Preface
The goal of this article is to share some of my thoughts about what would be important to do from a front-end standpoint to increase the results of steemit.com. I'm looking for your feedback and if you enjoy this conversation, please "resteem" to get more people involved in the discussion.
This article will not be talking about fair distribution or fair curation distribution. Mostly because it is out of my field of competence and even if it is an important topic, I try to stay clear from the politics that is involved in it. Even thou there are major improvement on the incentive level to be done, I believe that we have what it takes to at least scale to a million users by the end of the year.
KPI - Key Performance Metrics
Key performance indicators, also known as KPI or Key Success Indicators, help managers and employees gauge the effectiveness of various functions and processes important to achieving organizational goals.
Now, when it comes to Steemit.com there could be an infinite amount of data that could be measured.
The first step is to make sure that analytical tools are implemented to measure not only the KPI but also as many data set as possible to get insights on how people use the website and where users have hangups.
Once that is done, the second part is to define our top KPI. Here are the one I believe should be focused on:
1- Traffic to the website (by source)
2- Conversion from traffic to become a user (by sources)
3- Retention of users
4- Engagement of users (posting, commenting, voting)
KPI - Traffic
What are the ways that steemit.com can increase it's traffic? I see two:
1. Search Engine Optimization
There should be someone in the team constantly working on improving the on-page SEO of the website as a whole so that we are sending the right signals to the search engine.
2. Social Sharing Buttons
Seriously, I can't believe this has been overlooked. They are so small that I forget to click on them!
What we need are big fat floating social sharing widget that follows the article as people scroll.
This feature alone is a small hinge that moves a big door.
There is of course gamification but that requires a lot of work that is already on the drawing board.
KPI - Conversions
Conversions need to be approached scientifically through A/B split test and not through a committee. I don't care if it says: "We like Soup" as a headline if it increase conversions by 5%.
Live example: Last week I changed the color of a "book now" button on one of my client's website. Conversion went from 2.59% to 5.27%!!! Almost a 200% increase!!!
Every single thing on the front page and above the fold should be split tested to better our best in terms of conversions. Colors, headlines, sub-heads, position, etc.
This header hasn't change since May!
KPI - Retention
It's great if we get boat load of traffic and new users but what is it worth if there is a giant leak in the bucket where we lose users after 2 days?
The more confusing a website is and the more complicated the rules, the harder it is to keep people on the website over time. Steemit INC should be tracking this measurement closely and consistently try to improve upon it.
KPI - Engagement
More articles and comments makes steemit.com more valuable over time. The more people use the platform, the more we can boast about how powerful this tech is. We can improve this, of course, through gamification. But we should focus on finding a way to entice people to write as many blogpost as possible and to engage with each other content.
Conclusion
There are major improvement that are low-hanging fruits right now and I can't wait for Steemit INC to seriously focus on it's marketing. I believe the sky is the limit if they start having a consistent approach to improve those key performance metrics every single day.
@cryptoctopus It's funny how I was thinking the same thing!
I've been on the site for less than an hour and I've already started to reverse engineer several best-practices UI/UX features changes, thought of how I can "hack" Steemit (think GaryVee), and other things that could be done to drive brand awareness for Steemit.
I understand that a major pillar of Steemit is to be decentralized with no censorship and no proprietary algorithm filling your feed, but it might not be a bad idea to deploy some SERIOUS strategy against the centralized social network user bases, i.e. Facebook's marketing machine (cpc and engagement is insanely undervalued right now), Instagram influencers (same as above) who might want to early adopt to a new platform, and even plow into some Snapchat geofilters at crypto, tech, launch events ($5 USD/hr/20,000 sqft).
Right now it's about exposure and impressions. Market fluctuations on Poloniex can only do so much!
Hi @austrorms ! Funny you say that, the bulk of my job in life is Facebook Ads and you are right, its an amazingly undervalued tool and make a killing for my clients.
