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Adding A Forum To A Retail Website, Is It Worth It?

by JustinG30
11 replies
I own an ecommerce website that sells many different products. Im averaging only about 75-100 people a day to my site with a mixture of paid ads and organic stuff. I have a blog on the site that i add 2-3 articles a week too.

I was thinking of adding a forum to the site to help bring people in and have them coming back. Has anyone ever done this and had success with it or is it just a waste of time? If you have done it before and it worked, what steps did you take to get people posting or any other tips you may have.

Thanks!
#adding #forum #retail #website #worth
  • Profile picture of the author chris100
    Hello, I think you should focus more on how to find customers that are interested in your products instead to spend your time trying to create a forum.
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  • Profile picture of the author JustinG30
    Well we are doing that also, but if they come one time and we dont have something there interested in, they may never come back. So we are trying to find a way to keep those people coming back or to interact a little more with our website.
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    • Profile picture of the author chris100
      I hope that you already collect their email address. If you do so, then you can always send them an attractive offer ( discount) or remind them about your products. So, some of them will revisit your website again.
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      • Profile picture of the author Joshua Lowenthal
        I apologize for this but why in the world would you NOT want to create a discussion board for your website.

        I'll make this simple for you

        1. Go to place for you to talk DIRECTLY with visitors of your site and answer and and all inquiries about it in near real time.

        2. You have total control over the content and can even expand into various topics that will then create keyword densities for your SEO purposes.

        3. Sometimes you'll find people will hang out on your forum board here and there just to chat. This is when you roll out the targeted threads and throw some affiliate banners on it, or sell banner space directly, and monetize it that way.

        Think about this. Your on WF its a Forum, that has a marketplace, :duh: and I can assure you it's working out for the owner.

        Sometimes I can't believe the level of dis info people will vomit as fact and only fact.
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  • Profile picture of the author paulie123
    Only if you have the time to moderate it. Otherwise it can be a time-consumer and take away your resources from your e-commerce website, which I would assume is your priority.
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    • Profile picture of the author netmatrix
      Originally Posted by paulie123 View Post

      Only if you have the time to moderate it. Otherwise it can be a time-consumer and take away your resources from your e-commerce website, which I would assume is your priority.
      I agree. If you have time to participate in the forum discussions and answers, then add it. Otherwise, pass on the idea.
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  • Profile picture of the author funkynassau
    We set up a forum for our website and it was spammed so badly, in record time too. Well over 50K spams, to the point it sucked up all the bandwidth. Our web design person closed the holes and yet they kept trying to get in, again sucking up all the bandwidth. It took at least a week to get things sorted out, and I needed the help of my domain guy too. In the end we took it down and finally it's all calmed down and we are back to normal. It was a PhP bb. Seemed a great idea at the time. So for now we will not pursue this, but maybe down the road in another way.
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  • Profile picture of the author Gambino
    I can't think of one retail site that I've participated in a forum. I can't even think of a retail site where I've seen a forum.

    Maybe it's because when I think "retail site" I think ecommerce like BestBuy, Lowes, etc. I would say no.
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  • Profile picture of the author CyberAlien
    It definitely isn't a bad idea to add one, it just depends on if you have the time to monitor it. Forums can drive additional traffic to your website and if you get customers involved in discussions, they will keep coming back and not forget about your company.
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  • Profile picture of the author WillR
    Forums are very time consuming and require a lot of upkeep these days because of the increased spam risk.

    If you want to keep people coming back to your retail site then I would probably recommend you start a blog and a Facebook fanpage. Keep adding new posts to both those things each week, posts that are of interest and that people will naturally want to comment on and spread around.

    I think it's going to be a lot less upkeep for you but your results will be just as good if not better than if you were to add a forum.
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  • Profile picture of the author JustinG30
    Thanks for the advice. I never thought of the spam aspect. We have our Facebook fan page, blog and email list on there but was trying to come up with some ways to interact with our customers.
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