Is a forum right for my site?

I have been thinking about ways of making my site more "sticky" and wondered if a forum is the way to go.

Since my site is pure commerce, I thought I could make categories such as a trading post, product reviews, looking to find, etc.

I definitely want this to be something that would benefit my customers.

Any thoughts if this would encourage people to visit more often or gain new customers?

 

anything that places customers together can have its advantages and disadvantages. a forum would promote a community atmosphere and at the same time provide a place for your customers to share ideas and thoughts about the different products you offer.

its also a place where foks can voice there displeasure about something that they purchased from your site.

a forum can be a good thing or a bad thing. personally i think it would work, cause usually the good outweighs the bad.

just my 2 cents worth.

p.s. i install forum software cheap

 

trying out a forum may be nice, just make sure the threads and sections are organized properly and that a moderator is around to keep tabs on the posts of the users. Also try to be active in your own forum so as to build a nice owner-user relationship with your forum users

 

I decided to go ahead and create one. It's in my sig. Of course, it's brand spankin' new, so not much activity. I did notify my customers, so perhaps it will get a little attention.

It's really more of a service to my customers more than anything (and to gain new customers, of course!)

 

If you want to make it super sticky, add social networking and the forum together. Social networks are shown to have far higher monthly login rates than forums alone. While I am biased (as you can see by my sigs), social networks such as Facebook brag about return rates of ~90% whereas forums are lucky if they have 20%.