What is the Future of Nairaland’s UX?
Founded 13 years ago by an O.A.U (Obafemi Awolowo University)’s dropout, Nairaland has grown to become one of the most visited indigenous websites in Nigeria. Over the past years, the online forum has enjoyed a massive success despite it’s not-so-appealing user interface. Although it remains arguable whether the website could have grown bigger if it had undergone some UX improvements, the feeling of being satisfied with a barest minimum interface begs for a lot of unanswered questions.
Why Nairaland May Be Winning
A reasonable amount of successful online ventures today started around 2004–2006. Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Mashable, Techcrunch, Linda Ikeji, Bella Naija e.t.c, our dear Nairaland is not left out as it started in 2005. The concept of doing the right thing at the right time is one thing we can consider as a leverage for Nairaland’s success. So, timing could be a key advantage on why this forum is winning.
According to Scott Kelmer, every design endeavour should start with needfinding, which basically is a process of watching and asking people to learn about their goals and values to be able to uncover user needs and opportunities for improvements. The right thing Nairaland did was to serve user generated contents to people at scale and delivering these in a data dense format, especially at a point when data costs were really high and smartphones were still luxuries.
Marc Andreessen defined product market fit as being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market. So, it becomes immediately apparent that Nairaland achieved a product market fit.
How Nairaland Can Win More
Generally speaking, major interface changes to popular products are not always well received by users. Nairaland has a very dedicated community of ardent users and some are comfortable using the website as it is. But I think constantly experimenting with UX improvements is imperative for Nairaland to remain competitive. Nairaland does not have direct competitors that are strong enough to fight for that slice of the pie, but as companies like Zegist, Quora start penetrating this space locally, the online forum could start experiencing drops in engagement metrics. To avert this, Nairaland needs to take it’s user experience more serious.
Trolls Dancing to the Anonymity Tune
Apart from the tribal wars, incessant abuses and the use of filthy languages that have characterized recent conversations on Nairaland, trolls have gone ahead to wear their dancing shoes and have started dancing “Oppam Ganganm” style to the anonymity tunes provided by the online forum. While anonymity on an online forum like Nairaland is not an entirely bad thing, the way it is currently being managed is worrisome.
Nairaland gives ban access to mods (forum moderators) who can selectively prevent certain users from posting on the platform for up to 3 months once they are found guilty of spamming.
Why is this not the best way to handle trolls?
Because they will end up creating new accounts and start trolling again, so actively responding to trolls just invites more trouble.
Nairaland should employ shadow banning instead. This does not stop them from still behaving badly, but they will end up shouting into a vacuum, and everybody wins, both the real users, the trolls and the business.
Growing User Base Geometrically
The present stats on Nairaland’s homepage show that it has about 1.9 million users. Where will the next 10 million users of Nairaland come from? They will come from people that are already using Quora, Medium, Radar, Twitter e.t.c
Designing for this anticipated population involves raising the bars of user experience of the Nairaland forum. Sharat Sharan of The Next Web recently wrote about how the future of media is all about UX and not original content.
How long more will this statement become true for a forum like Nairaland?
According to Sharan, the question for modern media companies has always been whether content is king or if products trump all? The right answer is unequivocally: to win in today’s digital world, media companies must innovate the user experience.
If you observe companies finding success in the post-internet world, UX is the primary driver. Take YouTube for instance — it didn’t begin as an original content company. Instead, they offered the technology tools and platform for other creatives to share, “like” and spread their content across the globe. YouTube’s exponential success in media circles is the result of focusing not on content itself, but on the user experience. They chose product development over media production.
It is safe to say that those great contents will fetch you topranks on Google and user acquisition will not be a problem, but what about user retention?
Ultimately, the winners and losers of the new media landscape will be decided by technological prowess. Whether or not a company embraces that future, is up to them.
Nairaland for Businesses
Nairaland has been able to attract businesses to run advertising on it’s platforms due to the quality and quantity of traffic it has, but the forum isn’t offering many ad options as possible that can drive better engagements with the targeted users. Several conversations go on daily about different brands and there hasn’t been a way to connect these enquirers with their intents especially at the point of search. For other platforms, Google Adsense takes care of this for them automatically but for a platform like Nairaland that no longer runs on Google Adsense, achieving this feat will involve some high end programming.
Customized Experience will Increase User Retention
Nairaland usually displays your 3 most active sections. For months now, mine has been Technology Market, Investment, and Education. But this data does not in anyway improve my experience with the platform. The Nairaland’s homepage consists of topics recommended by the mods. I guess that they move posts to the homepage based on anticipated virality of the post, genuiness/urgency of the information, profile of the author and perhaps personal preference.
This combination of factors ends up giving visitors the mods experience and not the best user experience they can have. Posts on the homepage should be a reflection of my past visits to the website, Nairaland should place a priority on serving me posts from my most active sections, as this will give me a more personalized experience than what I currently see.
We Only Visit by Impulse
Usually I receive emails from Twitter, Quora, Medium, Pulse e.t.c about new updates on the most trending conversations, encouraging me to check them out. For the past 4 years I have been on Nairaland, I have only received about 2 emails. No matter what reasons Nairaland has chosen not to keep up with it’s users. It may be losing out on a lot of potential. According to Smart Insights, a business like Nairaland may get up to 13% Click Through rates on it’s emails, if only they take this more serious.
Conclusion
Nairaland’s main source of revenue for many years has been ads, and that is a testament to the fact that it has a huge number of real users. Improving the way these users consume content on the platform means raising the bar for the website’s UX, and these satisfied users will in turn engage more with the platform, which consequently brings more businesses on board for the company.
Connect with me on: Twitter: @OluwatobiMayowa Website: MayowaTobi.com
