millington

Founder of FeverBee

A lot of communities seem fond to do what CommunityOfSweden has done.

They waste valuable space with unncessary copy targeted at newcomers. 

This is especially painful when the categories are intuitive and self-descriptive. 

Screen shot 2012-03-09 at 11.17.12

There are three important lessons here.

1) Treat your real estate as sacrosanct. Don't waste it on pointless copy. If you can remove something, do it. The more copy you have, the less people read. Focus on the important things. You can test your copy and track how many people are clicking through, do this. 

2) Pay close attention to what you have above the fold on any page. Here it's clearly important to have all the forum categories above the fold. You also want to display the latest activity at any given time.

3) Don't target your website to newcomers. Regulars will know what each category is for. Newcomers should have an intuitive idea what a forum is and what 'myths about sweden' will be about without the extensive copy. When in doubt, always target your community at those that visit frequently as opposed to the newcomers.

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