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Building Online Communities |
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Creating a successful online community is one of the most sought after and elusive goals in a Web strategy. Companies budget huge sums to perfect online community strategies as they seek to build customer relationships that create loyal consumers.
You must know why your site exists. Otherwise, you cannot judge the effectiveness of any policy. Worse yet, how will visitors know if they want to join the community? What benefit does a user derive from participating? Why should anyone care? Without an underlying goal, it's extremely difficult to guide users in constructive ways. It would be like starting a company and forgetting that, at some point, you need paying customers.
Once you've found your goal, stick with it. It's fine -- and necessary -- to shift your focus to meet the needs of the community. Lacking a plan, though, you can only make guesses. Users will pursue their own goals if yours isn't plain.
Case Study: The Platinum Business Network
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In 2006, The Platinum Business Network set out to create a one of a kind business networking resource.
This resource would provide it's members and visitors a full-featured, business directory similar to a local yellow pages and the BBB. |
Members of PBNUSA.com are able to upload Powerpoint commercial presentations, PDF brochures, video advertisements as well as get rated by their customers.
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Website Templates |
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Search over 14,000 template designs and Flash templates.
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Browser Popularity |
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This data is pulled real-time from W3Schools which is a website for people with an interest for web technologies. These people are more interested in using alternative browsers than the average user. The average user tends to use Internet Explorer, since it comes preinstalled with Windows. Most do not seek out other browsers.
These facts indicate that the browser figures above are not 100% realistic. Other web sites have statistics showing that Internet Explorer is used by at least 80% of the users.
Data collected from W3Schools' log-files, over a five year period, clearly shows the long and medium-term trends.
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Suggested Reading
| The following books are highly recommended for learning web design. | |
Head First Labs HTML with CSS & XHTML
 
Excellent HTML book, used in my Art Institute XHTML Fundamentals of Web Authoring. | Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual
 
This book utilizes step by step instruction with multiple screen captures to enhance the projects. A truely WYSIWYG experience for visual HTML design.
| The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP
 
This is a great Advanced Dreamweaver PHP instruction text. David Powers has put together one of the most comprensive Dreamweaver Dyname Web Design Instruction texts. Everything is explained. I use this book in my Intermediate Web Design Course | | MARKETING | Designing Brand Identity: A Complete Guide to Creating, Building, and Maintaining Strong Brands 
I use this book in my Digital Identity Design class. It is a comprehensive approach for not only designing logos, but for the entire brand of a company.
| MKTG  In the Fall of 2007 I taught a Marketing class which included SEO optimization. Students found this book to be geared towards Millenials and that the easy to read, condensed format brought a pragmatic approach to learning Marketing. |
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