[JustinG]

I was wondering what you guys thought of setting up a community with in your site.

What do you guys think the perks are, and how can it help your site overall?

[anteater]

It 100% depends on what your site is and if there are already large communities out there.

I think it's a good idea, though sometimes your site will do better if it doesnt involve its users so much.

[Super Mod]

I think it is very important for larger companies, but small companies should avoid them. The reason being is that potential customers will see that you don't have much activity in your forum and may think that's because nobody uses your service. They might get turned off by the fact that other people aren't using your service and won't sign up. I think it's nice to have a community, but you should wait to unveil it until you have enough customers to support it.

The perks are that you will have a great community spirit and common support questions and concerned can be easily answered by your community rather than having a customer open up a support ticket. You will also benefit well from a potential customer seeing an active community, because they will see first hand that your company is large and has fans.

[JustinG]

I agree with you there.

But, is it important to maybe add a community to your site to bring in more revune? Curious to your thoughts.

[Super Mod]

Originally Posted by JustinG

But, is it important to maybe add a community to your site to bring in more revune? Curious to your thoughts.

It depends what kind of business you're talking about. What did you have in mind: content or service?

[Granger]

I think everyone has raised some good points about why you might and why you might not want to have a community. To me: it's not that important, but is obviously a plus if you have everything else going for you. I like seeing an active community and will generally join in it and start participating if I like the company.

[anne]

I think community can be useful for content sites, but if your business is selling a product then it could just be fluff. If I saw a good community on a site, it might give me more confidence in the company, but I'm not sure that the effort it takes to start a good community would make it worth it for most businesses.

[darren]

I have to say that it depends aswell,

If you are a company that likes to here what your customers are saying and to find ways of improving your product and service then a community (if properly moderatored) can be a great benefit but if you are a company that is looking to change much then I think it can only be for the worse.