Not sure if this is the right category or not but here goes. Are there any recommended ways to improve how new users see the forum, and encourage them to participate?
If I am visiting a discourse topic from Google, and I am new. I see a page like this:
There is no call to action to join, sign up, post a topic, join the community. In fact I’d say it’s actually difficult to figure out:
Does anyone else feel the same about this or has anyone overcome this?
By the way this is actually not to dissimilar to this request:
At the core the same, it’s not easy for new users to get started…
There is one shown at the bottom of topics
And there are also components which encourage users to sign up
Okay thanks @Moin - I will say the one that requires users to scroll down…all the way down, that’s unrealistic. The vast majority of users do not scroll to the bottom of a page. It would be great if they did, but they don’t ;(
Also is that call out on by default in discourse? I have not noticed it on our install.
I’ll take a look at the plugins - but my point is inherently a community should put emphasis on allowing people to participate. That’s the point right?
Also I believe all those plugins are modals - fine but they disrupt the flow. I’m just pointing out when I look at a page, I land on it - there are 0 calls to action for new users…
Is there something in particular you have in mind that you’d like to see here?
I’m curious to better understand what you’re thinking.
On mobile devices, instead of displaying both the Sign up and Log in buttons, only the Log in button is displayed. Clicking the Log in button opens a modal window that allows users to create a new account, but that might not be obvious to new users, especially if they aren’t familiar with Discourse forums.
So arguably there’s a call to action, but it’s only a call to action for existing users.
The easiest possible fix would be to change the text for the Log in button to “Sign in / Sign up”. The issue is that there’s not a lot of room to play with. This is a quickly made version done with my browser’s dev tools. It would require some adjustments:
Edit: a better but more difficult to implement approach would be to do something similar to what Twitter/X does. On mobile devices, the full Log in and Sign up buttons are displayed in a sticky footer. It’s possible there’s an existing Discourse theme component for this. If not, I suspect it’s something that could be done.
That would be “Anmelden / Registrieren” in German, which takes up a lot of space.
That isn’t good solution at all. And most of CTAs are just for annoy mobile using people enough that they either registrate or leave.
All of users know really good they can registrate. They do that if they feel there is some real reasons or perks, and that reason is content itself. And again — at least 90% of registrated users never participate. If we count lurkers that percentage is really much higher for registrations.
This isn’t technical issue. This is much deeper. Most of admins thinks that showing popups, where is begging of joining to mailinglist, middle of reading is a wonderful idea. But it is not. Everyone hates those, even those admins when they are visiting somewhere else.
It is actually just a form of spamming, but with consent. And majority never read those emails.
Same thing with CTA of registrations. It just not matter if a lurker registrare or not. They don’t participate.
But technical limitations of mobiles are obvious. There are not enough space. And if a forum shows ads too… that is really messy for visitors.
Showing registration/login is enough. Out there isn’t absolutely single person who wouldn’t know meaning of those two links.
It might be worth thinking about the two possible ways to participate:
The barriers to entry are lower in chat environments, like whatsapp, discord. There’s no topic, no topic title. But still one needs to know, is this a space to hang out, or a space to ask and answer questions, or a space to discuss particular kinds of ideas.
The easiest case, I think, is a support forum: a user or customer has a problem and wants an answer.
The hardest case, perhaps, is a forum with the vaguest of missions - something like nextdoor or facebook, where anyone can say anything.
Perhaps I am different than most in how I use forums, but reading interesting content in topics as an anon user is much more likely to get me to join and participate than a nagging modal at the top of a topic I want to read. I am honestly interested in how you know that the vast majority of your potential users will join without scrolling?
@Lilly sure, everyone visits and engages with pages differently. What I am focusing on is the page 100% of users see when they visit, which is the page in my screenshot. The % of users the scroll down will diminish the longer the page is. Im’ really jus focusing on the interaction that we know 100% of users see on mobile (not logged in).
My assumption is all discourse communities - the primary goal is to grow the community which involves getting new users to signup.
Right now the page is focuses on existing users, which to me should be secondary in the page design - because we can expect registered users to understand how to navigate the site and probably have more tolerance for navigating around the site to login.
