Help Guides

[JohnCh]

I've updated the top-level navigation to include a direct link to the Help Guides and also created new help guide articles pulled from the FAQ to increase discoverability for common issues.  If you are having trouble figuring out how to do something on the forum or why something isn't working as you expect (e.g. How do I upload a photo?  Why is my photo upside down? Why can't I send a PM?) please check the Help Guides first.  Most issues mentioned in threads or via direct message to me are covered there and using them will result in much faster resolution for you. If the issue isn't covered there, then please don't hesitate to contact me so I can address.

 

Thanks,

John

[Vovchandr]

Thanks!

 

User underutilization of tools available on forums has always been a problem. 

 

I'm glad to see the map markers are used often

[JohnCh]

I've tried to make the site intuitive, and self-help enabled, but there is always room for improvement.  As for the Community Map, yes, it's being used, but I'd love to see more people take advantage of the feature.  And if you are reading this but haven't put yourself on the map, see the dedicated Help Guide which even contains tips for maintaining your privacy   

 

-John

[Vovchandr]

18 minutes ago, JohnCh said:

I've tried to make the site intuitive, and self-help enabled, but there is always room for improvement.  As for the Community Map, yes, it's being used, but I'd love to see more people take advantage of the feature.  And if you are reading this but haven't put yourself on the map, see the dedicated Help Guide which even contains tips for maintaining your privacy   

 

-John

 

In my experience humans are visual creatures when browsing online. 

 

You can hide a free gift behind a text link and it will easily get overlooked. Words by nature tend to blend into each other and they don't pop out. On my old forum I made "New Posts" in bold and red text because I knew that's one of the most used/useful features for any forum

 

If you make it into a picture however (like a clickable tab in the banner) it gets immediate attention

 

 

Having something clickable on top for maps will certainly get attention

 

 

I know that the software is limited and I think I've mentioned it before but to help the gallery get used more, I've also hard a running set of about 8 random small photos from the gallery popup between the header and the forums in rotation. 

 

 

[JohnCh]

Both good ideas, but as soon as we start doing customization, things get very difficult to manage and someone else would need to take over.  The reason we went with this software is it gave us a ton of reliable functionality out of the box.  Now that we are 11 months in with no issues, I may be able to add a little more native functionality as time allows.  As you are aware, this is volunteer work for me, and I have to balance time invested with my day job and personal commitments.  

 

-John

[Croc]

In my experience, people always click on pictures with boobs or any email/file with the words "Company pay history".   99% fail rate on that spam malware email test at my office recently.....  

 

Just my suggestion on improving visuals on this site.    

 

Probably not helpful though?  

 

 

[Vovchandr]

16 minutes ago, JohnCh said:

Both good ideas, but as soon as we start doing customization, things get very difficult to manage and someone else would need to take over.  The reason we went with this software is it gave us a ton of reliable functionality out of the box.  Now that we are 11 months in with no issues, I may be able to add a little more native functionality as time allows.  As you are aware, this is volunteer work for me, and I have to balance time invested with my day job and personal commitments.  

 

-John

 

I hear you. Been there. Somewhat thankless job. 

Does this software have a lot of plugin support? I can only assume it does. I understand it's custom but it's also plug and play and typically very quick and easily to enable/disable and remove as needed without changing things. 

7 minutes ago, Croc said:

In my experience, people always click on pictures with boobs or any email/file with the words "Company pay history".   99% fail rate on that spam malware email test at my office recently.....  

 

Just my suggestion on improving visuals on this site.    

 

Probably not helpful though?  

 

 

 

You aren't wrong... Put nipples on the headlights of 7 and we might have a compromise. 

[anduril3019]

I'm responsible for a couple of websites so I'm experienced in the thankless part. With that in mind... Thank You!

One of the reasons I love coming here is the visual "tidiness", easy functionality, and intuitive navigation. My first click is usually "Activity" to see what I missed over night, and I'll check the map about once a month to see if anyone new has popped up.

 

@Vovchandr Have to say I was a little disappointed after clicking on your "Free Prizes" visual. :-(

 

[Vovchandr]

17 minutes ago, anduril3019 said:

I'm responsible for a couple of websites so I'm experienced in the thankless part. With that in mind... Thank You!

One of the reasons I love coming here is the visual "tidiness", easy functionality, and intuitive navigation. My first click is usually "Activity" to see what I missed over night, and I'll check the map about once a month to see if anyone new has popped up.

 

@Vovchandr Have to say I was a little disappointed after clicking on your "Free Prizes" visual. :-(

 

 

That was intentional.

 

I assume you didn't click my text link? That sort of proves my point. 

 

17 hours ago, Vovchandr said:

text link

 

Gallery is a great feature but judging by the views that pictures get it doesn't get used enough, which is a self feeding loop as when people don't browse it, others stop uploading and sharing as well. 

 

With that said, the forum is great and everything is very well. I get a notion that there is a small drive to make it "more" and add to it, so these few points were my advice to help reach "next level" sort of speak. 

 

Simple works, but simple is also boring and boring doesn't tend to get returning users or much interaction.

 

When we click "activity" and don't see much activity, I'll be most of us move on to other things and don't interact or browse anything else. 

 

This is the reason Facebook feed is brilliant. It always finds a way to feed you new information and it also knows that anything that happened more than 3+ days ago, is quite irrelevant unless you're specifically searching for something. 

 

Forums don't have an information feeding algorithm. It's entirely user based. A rotating random gallery is something that helps feed new information every time you login that's not directly user driven. Otherwise we are reliant on people asking questions, driving discussions or updating long running threads like Croc does every week with the sales thread. 

