Why have community forums

alexboyer

Attn. all community members! I run a forum that could be in danger of being removed from our site. I need to convince the management that community forums are a good thing. Please, anyone and everyone who reads this, please post links to or advice about the benefits of community forums. Specifically for manufacturers.

Thanks!

planetsim

Forums depending on the subject of the site is good. What is the site of manufacturing about? from what ive seen sites that are not related to general chat, a specific topic within IT or a pre-made community usually struggle that is probably the case of your website. If so take them down they arent beneficial in your case.

alexboyer

Our product line has many technical aspects similar to those of a computer system. R/C cars have many different parts, setups, specifications, etc. Customers want the forum. I've tracked stats. We had over 18,000 hits in one week and the forum hasn't been active in 2 years (long story). I'm trying to get it reactivated. Anyway, keep the recommendations coming.

Mordecai

I take it that the forum is on an RC car page?

You'll probably end up with a lot of people posting general how-tos, mods, etc. (much like with computer forums). These really do spark customers, which in turn helps out your site. However, if you don't sell the products in the mods or whatever, then it might draw others away from your site.

So, if you're a good store, it's good for business. If you're a bad store, it's bad for business.

But I know from personal experience that just looking at pictures of cool things people did with certain products very much makes me want to buy them.

vaaaska

You might consider the fears about running message boards as well...the largest one being that people will come in and talk poorly about your product(s).

This is only a bad thing if the company really has no intention of trying to solve customer problems. If you believe that your company will not address the users, then it might be a better idea to forego the message board until something changes at the company.

I think we've all built nice websites for our clients only to find out that they have absolutely no idea or time to keep them maintained or updated (as they thought they would) and then everything falls into disarray.

alexboyer

We do not have the only R/C forum. If a product has a defect, It's going to show up somewhere. I'd like us to be the first one's informed of a problem so we have more time to start working on a solution, preparing a statement, creating a return policy, etc.

We are a business interested in being profitable. Ignoring customer complaints and / or not fixing obvious problems or product defects is not a viable solution for our company.

I'm not doing this as a freelance agent. I work as this company's webmaster and am in charge of the continuing operations of the site. As we have over 70 employees and are continuing to grow, there's no real reason why we shouldn't have this feature as many other comparably sized companies have done so.

drawmack

I worked for a company that wanted no interactivity on their web site. So I talked them into some extranet type stuff. For example I talked them into setting up a private, password protected section of the site available only to employees. Then I managed to convince them that it would be quicker, cheaper and easier to set up a canned message board then to build our own knowledge base from scratch for this extranet. Once they saw how great it worked internally, took about a year, then they came to me and asked if I thought it would be a good idea to set up a public message board system.