FAO Guests & Lurkers

[Steven P. Administrators]

I tweaked it a bit.

[Chasethebase Veteran]

Seems to be a general thing with forums as of late. A huge number of guests compared to registered members.

[Osiris]

Well if giveaways, competitions and awesome content in both news and forums wont do it, maybe its safe to say the carrot isnt working and lets bring out the stick?

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Seems to be a general thing with forums as of late. A huge number of guests compared to registered members.

It's always been the case.

To any guests reading this: Registering only takes a minute, is free and makes you part of one of the best community forums on the web. You're not going to regret it. (Y)

[Steven P. Administrators]

Well in all honesty we had huge problems with Internet Explorer 8 for a while due to an ad only guests saw, so it's safe to assume those people didn't come back :/

[Shaun N.]

Surly them not registering (showing more ads) would earn Neowin more monies?

[Steven P. Administrators]

Yeah, but whats wrong with promoting more activity

[amon91]

I tweaked it a bit.

Still doesn't make it clear enough registering != subscribing or the benefits of each. Instead of that huge subscription banner, why don't you make one for registering instead? Once members are registered you can (nicely) nag them about subscribing. :p

[Steven P. Administrators]

Still doesn't make it clear enough registering != subscribing or the benefits of each. Instead of that huge subscription banner, why don't you make one for registering instead? Once members are registered you can (nicely) nag them about subscribing. :p

They rotate between these ;)

[game_over]

Just because there are that many guests online it doesn't mean they are constant lurkers on the website.

This forum has a lot of content, just think of all the questions that get asked in google that return results from this website... What is the timeout, usually 15 minutes?

So one quick page hit shows that user as a guest for 15 minutes, they may have just looked at the page they were directed to and left, so probably never even seeing this thread.

Maybe you could have a little popup to people who are refered from a search engine, similar to the survey popup.. just saying registration is free along with other benefits.

[Steven P. Administrators]

Uplift, if a user comes here from a Search referral finds what s/he's looking for (or not) and then leaves, no amount of pop-up surveys is going to help ;)

[game_over]

Uplift, if a user comes here from a Search referral finds what s/he's looking for (or not) and then leaves, no amount of pop-up surveys is going to help ;)

It would certainly do a lot more than this thread, haha.

If people aren't really looking for a forum to sign up to, why would they? you need to point it out when they visit.

[Wannes]

That should be enough to frighten anyone into registering. :p

Or it could make people run away from the site!

[amon91]

Or it could make people run away from the site!

No, that'd be the grape theme. :p

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

No, that'd be the grape theme. :p

If you think the grape theme is bad, use the pink theme for a while.

[+Anarkii Subscriber²]

What about a 7 day free trial of subscriber level 1 access? Perhaps that might entice more people to subscribe?

+1 for this idea, also yeah, the 'we love your monies' has to go Neobond...

[amon91]

I say if you do a trial make it tier 2 so members can enjoy a week of Neowin without ads (and get hooked? :p). The only downside I can think of is everyone would be able to access you know what.

[Chasethebase Veteran]

I say if you do a trial make it tier 2 so members can enjoy a week of Neowin without ads (and get hooked? :p). The only downside I can think of is everyone would be able to access you know what.

Yeah, the trial would give you all perks except for access to the subforum, that would be the best way about it.