Successful online community development

In the article on online community success the authors point out the metrics for success evaluation and integrated success factors for different life-cycle stages they have discovered from various literature, research and practitioners experiences.

Integrated and orderly guidelines for initiating and developing a successful online community are of great importance to the developers, but it had not been studied earlier. Previous research only shows the impact different components have on communities separately and not depending on the life-cycle stage it is in.

The success factors of online communities derived from previous research in different disciplines that are not integrated to a certain stage are:

• Management: Customer loyalty, business models, organizational knowledge
• Sociology: Identity, physical community, social capital, collective action
• Psychology: Sense of community, uniqueness and motivation
• Computer Science: Internet technology
• Information Systems: Life cycle and Web development, user needs - sociability and usability, privacy and safety etc.

In the article the authors integrate most important success factors found by researchers and practitioners to stages. The life-cycle stages in this research are labeled as inception, creation, growth, maturity, and death. The authors reason the choice by following the widely known concept - the stages in the information systems life-cycle, which is highly reasonable as the intended readership belongs mainly to the group of information technology practitioners.

The online community success factors by life-cycle stages are as follows.

Inception:

• Purpose (transparency of goals)
• Focus (target audience; focusing on one target group)
• Codes of conduct (establishing codes of behavior to contain conflict potential; facilitator to monitor and control behavior)
• Trademark (building a strong trademark; tag line)
• Funding/revenue sources (defining sources of revenue as a starting condition for building a virtual community; advertising and subscription fees)

Creation:

• User-centered design and evolution (focus on the needs of users, design with users in mind)
  
• Interface usability (ease of use, intuitive user guidance)
  
• Security and privacy (handling member data sensitively, authorization)
  
• Anonymity (discretionary levels of identity disclosure)
  
• Identity persistence (identification and history viewing of other members)
  
• Reliability (stability of the site, interface)
  
• Performance (fast reaction time of the Web site)
  

Growth:

• Attracting members
• Growth management
• Integration of new members
• Up-to-date content
• Content quality
• Interaction support
• Trust building
• Neutrality/non-partisan offers
• Reaching critical mass
• Transparency
• Personalization of portal
• Personalization of offers
• Offline events and meetings

Maturity:

• Regular online events
• Sales and offers
• User tools
• Permeated management and control
• Recognition of contributions
• Subgroup management
• Recognition of loyalty
• Member satisfaction management

From maturity the community may continue to grow on and succeed or face the termination. Determinants of online community termination:

• Under-supply of content
• Poor participation
• Unorganized contributions
• Transient membership
• Members with week ties
• Willingness to share information
• Lack of anonymity
• Concerns about privacy and safety
• Shyness about public posting
• Time limitations

The authors have reviewed great amount of different databases and literature and used it throughout the article. The result has practical value and is worth reading for developers and other researchers. The practitioners probably do not see much new or surprising in the results but the list is rather useful to keep in mind as a guidance and checklist for developing an online community.