Conference Design Customization Checklist
By terrie | No Comments
Many self-service conferences are doing design customizations that are amazingly beautiful and thorough. We love that!
Design customizations are one of the main services we provide in our support packages, but the tools we use are the exact same tools you get from our self-service packages. So doing a design customizations is just a matter of skill and experience.
On the skill side, we usually say you should have basic web development experience, know CSS, and have access to a tool like Firebug. If you are that person, or have that person on staff, you can make CrowdVine look like any of the networks from our Favorite Designs post.
Below are tips for the major decisions you need to make before you get started and the checklist we use internally to make sure we didn’t make any mistakes.
Getting Started
You’ll find your design customization options on the Admin panel in the “Content and Design” section.
“Design” gives you access to basic features like changing colors or adding a logo. “Customize our default templates” is where you’ll find the goodies for advanced users with knowledge of HTML and CSS.
Many of the templates that are used to display a network are completely customizable by you. The two most common templates to override are layouts/top_header, which allows customize your own navigation banner, and sites/css, which allows you to add your own custom CSS.
You will probably want access to images for your design. You can upload those through the Admin Manage Uploads page.
Decision Time
Check for compatibility between your existing design and CrowdVine. Most customizations are based on an existing design from the main conference website. For the most part, CrowdVine is extremely flexible. But there are two gotchas. CrowdVine likes to use the entire content area and so we have a strong preference for avoiding vertical navigation (i.e. navigation that appears in a sidebar). CrowdVine also uses the prototype javascript library. This often conflicts if you’re using jquery in your design. If either of these are the case, most conferences choose to create a simplified variation of the design for CrowdVine.
Most CrowdVine customizations are based on an existing conference website. You need to decide whether to add the CrowdVine navigation as additional navigation or as replacement of existing design’s navigation. – in most cases, you can keep your site’s navigation and let CrowdVine add its own navigation below. Here are two examples of how that design decision works out:
CrowdVine navigation only
Conference navigation + CrowdVine navigation
Our default CrowdVine networks have an overall width of 940px, with the left column (#left_side) being 620px and the right column (#right_side) being 280px. Please keep in mind as you adjust the design of your network that decreasing the overall width could cause problems on certain pages. If you do plan on reducing the size of your network, we suggest changing the width of the left side before the right side. Many items on the post-customization checklist are there because of potential issues you may run into with width changes.
Many conferences want to add a sidebar for sponsors. This is possible, although it’s basically the most complicated design customization because it often requires changing the width of the CrowdVine content, which creates cascading effects. A less invasive way to add a sponsor column is to just add the column to content pages by customizing the pages/show template. If you do want an extra sidebar on all pages, you can add content to sites/optional_third_column and CSS to sites/css along the lines of:
#third-col{float:right;width:180px;}
#outer_content{width:940px;margin:0 auto;}
#content{width:730px;float:left;}
#left_side{width:440px;}
body#sites.show #left_side .summary, #left_side .summary{width:420px;}
#right_side{margin-left:0;}
OK, on to the checklist!
- Check that #flash and .prompt are pleasantly styled. These often get missed if you’re doing heavy customizing of colors in the content area.
- Make sure text areas aren’t cut of on private messaging, discussion posts, comments, and profile comments.
- Check the login page for pleasant styling (http://yournetwork.crowdvne.com/account/login)
- Check the photo page for pleasant styling (http://yournetwork.crowdvne.com/posts/photos)
- Check the map page for potential overlap issues (http://yournetwork.crowdvne.com/maps/show)
- Check the twitter page for correct styling, esp. borders/margin/padding (http://yournetwork.crowdvne.com/posts/twitter)
- Make sure the right side is actually on the right side on /posts instead of below the content
- For sites with a smaller #left_side, add this for IE7 and IE6: body#profiles.show #left_side #bio_section .infobox{width:__px;}
Happy customizing!
How to launch a social network
By tony | 2 Comments
It’s easy to create a social network website these days. We’re partial to our own software, of course, but you have more than two hundred other options. However, having social network software is not the same as having a social network. For that you need people.
We recommend the five step recipe below to everyone who uses CrowdVine. They’re simple, common sense steps that reliably lead to launches with high adoption and active members. We also see many networks try something different, and we can see that missing just one step reliably leads to a dead, lifeless, failed network no matter how much work the creator puts in. But have no fear, these are easy.
