The 6 stages to getting your web site audience to commit

The online community contributors journey



Why do individuals join online communities? How do we attract more people to our community? Just because you have a great blog engine it does not mean that anyone will use it. The answer to these questions is simple, its the same reason that some one commits to i.e. buys any product. It s because the product has been marketed to you. Unlike a physical product the online product is different, and the marketing has a close relationship to the technology. This is important for the architect, as they have to consider the marketing in the design. The potential community member takes a 6 stage journey from knowing nothing about the community to becoming a fully fledged contributor.

• Unawareness: If you havnt launched your product .. this is everyone in the world
• Awareness: These are the people who have seen an ad or look at page that has a x-link.
• Belief: These people could tell you what you product is, but are ambivalent.
• Attitude: these are the people who are about to find out about your product, they say things like "have you seen ..." or "what do you think of ..."
• Intention: These people say "Im going to join ... just as soon as I get a moment" they have probably been up to the site a few times, and may have been to many of your referees.
• Committed: these people have logged in, signed up and done your Chutpta, and importantly they have also commented on something, joined in or added some content.

Finally ...

• You need to keep the committed there so that they commit again and again.

In your design think about how you will measure each stage. The unaware is easy, its the number of people in who are "online" note that this number grows. The commiters is easy its the number of people who have made comments. The stages in the middle are tricky, and they are also specific to your product. As an architect think about which tools you will build into the design to record a metric against each stage.