A quick poll for the community and a request for member feedback.

If you were able to change the current colour scheme/forum design, would you do so?

How do you rate the current colour scheme and design? Do you think its dated and needs updating or are you happy with how it is right now?

The reason I ask is that we are in the process of revising our brand image to feed both growth objectives and future developments. We are interested in what you, as a community, have to say on the current setup?

Any comments, good or bad would be greatly appreciated. Please do remember to vote in the poll.

Thank you.

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I don't think there is a lot you could do to improve the forum, I think people join and stay here because of the community not the colour scheme.

If it isn't broke, don't fix it

Originally Posted by actuallyclass

I don't think there is a lot you could do to improve the forum, I think people join and stay here because of the community not the colour scheme.

If it isn't broke, don't fix it

Ditto

It's what lies beneath the skin

But it's not all about current members.

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Yeah True.

If you are looking to attract new members then a new design would be interesting.

I think the majority join the forum because they are in need of something, whether it be advice or products therefore I'm not sure how important the layout is.

A good addition would be to advertise the marketplace more, it is one of the forums strengths and very active therefore attracting more advertisers and buyers would be a good thing for all members.

Afterall there are plenty of buyers in members as well as people that just lurk the forum without getting involved...

The forum layout is much "prettier" than loads of others I've been on.

It has the look of a web page, unlike a lot of the forums that have the look of a telephone directory.

I think that anyone finding the forum from a search engine, will arrive here because they're looking for a thread that sort of matches their search, or because of the main content of the forum described in the tags in the page source.

Fancy colours and layouts are less important than easy to read text and suitability of the content you're reading for an informative site such as this, in my opinion.

I know that it's all about attracting new advertisers, but the stats should speak for themselves on that one - if they are impressive, maybe publishing some would help attract more advertisers?

I personally love the current forum look, however agree that an update would give a fresh new look and may attract more people to sign up.

Thank you for the feedback so far. All of this is very useful.

I would like to pick up on a few comments made so far:

I don't think there is a lot you could do to improve the forum, I think people join and stay here because of the community not the colour scheme.

If it isn't broke, don't fix it

Thank you for the compliments, although from a branding perspective, we feel that it is in the long term interests of the business/community to revise its current image. You're right in many ways that people are here for the content and community more than anything, but all of this goes hand in hand. Without one, the other seizes to function effectively.

Ultimately our objectives are to grow the community, introduce new services and expand current offers. We also believe that our current brand could perform better in terms of acquiring larger advertisers and a more professional audience. First impressions are everything and we all want to see the community prosper even more so than it already is. We don't want the site to become stale or out of date and have to look beyond where we are now and look to where we want to be in the near future.

A good addition would be to advertise the marketplace more, it is one of the forums strengths and very active therefore attracting more advertisers and buyers would be a good thing for all members.

That's certainly in our plans within the next six to twelve months. I'm sure you appreciate however that we are, in many respects, starting from the ground up and enhancing and growing across the board and building on our strong foundation. It would be short sighted to think that simply advertising the marketplace would convert into more advertisers/more members. The appeal and initial impression has to be there to even get their interest, and we believe this starts with branding/design.

Fancy colours and layouts are less important than easy to read text and suitability of the content you're reading for an informative site such as this, in my opinion.

It isn't necessarily about fancy colours, nor complex layouts. In many ways there isn't a lot we would change with the current layout, it works well and for most it seems to be fairly user friendly. We are also limited, to a certain degree, what we can do with generic software (i.e. vBulletin). Regarding colours the idea would be to simplify the colour scheme in many ways and stick to one or two colours across the board, rather than the dull looking colours bring a more fresh, vibrant scheme that gives a more professional image of us as a community.

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Last edited by Anthony; 05-02-2009 at 03:02 PM.

Sounds like you have it covered Anthony. I have only ever heard praise for the Admin staff on the forum so clearly everyone is happy with the forum as it is.

Of course there is always room for improvement as with any business but with that said if you look at similar forums in this industry none of them are even close to this one. The forum is the most active I have ever seen as well as looking a lot smoother than many.

If you look at the likes of salehoo's forum theirs is quite messy with no where near as many search functions. Their marketplace is also non existent.

The wholesale directory is another added extra that we are lucky to have on the forum, maybe putting a link at the top of the homepage would benefit many looking for a good list of wholesalers. Also more traffic would benefit the wholesalers who advertise on there as well as providing another avenue for community advertisers to list their own site.

Like it the way it is as it stands out from other forums, due to it's clean layout... too much colour & design can flood things, i think this forum has a nice gold feel to it - everything is easy to find & love the little icons (i.e: thumbs up on "thanks").