This is the first in a series of posts I’m going to write about user experience and usability in building online communities, whether white label or on an open network, using YAP as case study. (YAP, by the way, in case you haven’t heard about it, is a community for young association professionals, including young to the profession and young at heart, and totally free to join. Someone said recently they heard YAP was so cool they assumed there was a membership fee. Huh? No. There is no price for awesomeness. But I digress.)

I am continuously surprised at the number of online communities I’ve seen that are missing this key element on the homepage: an engagement snapshot.

Here’s what I am talking about.

This little community snapshot is probably the most important element of the whole home page, albeit with the “last members online” widget coming a close second (more on that in a later post). Essentially, for a newcomer to the site, it tells you exactly what you can do as a first step – see who’s here that you might know, look at what we talk about, or check out photos. People like to connect with people.

We have a ton of other stuff going on here, of course. The homepage shows all the usual activity like recent discussions, new groups, latest members to join, blog posts, job board, upcoming events etc – in fact we may need to go and simplify some of this stuff, we have so much going on. But the engagement snapshot gives a newbie three immediate ways in, not just visually, but by providing a place to click, something to DO as a first step.

I have a ton more to say on this usability type stuff, but I’ll take one element at a time and I’ll reserve the rest for future posts. What I will say though is that Groupsite.com (formerly CollectiveX, and the platform YAP is on) continues to provide the best user experience of all the online community platforms we’ve explored, despite fierce competition. Feel free to dig in to YAP and you’ll see what I mean.

To be continued!