What's the benefit of creating a forums in ecommerce site?

Hi DP,

I have a ecom site which is selling hosting service.
I've created a support forums @ subdomain, e.g forums.example.com.

Just wanna ask you:

What's the benefit of forums?

 

The benefit of forum is it can let your user interate with each other such as sharing problem and solution how to fix it.

 

Thank you, mentos

I just wanna ask about the SEO and SERP.
If users start linking to my forums instead of my real ecommerce site, what should I do?
If the contents in my forums is a bit different from my ecommerce site (it's a forums, so I can't control all contents), does it hurt my SERP?

Btw, the sub.example.com's traffic will be counted as example.com's traffic (in Alexa ranking), is it right?

 

Forums are good because its user generated content so you can be found for lots of long tail traffic without any effort.

 

Forums allows others to give feedback on your products and services.

 

maybe advertisement

 

Forums are the best way to increase website traffic and user iterate with each other discuss about useful thing. Especially very helpful to e-commerce site. It allows visitors to give feedback on your products and services.

 

Một website chuyên nghiệp sẽ giúp bạn => visit my wwebsite: vnnetsoft.com (they do not allow me to leave a link here)

- Tăng cường khả năng giao tiếp của Doanh nghiệp với khách hàng.

- Tăng cường sự tín nhiệm của khách hàng về nhãn hiệu và chất lượng sản phẩm, dịch vụ.

- Tạo sức cạnh tranh để chiếm lĩnh thị phần với các đối thủ lớn.

- Mở rộng Kênh thông tin quảng bá, tiếp thị và cung cấp Sản phẩm, Dịch vụ.

- Quảng cáo không giới hạn.

- Cơ hội liên kết và hợp tác làm ăn trên mạng rất lớn, ở phạm vi quốc tế.

- website cho phép dễ dàng có thông tin phản hồi từ phía khách hàng.

- Việc kinh doanh của bạn sẽ mở cửa 24 giờ/ ngày, 07 ngày/ tuần

- Tiết kiệm được bưu phí và chi phí in ấn, Cải tiến hệ thống liên lạc.

- Tạo một hình ảnh về một Công ty chuyên nghiệp, được tổ chức tốt.

refer: Nguyen Quang Tuan
source: vnnetsoft.com

 

Not only do forums result in user generated content good for capturing long tail traffic, but the also build up a community around your product or service.

 

If the forum looks empty, then this will look bad for a possible customer, as it just shows you dont have many customers.

 

A forum is a tremendous opportunity, but with opportunity comes risk. The big plus for you is that your users will support each other to a certain extent. But you will need to be active in the forum as well to deal with queries or respond to criticisms (justified or not).

 

most of the peoples don't use forums,,,, i have seen forums of big ad networks, which don't even have 1000 posts.

 

As you mentioned SEO as a baseline for your motivation in setting up a forum, I'd say it's a good idea.

Even if you have a small niche and there isn't a lot of forum traffic, what you do get is free and it shows as user generated content that is typically targeted around your niche.

You said that you installed it on a subdomain though and I dunno if that negates the SEO bump for your overall site. I've always been led to believe that subdomains are treated as separate sites while folders are not. Might have been best to install the site in a folder called 'forum'...but I can't be sure.

 

I am agree withyou. Forums are very helpful to e-commerce site.

 

Do you have any responsibility for support for the hosting services you sell?
If so, then this is definitely a smart move, as it gives your users the ability to potentially support each other, and so reduce your workload.