Hi all! I have a Pet Lovers Social Network at www.petzee.com I planned to launch it by February 1. I almost finished development and design. But still need to fix/change some small things which will help my users feel easy with the site. While fixing those things I got a confusion with Profile Photos! When a member joins at the site he have an option to upload his profile photo. I want to know whether this should be MANDATORY or not? Without a Profile Photo, the entire profile page looks very bad! (I'm also adding new users at home page) So, I feel a Profile photo is very must. But I hope most users don't like a profile photo as mandatory field while joining! Is that okay to have a Mandatory Profile Photo field in join form or not to have that as mandatory? Please help! Thanks in advance! Please post here your comments and ideas on what are the points to be taken care to keep the users return to the site and to make them feel happy with the community! Any ideas would be appreciated!
What about not making it mandatory, but that you have a range of default images that would be uploaded corresponding to the kind of pet they have. That could help give the layout of the page you desire and hopefully would encourage people to then update with a more accurate pic after joining and playing with the site. People who are passionate about their pets would more likely update/post a pic of their own so it's reflective of themselves without feeling bullied into it.
Did you happen to do any research as to just how many pet orientated networks there are already before you spent time and money......?
If you want to make profile photo mandatory you should give your users default pictures option preferably from pet categories.
Perhaps you could automatically set them with a default picture on sign up, and then they will have the option to change the picture once they have registered in their account options panel (this will speed up the registration process).
Logically thinking,its a good idea to ask the user to put the picture but i have do this before and it end up it turn many user away.Other than that,the user go to my forum and say that they think the feature is not cool and its their right whether to put or not picture.