If I look at the current screenshot, the only thing I can see remotely like a sign-up is ‘login’ - which I wouldn’t click if I’m a new users…because I don’t have an account.
But let’s say I do click it, here is what I see:
…it says ‘welcome back’ - but I never was here, so how can I be welcomed back? That’s confusing! If I look really really hard I see some small text about signup at the bottom of the modal.
Again, all this is geared towards existing users…
I think if I were to recommend some changes, since I sound like I’m complaining 
I would:
These are just some ideas, I’ll check around for more!
Also @Lilly I don’t think I said the vast majority of users will join without scrolling, but that’s not really the point. It is 100% sure that the vast majority of users do not scroll long pages, that’s for any webpage, all webpages, it’s a pretty well know, accepted metric. So why not make it easier for ALL users, not just long scrollers?
@mcwumbly sorry I missed your response. Yes that was not great of me to post the original message without suggesting some sort of improvement myself.
We’ve had feedback from our user base, and also just generally getting familiar with discourse that points to new users not having an easy way to onboard on to the community.
No, that’s completely fine. Understanding what problem you are experiencing is a good first step.
I was just wondering if you had something in mind already for a way to solve it. If not, that’s OK.
You can consider using Welcome Link Banner to customize your own call to action and show it to trust level 0 users
…on mobile. Remember that it is a different experience. On desktop you see both CTAs – there is only on on mobile due to the limitations of screen real estate.
Do you know that you can change that on your own instance? See /admin/customize/site_texts?q=Log%20In
You can also change this on your site.
Thank @HAWK helpful, and yes I did know that the desktop has more calls to actions (login/signup).
Maybe it would be helpful to understand the current design pattern. Is there a reason the mobile view is focused on existing members rather than new users?
I think the assumption is that people will understand that the login button also functions as a signup button. That assumption may or may not be correct.
It would be fairly straightforward get an accurate answer with some A/B testing. For this case, I think A/B testing could be accomplished with a theme component that randomly selected variations of the the layout and an analytics platform that recorded details about how users responded to the variations.
I’m not sure that it deliberately is, TBH. I understand your point re the Registration process but I don’t agree that labelling the button Ask would make it less ambiguous – I’d say the opposite. I think that most people would intuitively click Log In if they wanted to sign up.
I also think it is important to consider how people would usually use a Discourse site on mobile if they had never been to the site before. They would almost certainly have followed a link from a search engine or other site and would land on the topic they were trying to find out about. Once they had read it, they would either try to reply and be prompted to create an account or they would get the JIT message that Moin mentioned.
Alternatively, they may visit for the first time because they want support from the site, in which case they would search and browse and the same thing as above would occur.
Most people do not visit the homepage of a forum for the first time and decide to immediately sign up, so we have designed around those more common paths.
Ok here are some options.
go to admin -> site texts then type “Log in” in the top filter field. A list will show up and it should be the one at the top called js.Log_in - edit that one
result (on mobile):
If you use the Versatile Banner component and make your own banner, there are cookie-related controls for how it behaves for users. Alternatively, you can fork it and make your own custom banner.
In a new or existing local theme or theme component, click the “Edit CSS/HTML” and go to the “Head” tag and put this:
<script type="text/discourse-plugin" version="0.11">
api.replaceIcon('bars', 'user');
</script>
result:
I don’t believe that pointing it to a modal is possible without some custom programming work. Does that mean you want to hide the whole sidebar menu for anon users? if so, this theme component has that functionality.
Thanks @HAWK . My comment only applies to a topic not the homepage. My example at the beginning of this topic is an image of a topic. If that was confusing that’s my mistake.
I agree the majority of users would see this experience coming from a search result.
I’m not sure what a JIT means, but I assume that’s the message a users sees when the scroll all the way down on the very end of a topic and are not logged in. By the way I don’t see that on our install, is that a plugin or standard?
At any rate that’s nice that there are ways for people to join after they scroll all the way to the very end of a topic.
My comment still stands. When a new user hits a topic for the first time - there is no call-out and no way for them to join in one click, not two clicks. That to me feels like an improvement that would be good for everyone.