Edited February 3, 2022 by Vovchandr

[Vovchandr]

For example, I don't know what plug it is, but it's on the Invision board already and it demonstrates the possibility. I can assume it's a native plug or a simple plug

 

 

Here is a rough draft what USA7's could look like with probably smaller pictures

 

[JohnCh]

@Vovchandr I wouldn't expect people to click a text link that simply reads Text Link. You need to compare apples-to-apples or the data is useless.  Having a graphic that reads "Win a Caterham" then comparing click through rates to a text link that reads "Win a Caterham" is the correct methodology.  For a text link to work, it needs to be descriptive.  As for Facebook, again, apples-to-apples.  A forum feed is never going to have as much new information over a 3-day period as a FB feed that spans dozens of pages a person may follow.  There is a significant scale difference.

 

That said, I hear you, and we are thinking about additional functionality, but I am not adding functionality that increases overhead.  That means no custom code, and only plug ins that have strong user feedback.  I need to go through a test matrix every time the software is updated which can happen monthly.  One reason we have stability is we only have one plug in that is at risk from these updates.  It has a large user base with a long track record of not breaking and was thoroughly vetted.

 

@croc and I are thinking about running a survey to get feedback from our broader community to understand potential changes that would drive engagement.  This isn't a revenue generating forum where capturing eyeballs is the objective.  The reason I'm here, and the reason I volunteered to take over admin duties from Mazda is because it's a valuable resource and pleasant place to hang out for people who are interested or own Se7ens; it's the combination of the people and the knowledge base we've collectively created.  Provided other members feel the same, I'd like to pursue improvements that help us take those benefits to the next level.  If having a rotating image gallery at the top of the forum is what the broader group wants, then we can pursue that.  

 

Thanks,

John

 

[Vovchandr]

@JohnCh I hear you. I'm not dying on a particular hill for anything, just throwing ideas out there that I've had experience with. Fair points with the text link and descriptors. 

 

This works. And it works well. I wouldn't even think of suggesting anything if I didn't see inklings of a drive to get more out there and being there myself a long time ago. 7's Facebook group/posts, Instagram account, adding the gallery at all, having a tech database/section are all things that constitute as being more "more" than just a forum. Implementing new things takes time, money, effort and risks and nothing is worse than taking time and effort to implement new things just to see them not utilized.

 

If they aren't utilized the question is the following:

 

1) They are they less useful than they appear

2) Do people simply don't know about them/they are inconvenient to use

 

If it's the latter than it's a matter of making small changes to make sure people do notice and use the aforementioned useful features. 

 

Again, I'm not arguing or fighting for anything in particular. Just having a conversation and a "no" to anything I say isn't taken personal or even warrants an explanation. 

 

Thank you for all the work otherwise. It's one of the 5 or so websites I visit on the daily/throughout the day. 

Edited February 3, 2022 by Vovchandr

[JohnCh]

I appreciate the input and wish others were as vocal as you have been over the past two years, so we have a broader view of what people want (hence the survey I mentioned.)  I may be a little sensitive to the gallery suggestions since you have made them many times before and I'm running out of ways to say "I hear you, but..."  Sorry about that. 

 

Bottom line, the forum is in a much better state than it was 11 months ago, but it can be so much better.  I just want to ensure we are thoughtful about any changes and start with the objectives, then map the features/changes to those objectives.  Without that, it's difficult to prioritize between them and the result is a lot of activity, yet the underlying metrics we are trying to achieve are unchanged.  Simple example: if a key objective is to increase engagement in the forum, key metrics to support it might be 1) number of new threads/month, 2) number of posts/thread, and 3) number of posts/member/month.  There is a funnel view for this that starts with visits to the forum, progresses to conversions of these guests to Registered Users, then into the 3 metrics above.  If a feature improves the visits, but the conversion from guest to registered is unchanged, did that feature make an improvement that we care really about?  Conversely, if the objective is eyeballs and people prefer viewing images to reading posts, prioritizing any features that support forum engagement would be questionable effort.  The examples above contain some hyperbole, and shouldn't be taken as absolute, but it's the best I can do while multi-tasking in a meeting  

 

As a next step, I'd like to explicitly identify our objectives, the metrics that reflect achievement of those objectives, then identify the features/changes that support those metrics, ideally in a way that allows us to measure any correlation.  It's going from strategy to tactics to quantifiable proof of success or failure. 

 

-John

[Vovchandr]

Thank you for the explanation. I support a survey and more opinions. 

 

We all know that there are about 3 types of users. 

 

1) Lurkers - not really quantifiable or useful group statistically, unless you're trying to monetize the site (which you're not)

2) Casual users - registered long time users who post occasionally as it fits their needs

3) Regulars - contribute to most conversations, go out of their way to post and share threads, have their own threads etc

 

Relationship with group 2 is opportunistic. They use the forum as a tool when they need something (like a bad friend), otherwise they don't really have interest

 

Group 3 is the primary group. It's small but it's what keeps the forum going. Without them lurkers have no interest as there isn't new content and casual users don't use it anymore because there aren't enough regulars here to make it a useful tool.

 

In my eyes you have to appease to regulars for this type of community. Maintain however many you got, and appeal to new ones as you inevitably lose old ones with people selling cars or losing interest in visiting

 

Have the engagement gone down or up over the years? Thread counts/posts? That was my primary rubric of success in the past

[coffee break]

John,

Thanks for keeping the wheels turning.

Carl

(thumbs up)

[JohnCh]

thanks @anduril3019 and @coffee break 

 

@Vovchandr numbers are essentially flat over the past year.  Stay tuned for a survey.  Hoping it comes reasonably soon, but given supply chain issues... 

 

-John