#1. Your network must be member-centric
Many social network ideas we hear are variations on “I can make a lot of money if I had a social network with millions of people talking about X.”
Yes. You would. But no members are going to join a network for your benefit. They’re going to join for their own benefit. You need to find a reason that’s compelling to your potential members.
For example, with event social networks, the first thing we tell potential members is “Meet other attendees on the event social network.” That’s a clear and direct appeal to one of the major reasons people go to a conference. Our adoption rate with this pitch is usually between thirty and seventy percent.
In comparison, there was an initial wave of event social network products that were transparent attempts to get attendees in front of exhibitor sales people. The pitch was, “Come get harassed by sales people.”
Not surprisingly, these networks saw very little adoption. Their pitch was a classic example of the “I can make a lot of money” approach. If the network was full, you would make money selling the opportunity to exhibitors.
The problem is that those networks were empty and so nobody got any value, not the creators, not the exhibitors, and not the attendees. Pretty much the only significant difference when we started working with events was that we’d flipped the value proposition around enough that we actually got adoption.
#2. Seed people in the network
There is no value in a social network that has no members. That means you have a tough sales pitch at first. Potential members will experience your pitch as, “Join my completely worthless social network about X.” One hundred percent of your potential members will ignore any marketing or communication requests to join that type of network.
You need to get around the empty-network syndrome by getting some early members. Then your launch pitch can be “Come join these awesome people on the social network about X.” Here are some ways you can get early members:
- Invite people who can’t say no, like people that work for you. It’s their job to join!
- Invite people who will join as a favor, like friends or close colleagues. Tell them they are doing you a favor and that it will be worthwhile to them down the road.
- Load profiles from some other source. Associations have membership lists. Companies have employees. Events have attendees. Many of these sources have the implicit assumption that they are going to be part of a directory–that’s all the social network is.
- Use a combination of these–the more members at the start, the better.
If you don’t have an organization with members, don’t have friends, and don’t have employees, then you aren’t ready to launch a social network.
#3. Invite people via email
Just like there’s no value in an empty social network, there’s also no value in a social network that nobody knows about. Email is the most effective way to let people know that your social network has launched. It’s several orders of magnitude more effective than a blog post, twitter post, or website link. By all means, use websites and social media to promote your network. They help, but they’re not sufficient.
What we see when a network is promoted without an email list is that visitors dribble in but that there never develops a sense of activity. Members want to be able to find other members but they also want the sense that if they contact someone or start a discussion, they will get a response.
With an email blast, all potential early members visit on the same day. That gives a sense of activity and that activity increases your adoption rate.
#4. Set the tone
There’s a learning curve for people who join a social network, but it’s not about learning software, it’s about learning social etiquette.
In the real world, some people have learned etiquette from a book like “How to win friends and influence people” but the vast majority of people learned how to behave by copying other people. It’s the same with an online community. Some members will read your community guidelines, but the vast majority will wait to see what other people do.
When you launch your network you need to play the role of community manager, break the ice, and model every behavior that you want from other people. Add new members as contacts. Send private messages welcoming them. Start discussions. Comment on discussions that other people post. This role is crucial at the beginning and can tail off as your community members get more active.
#5. Send a reminder email
The goal of the first few steps is to create a network that’s good enough to draw people in and spark activity. Once you have active members your network changes from good-enough to great. Nobody gets 100% adoption out of the gate. Some people will miss whatever initial email you send. Some people will get the email but decide the network is not compelling enough (yet). Some people will join right away and miss the members and activity that comes a few hours later. Once your network is launched and more active, you should send at least one more email blast.
For our event networks we recommend that the reminder blast comes about a week before the event. This is the peak moment of interest (rational behavior for many attendees is to procrastinate until as many event details are settled as possible). For permanent social networks there usually isn’t a peak moment of interest but there are often high points. Send regular emails highlighting discussions or activities.
These tips are about the difference between success and complete failure. We like dreamers and we like to experiment with different techniques, but when I ran this post by other people at CrowdVine one response came back “Tell them they’re an idiot if they don’t follow this advice.”
I think that’s too strong for people who have already launched–we came to this recipe through trial and error. But, at this point, there’s enough experience out there to launch your network the right way. Let us know in the comments if you have your own recipe or other tips.