Creating your community structure
Structure is the organization of information in your community. It’s how related content is grouped together for intuitive access. Community navigation is determined by the community admin configured structure and should be focused on how the end user would journey through the community to reach the content they seek.
The primary purpose of an effective landing page is to engage the end user, to read and digest content, participate in discussion, share and learn with their peers. Well converting landing pages share 3 characteristics, signs of life, volume and clear navigation paths.
5 - 10 posts per day is a helpful rule of thumb to guide your decision making when defining your community structure. This rule determines that in any given time, your community should receive no less than 5 - 10 posts per forum board, per day. Forums achieving this minimum are successful in showing signs of life and volume, and therefore more likely to grow.
How does this help you get the right size structure? Let's look at an example:
Potential addressed audience size 300,000
of which, 10% will visit in a 30 day period
300,00 x 10% = 30,000 visitors
10% of those visitors will post
30,000 visitors x 10% = 3,000
3,000/ 30 days = average 100 posts per day
Therefore, aim for no more than 10 public forum boards.
Common mistakes
When building your community structure and designing your home page there are some commons mistakes you should avoid...
Overwhelming with new or editorial content
The home and landing pages should enable the user to find what they’re looking for with ease. Overwhelming them new or editorial content often fails to support the user need. Remember for 90% of your visitors everything on the community is new.
Hiding the community navigation structure
The community structure forms the navigation, and when well defined aids the user journey through the community and content. Hiding or minimising the board hierarchy, creates challenges for users to journey through community and content.
Hide or minimise search
The majority of your visitors to community will search before posting, keeping search easy to access throughout the user journey is key. When search is difficult to find users will often become frustrated.
Trying to build in anticipation of the future
Keeping a balance between navigation structure and volume of content is key to ensure a sense of activity, in turn supporting future growth. Building a large structure in anticipation of future needs will dilute the impression of activity in community, and deter participation. Create a navigation structure able to expand and grow as your community does.