I am also in charge of doing the Facebook support. One of the major issue is ease of signing up. If only 10% of signups issues gets to me, there are a lot of people who just turn around and don't bother with it. (That's a conversion issue)
Lastly, I believe that before we start spending money at exposure, we should make sure that everything on the receiving end of that traffic is calculated and improved rather than just "Spray and pray". :-)
@cryptoctopus For sure! The "Spray and Pray" concept is what so many non-practitioners are doing right now on some of these platforms and they are STILL achieving a better ROI than traditional media (direct mail, radio, TV UGH) because the attention is on social right now. Facebook sign-up issues started as soon as they required "photo id" to create a profile using YOUR OWN NAME. It's frustrating.
If Steemit founders took 10% of their holdings, exchanged to BTC and then USD, and ran a SERIOUS Facebook campaign targeting males between the age of 18-25 with specific interests to grow awareness, it might work if the usability of the site was semi-conducive to a broader group of "early adopters."
BUT it's still all conjecture. Facebook, as well as any other centralized entity/platform, could always build into their feed algorithm any and all Steemit content on their platform and essentially kill any organic or paid growth in those ecosystems.
I really wish they'd allow customization of the algorithm so that I could block out any and all Kardashian/Jenner nonsense, but I digress.
Anyways, good talk as always. Looking forward to more conversations in the future.
-@Austorms
Thank you for posting @cryptoctopus.
Yes....the simpler the better. One does hope straightforward and simple are measurements of considerations for the platform.
Many users here at Steemit are first time Social Network users and appreciate that these various 'Social Network' buttons are discreet...if changes are made....then an option to delete them all together would be desirable for some.
If one may express opinion.....Steemit does not need flash and dash....For example....there are those who have aired their views regarding the annoying red tab notification. If one is unaware that there is a decentralized network that does not invade your privacy....steal your content......manipulate your feed .....until then.......why would anyone want Steemit when they have Facebook?
Until either the public is ready for what Steemit has to offer or Steemit can market what separates it from the rest....what makes it the future...what puts it on the edge of everything that is exciting...then no amount of flash and dash...bells and whistles...is going to change Steemit's place in the market.
Appreciate the opportunity to ponder your post and express these thoughts.
All the best. Cheers.
@bleujay I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you here. I think that the life or death of a social network is directly correlated with the momentum from early adoption, user growth and retention, engagement, etc. and THOSE things (KPIs if you will, thank you @cryptoctopus) are directly tied to the vision of the founders of the platform and user-friendly characteristics. A mobile application for Steemit would be FANTASTIC (but let's take baby steps lest we run off cliffs like the dodo).
And let's be real, nobody wants Steemit to invade privacy, steal content, or manipulate their feed. But as a social network built on decentralization, it WILL have to have a centralized team that drives innovation within the platform or "Steemit 2.0" will soon emerge, do all of the things Steemit isn't doing, pull users, and R.I.P. Steemit.
"The big fish no longer eats the small fish... The fast fish now eats the slow fish."
I can agree with most points made in this,.Tho the company its self does nothing in the form of advertisement. So its really up to the users to remember to click those share features to outside networks, i think steemit can go far but there needs to be a little push i understand updates and that;s still in beta but still.
The fud / flaming and circle of the same posts over and over again is kinda boring. We need to get other communities involved. Cosplay people, animation artist, tech reviewers, food reviewers and much more. This community seems to have a select theme and from what i can tell yes there is art and stuff but from what I've read and seen it needs more.
communities will help create more diversity on the platform. I got to say that, even though the design is very simple and clean, there is no thoughts on increasing social share...everything related to marketing on this platform right now is an after-thought.
It suffers from what most corporate websites suffers from: "Slick website that makes no sales"
Im of the same view you can make it look as nice as you want, but if only some many people know about your site its kinda useless, That whole thinking of the end game sites do can kill a site pretty quickly.
Loads of great points I can only agree with so far! Thanks for sharing your views on the matter, it is going to be helpful to us all on the long-run. Namaste :)
Very nicely done @cryptoctopus! Thanks so much for putting this out there!
Fantastic excellent suggestions. Knowledge is power...the power to maximise our utility and effectiveness in the shortest time possible with the most efficient use of resource.