My revenue is dropping at a fairly fast pace but I will have a big chunk of revenue coming in in a few months. I have gone from 6000 active users to 2300 since february and it is slowly trickling down. I had a talk with a large number of the people that were around and I am getting very similar feedback from all of them.
I know people at vB and IPB like to talk about how bad SMF is. Well with SMF I not once had a month where my activity members decreased. Things like the rate that people joined did fluctuate some but it had a steady upward bias to it as well even tough there were a couple of months a little worse than the previous month.
What I have more an more is a younger crowd that does not bring in the revenue. Right now the biggest complaint is the search engine. I need to get them a better one soon. The other thing that tons of the old members told me after I started contacting them was they missed the simplicity of use that the old forum had. We didn't have any social networking stuff, there was no SEO to help us show up better in the rankings. What we had was a no frills uglier than sin basic forum that seem to draw people and 33% of them stuck for the long term.
I did have problems with the old forum but the members did not see those, that was all from my side of things and it took up quite a bit of time. Messages take up even more time but it was still time consuming and I did way too much stuff off of spread sheet and manual intervention.
I am still watching members that have logged in daily since 07 slowly drop off. A bunch left after a couple of months and it slowed down but the old timers are still leaving. I want to get to get them a better search engine and I want to get the tools to lower my workload. IPB might be able to get me that search engine I need and the tools that will save time. What it will not get is that simplicity that the older members also want. This xenForo feels very very intuitive and easy to use from the user standpoint.
If I can get a search engine for them and tools for me I will do it. If I can get them a very easy to use UI I want to get them that too. I would like to do this before all the members from 06 and 07 have gone. I don't know if the move will turn things around but at this point it cannot hurt. I started to move back within two months of my move but a bunch of people told me that what I said was happening was not because of the move. Well after talking to the old members they told me why they were leaving.
I do have a younger crowd not but they as a group do not support things and are changing some of the personality of the board. The older group added quite a bit to it and brought in more people like them. I want to try and maintain a balance of young and old but that is slipping away. I also cannot replace members that have been there from the first and second years with new members.
I don't know if it is the best move but I thought it would be worth a try. Get them search engine they can be happy with then get them the simplicity of use the older group wants while I have things to help me with my things.
