This topic contains 6 replies, has 7 voices, and was last updated by 
MTCLMBR 5 years, 7 months ago.
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As people use social media more and more what do you think should be done to keep the website current and bring members back to it in order to grow the 1 )WGA 2) keep it from being stagnant 3)engage the members?
This is a bit of an enigma. I am not a web designer, so I have pretty much stayed out of the web site discussion. I believe that a person should know what they are good at, and let other people take care of things that they aren’t good at. We have a team that has much more knowledge with this type of thing than me, so I trust them to make those decisions.
All opinions, comments, and useless drivel I post are mine alone and do not reflect the opinions of the WGA BOD.
I’ll go with BigJim on this one, web design is also not in my realm of experience. From this geocacher’s point of view I use the site to work on the WGA geoart caches but stalled once I got to the history of WGA, I find it sometimes hard to navigate locating the information I need on some of the mysteries. The history is interesting, I’ll agree on that. I also like to read the home page, but find its not updated enough on current happenings..I have brought a few people to the site that had no idea the WGA existed, so that’s a plus. Recently I made contact with an organization that manages land~hidden gems that are available to the public but are not well known. I inquired about hiding caches obviously, and geocaching was something they never considered using to attract visitors till I opened my mouth. I’ll share more on this once I know more. But I got their attention, this will be discussed in their meeting on the management of the lands and they now know the WGA exists and we are nature/outdoor lovers just as they are. So where I’m going with this is getting the attention of other organizations that also share the love of the great outdoors by maybe being involved in or co-creating events with them, CITO’s for an example.. perhaps like Friends of such and such state park and so on… adopt a highway… the list goes on. 🙂 Maybe this is something that has been looked into already? I’m just a newbie remember. 🙂
Cache me outside
As people use social media more and more what do you think should be done to keep the website current and bring members back to it
I’m all for making improvements to the website as I’ve indicated in a few of my other answers. But the mindset that we must bring users back here from social media doesn’t seem quite right in my opinion. I wouldn’t want to abandon the idea that the website is important, but perhaps it’s no longer as important as it once was. If members are spending a lot of their time on social media, I think we need to be engaging them there with the hope that they will come here as well, rather than expecting everyone to make the effort to come back here.
The most popular social media platform is probably Facebook. There was a thread started around this time last year to solicit ideas for the annual in-person BOD meeting. One of the suggestions from Hack1of2 was that the WGA should have a Facebook group rather than just a page. As much as I personally dislike Facebook and especially Facebook groups (their sorting algorithms make them really difficult to follow everything), this seems to me like a great idea to help us engage the membership on Facebook where many of them are likely already spending a fair amount of time.
Based on the minutes from last year’s meeting, it looks like the board did decide to allow visitors to post on the WGA Facebook page. But how many people actually know they can do that? I didn’t until I checked just a moment ago, and I would consider myself a more savvy user. I think an actual group would put us in a better position to foster discussion among geocachers and engage members. I see that several of the admins of the Geocachers In Wisconsin group are current/former BOD members or active general members. Perhaps we can work with them to see about turning that group into something officially labeled as the WGA Community Group?
If we can do better engaging members on social media, I think that also gives us more opportunities to advertise what the website has to offer and still get some people to come here. Which brings us back to improving the website to make it easier for people to find the sort of information they are looking for and generally make the site more of a joy to use. Some quick (and maybe? simple) ideas:
- More frequent postings on the main blog. I recognize this is an easy thing to suggest and much harder to deliver, but the posts don’t have to be complicated. For example, the most recent post as of today is still about finding a fifth candidate for the last open seat on the baord, but silentecho joined the race five days ago and there’s been no additional postings.
- Expose more than just geocaching events on the calendar. Election activities and relevant dates would be a good example.
- See if we can fix the forums so they don’t show 137,000 pages for each topic when most actually have one or two.
- Better expose information about committees (and maybe other topics).
- Consolidate the history pages and bring them current.
- I’m not great with design, but I think we can come up with something that looks a bit more modern without too much trouble.
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
Keeping members coming to the website is an uphill battle. In today’s world we want info now, and easily. Checking Facebook or other social media is quick and easy to access on our phones, tablets and even smart watches. The WGA website is not the most user friendly platform, on a PC, tablet or otherwise. I think that modernizing the website and making it more user friendly would be a tremendous help, but I don’t know how we can achieve that without out sourcing the work, which could prove expensive and may not be the best use of WGA funds. We do need the website for numerous reasons, elections, the LCG, archival purposes to name a few.
If elected I would like to see us reach out to other Geocaching Organizations and see if they are experiencing the same trends; if they are, see what they are doing to redirect traffic to their website, or if not, what they are doing to keep their website relevant.
Disclaimer : All posts are the opinion of the poster and do not in any way reflect on the WGA Board of Directors
I agree with all said previously to me. It’s an uphill battle with regards to the website. So many are engaged with mobile devices and tablets. Getting our website more mobile friendly would help tremendously however, it’s a major undertaking. If elected into the BOD that will surely be a discussion and lots of research will be required not just by one sole individual, but as a group.
This is the heavy question I think every business and organization has to keep asking themselves today with their websites and social media. Everyone wants everything and they want it now.
I can agree with everyone that there is a major need for improvement with the website. But sadly I’m also informed with the current state of the website. There is a lot of technical debt that is in place with the website, along with changes in the past year or two technically from Groundspeak and the Geocaching API. All this combine makes “simple” updates no longer simple and a very large effort involved.
A lot of the past couple years has been playing more like the cartoons when the boat is leaking and holes keep popping up and you run out of fingers and toes to plug. Now that is an exaggeration but sadly have been working more to keep things working then able to work on something new. I would like to make sure this changes.
Next the question is if a new design of the website is done right and is made to work much more moble friendly then it is today is there truly a need then for an app? Cause with adding an app that adds for additional maintenance. Of course discussions for the BOD to decide on and what is needed for the membership.
As for social media. I think everything should tie together. My thoughts always are websites are the source of truth on information and should hold the answers and social media is a great place for interaction and engagement. Both can have minor cross over as some may visit the website infrequently but others don’t participate on facebook or social media so you have to think of your target audience and how to best reach them. The goal of each platform and how they are to work together.
Difficulty with facebook as ACME shared is they have their various algorithms, defaulting of comments to show relevant vs all, and more make different things difficult there as well with making sure the right information is shared effectively. I think there are some strong Facebook groups out there already with high WGA member involvment. The forums should always be kept from a historical perspective and lots of good information in there. But hopefully we can figure a way to improve that experience.
I’ve had a long list of improvements that could be done some needs and some nice to haves. Outside of visual I think improvement can be with blog posts, as would love to see an increase in member content like had seen in the past. Site pages and information can be better organized and so much more.
Short answer is both have their place and could be better utilized and need to be used to work well together but there is going to be a lot of work needed to get the solutions everyone wants.
Climbing To New Adventures
**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**
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