Converting visitors ----> members... This is hard!

I just started a little forum out of personal interest - theculturephile.com - I am getting about 20 unique visitors a day but my conversion rate (into members) is very low!

Does anyone have any advice on how I can make becoming a member more enticing...

I know about contests and such... Its just my forum is a bit too young for that.

If you visit my site and have any ideas... please share them.

Thanks.

-pk, www.theCulturePhile.com

 

give them a reason to join...
like a contest or special content for them being a member.

 

Start a CASH LOTTERY for posters. 1 ticket per post.

I'm serious. You may not have the money to implement
such a strategy... which is too bad - buying your customers
works in a lot of businesses and it will work here.

 

Very few go to message boards, especially to sign up to post regularly, so you are going to have to bring in hundreds of visitors.

20 a day just ain't going to cut it.

And contests do not work, either. You want them to stay, not sign up for that, and then leave as soon as it is over.

 

Yes that is the difficulty of forum.
But what you can do is try your best to use promotion method such as paying incentive to member to encourage them to recruit more member to your forum.

 

Not going to lie, you might want to change the look of it. When i first came to it, i was slightly turned away. There are plenty of free forums scripts out there. YOu might want to think about changing it up. You can try things like mybb and phpbb. That should help a great amount of people converting.

If you don't want that, then what you need to make sure is that there are always new post in the forum. People will normally come back twice before they signup to make sure they actually have a reason to be there. Either you can take on the hard task or hire other people to do it for you, but someone has to do it

Hope this helps
Brandon

 

Brandon -

Thanks for the feedback... what did you not like about it exactly? are you not a fan of Vanilla or do you not like what I did with it?

thanks.

-pk

 

make your sales page a little better about what the benefits are to joining

 

its not that hard, if u have well targeted keywords and ranking then u will get good traffic

 

to raise my ranking i need links... correct?

where can i find help with keywords? you are referring to the keywords i have in the meta header? yes?

-pk

 

I visited your site, and to be honest, I have no clue what it is about! There is no organization, the layout is rather unattractive, there is a discussion about NYC sports right next to barbershop reviews in Hong Kong?

I would get some sort of Forum script that would put all of this in order for you! That would help a bit with conversions.

Then you need traffic. When it comes to forums, nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.

Good luck!

 

Pick related keywords to your forum and try get ranked.

 

the design is simple, to simple. People go to your website and have no clue exactly what it is. Check out mbboard.com. It is very easy to install and it gives more of a forum look.

It is also very hard to read at least on my screen. It is very bright and random colors (ping and green). You might want to put an image or two.

Hope this helps
Brandon

 

Brandon -

Thanks. there is nothing on mbboard.com, what is it?

-pk

 

Seconding the opinion of another poster, the forum lacks organization. From the existing posts, you could easily create travel topic subcategories for food, places to eat, places to stay and photographs. That would give visitors a better chance of determining what the forum is about and whether it interests them or not.

I typically sign up for forums when I am emailed a link to a thread that's really entertaining or that I can contribute to in some way. For your forum I would suggest starting threads along the lines of "Best Vacation Pictures" or "Strangest Meals While Traveling." I expect many people will be able to relate to those and may be willing to contribute.

 

Scopes - That is actually a very good suggestion - give people a set stage to discuss one of their favorite experiences. I like that. Thanks.

Also - do you think it lacks organization due to how Vanilla is?

Thanks.

-pk

 

As far as organization goes, having the front page show a list of threads just doesn't appeal to me.

When you visit the front page of the DigitalPoint forums you get a choice of different topics with a short description. I find that style of organization much more useful. You can start off with a few different topics and add more as your memberships increase and you see trends in the topics being discussed.

 

That is just common. Try to have a contest on who ever refers the most will have something in return.

 

Ok -

I have considered all your comments... I decided that for now, I want to create a splash page that introduces the forum.

How will this effect my SEO? what do all of you think of this idea?

-pk

 

Also -

I worked on my categories and added subcategories... Vanilla is very basic so... I did my best. Let me know.

-pk