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I just stumbled upon this great study by Forum One Networks. One of their projects is the Online Community Research Network. Why didn’t I find that earlier? The study was made in October 2007… Better late than never. They also provide other interesting stuff and you can participate in their studies, which at the end of the day will be great for everybody.

Some findings they point out on page one:
- Respondents generally valued non-fiduciary dimensions of value, like loyalty over direct revenue.
- The most effective revenue generating techniques were advertising and charging for community subscription.
- A member-first attitude is needed when considering the addition of fee-based or revenue-generating services. The best way to find out what your members do or don’t want ? Ask them.

Interesting facts to me while I was reading the study were:
- More then 50% don’t get directly attributable revenue from their communities.
- Community activities like content sharing and social networks got more popular. Blogs, general discussion groups, content sharing and product support forums are the most popular.
- Highly valuable dimensions for the organizations are: member engagement, member loyalty, member satisfaction and influencer activity. This is much more customer centered than call avoidance which was rated not valuable.
- communities charge for a lot of different and specific stuff. For example: Contact members, assess to experts, Storage ad-free browsing, custom domain, enhanced game play, enhanced support, member visibility, networking, private groups, custom platforms, enhanced profiles, premium articles, custom templates, private messages, there’s no freed content on the site, premium documentation, developer version software. I’m wondering for what else you could charge: more detailed information, earlier access to information, unique Profile extensions or effects, …
- best targeted Advertising and Subscriptions but the most common ways to generate revenue from an online community. Thought leadership, lead generation, customer retention, brand loyalty are top indirect revenue sources. The study provides a list with websites that have interesting revenue approaches, which show that Advertising and Subscription generally work for every community but you need to find a specific solution that depends on your community.

Overall the best advice is to understand your community, what value do they find in interacting. Ask them what they want/ need. Which means that you add features that are valuable for the members and compliment the core features. Don’t abuse it, try advertisement or sponsorship that is that well targeted that it actually adds some value. If you want to charge for features, add something where your members think its actually worth paying for. Try to mix the parts of the different revenue models so you always use the one that suites you community the best.

I just found Rachel Happe’s Blog www.thesocialorganization.com – how social media is changing communication and organizations. This is not only a very interesting topic, she also provides us with brilliant thoughts, lists, question an further information.

Social Media is one of the most popular buzzwords these days. So how do you put metrics on a blurry phrase?

Rachel formulated a couple of question to understand what social media provides and what the value we want to meassure would be:

- What is the value of having a better conversation?
- What is the value of meeting someone?
- What is the value of getting more accurate information faster?
- What is the value of being able to drive consensus around an idea faster?
- What is the value of building trust?
- What is the opportunity cost of not innovating?

And how can we measure that? Just try to answer these question for yourself, your social media life…

Can you measure the value of a conversation and if you do, don’t you forget a lot of aspects that these numbers won’t show and therefore you miss more information then you gain? Not measuring at all can’t be a solution but always be aware of the fact that a lot of information especially regarding social media can’t be measured but is at least as important.

Still companies need some numbers as a basis to decide if things work, if they improve, if they are worth the investment. So if you are looking for numbers to put some sort of handle on these question try Rachel’s list. They might not make sense for everybody in every case, but it’s a great starting point to decide where to start and what you need in your special case. So go to the list, answer the questions and get some inspiration.

It’s pretty quiet in our blog these days but I still have a lot of panels to sum up. This might probably take me till I attend SXSW 2009..

“Description: ‘A/B Testing’ is the practice of directing web traffic to multiple alternative designs to determine which is optimal. This method raises significant questions regarding the role of a designer and the need for a traditional design approach when deciding which design is ‘best.’ Are we being cut out of the equation?”

You will always need a designer, intuition and experience, because you simply can’t answer every single choice you have to make till you have a website by A/B testing. There are books, blogs, articles that offer general guidelines and help you avoid basic mistakes. A/B testing will help you afterwards in the optimization process and to validate your previous decisions. Lets put it this way: If you are developing a car you won’t ask your customers how to build the engine or how many wheels they prefer, but when it comes to colors or usability questions their opinion is important thus not always what you expect.

For effective A/B testing you need to focus on the goal of the site. You have to have one clear and measurable action/ site goal that you want to improve. Your sign ups etc might diminish during the testing but the lessons you learn from the test are worth it. Analysts and designers should work together in interpreting the result of the test. The analyst can provide the better data and interpret it more rationally because he wasn’t involved in the design process. The designer can point out connections between the design elements the analyst might not be aware of.

On the one hand the designer might feel less creative, because your audience might not appreciate your ideas, but it can also be the other way around. You might be able to test a really crazy idea which under “normal” circumstances would have never made it to the monitors of users and it might turn out to be the best solution.

For a more detailed Summary of the session check Matt Heerema’s Web Design Blog