Lurkers

How to you encourage lurkers to register?

Do you think your encouragement works more than half the time?

Some thoughts in general:
1. Forums are structurally and fundamentally bad at incentivizing new members. Our basic design and user flow hasn't advanced in over 20 years
2. I've come to the conclusion - and professional community management has arrived at the same conclusion, especially on enterprise communities which tend to be more transactional - that lurkers are going to be what they are. We should stop trying to push them along the 'member journey' and accept them for what they are.
3. BUT there are features like social sign-ons, post before register, pushing popular and trending content and users, all of which help chip away at the hesitation of new users.

You could handle lurkers by making them register after X page views. I've seen that it can boost registrations by multiples.

But, it leads me to question how much traffic is lost from lurkers that never come back? Is it worth the risk of losing a lurker by forcing them to register before lurking more when you need impressions?

Lurkers lurk because they’re shy and are hesitant to join. The best way to encourage them is to ask more questions and try to lure them in.

Create a more welcoming message. Is there a quicker way to register? Such as, can users join via their social media accounts or other accounts such as Google or Discord? If not, it’s a possibility that they’d be more inclined to join.

As long as you’re gaining traffic and viewers, lurkers aren’t a huge deal. They’re still viewing your forum. They’re also probably sharing your links as well, but lurking behind the scenes. Which is a good thing.