Hey folks!
Was going through my analytics for the year, and noticed some trends that I think are caused by live chat, and possibly hurting my overall page views. I don't (yet) want to bring up what exactly I'm seeing in the trends, I want to discuss it to see if there are trends we can relate to live chat.
First, I want to ask those who have live chat. Do you think your specific pages viewed could/would be drastically different without live chat?
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see, i was thinking if there wasnt a chat, MAYBE the forums would be utilized as a message board, and if people are posting messages, every message that sent is clicked is a page view! Keep in mind, a forum can be renamed to anything via the language editor...a "Who is online" on the forefront would be very useful like this too....
Well i have chat and it's really active so thank goodness for that lol
Now You must realize that the chat will hurt your page views a little But it will bring your community together faster .
Now the chat will increase your users time on site note this is very important just as much as page views.
It really is what your site is about. my chat hasn't done anything bad to my forums and blog it's helped it more than hurt.
But it's all up to you i say test it out if your not liking whats going on than remove it.
This is an interesting discussion. I've always had the chat and it can be useful to have questions answered in a timely manner. It also brings members closer together as in a person-to-person conversation. I moved the chat off the top front page where it has been prominent for two years. I will now take a look and see any changes to activity. I think the chat is being used much, much less, but not sure whether activity is up.
In addition, the ACTIVITY shown has new features where people can post directly on the front page a quick thought or tweet, which also does not get them to go to other pages on the network.
Therefore, a multiplicity of variables has changed the look, feel and activity on all the NING networks.
I just tried to see if it can be moved from the DASHBOARD FEATURES. Looks as if that is not possible.
There are two types of users...chatters and forum posters. Sure, you have crossovers but I find they are usually one or the other. While chatters may not help with page views, they do show site activity just by being online. That brings in more members to cruise your site.
Yes live chat hurts that is why I don't have it on my site.
Are you sure that increased page views alone will increase revenue? I understand that this is how it should be in theory, but one gets paid by click-through, and not by pageview. It might be better to cater the ads to your audience (by choosing the right affiliate program) to increase the click-through rate.
As far as my experience goes, I agree with Tyler: roughly, there are chatters and there are forum users. If you are more interested in the latter, try to encourage discussions on topics that force people to spell out their arguments in detail. This cannot be done in a chat, so members will use forums instead.
Politics, sport, and babes. :-) You know what I mean.
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