User Loyalty Articles

In the competitor analysis (refer to Appendix B), websites with similar concepts were rated according to different criteria. The first key finding was that the main competitor of ideatemple was ideen-box.de because it was the only website of that kind in German and it had a high search-engine ranking (Google first result when people search for the German word for ideas, ‘ideen’). Another benefit of the site is its large amount of content in the form of ideas and the possibility of asking a lawyer copyright-related questions. The second key finding was that all examined sites did not have community features, with the exception of globalideasbank.org , but its forum lacked categories and had only a very small group of visitors. The third key finding was that no website provided background information or tutorials that were related to ideas except ideafinder.com, which lacked the possibility of submitting one’s own ideas. The fourth key finding was that the aesthetic and creative aspect was not considered in the websites that were compared.

While ideatemple did not have the resources to compete with the rich content of ideen-box.de, in the short term it was possible to implement community features, background information about ideas and develop an attractive and easy-to-use design that suited the subject.

The key findings of the literature review and the competitor analysis form the foundation of this research and the concept of the first version of the site is based on these findings.

As the internet is an active medium (Chak 2003, p.29) in which customers decide how they interact, it was important to give users various ways to contact the organisation behind the website and meet the demand for user-to-user interaction. The concept of the website included the possibility of getting assistance by email, using the chat feature to get live support, submit their own articles, submit their own news, submit their own ideas, or use the chat or forum to enter into a dialogue with other users. The news section also offered the possibility of writing comments to a news post. These features were included to adhere to the concept of establishing an online community (Rheingold 1993; Preece et al. 2003). A community offers the possibility of establishing relationships and improving the value of information (Tartaglia et al. 2005) and can generate much of the content of a site (Kotha 1998).

In addition creation of content by customers increases their involvement and enhances the credibility of a website (Kotha 1998). Another beneficial aspect of communities is that they produce loyal visitors. Studies show that active community members visit a site up to nine times more frequently (Sterne 2002, p. 180).

Online communities can be categorised as communities of relationship, communities of interest, communities of transaction, and communities of fantasy (Armstrong et al. 1996). The community that was created in this research was primarily a community of interest, in which people who are interested in the topic, ideas and creativity, can meet and exchange. A secondary goal was to establish a community of relationship because increased social interactions among users generate a ‘switching cost’ (Ginsburg et al. 2004) or barrier. Positive interpersonal relationships are viewed as positive switching barriers (Julander et al. 2003) because users would have to leave these interactions behind if they were to defect to another website.

The open source CMS PHP-Fusion was selected because it had several features like a forum, options to submit news and submit articles already implemented. The reason for using open-source software was that it is free to anyone to do modifications on the source code. PHP-Fusion is under the GNU Public Licence (1991) and therefore everyone is permitted to edit the source code.

The content for the site had to be interesting, unusual and related to ideas and innovations, therefore the weblog awards winner of 2004, engadget.com, which is a technology weblog and its sources, were used to gather news for the site. Using the format of weblogs as a news source had several advantages. The main advantage is that they are written by amateurs and not much effort is needed to create a weblog and therefore they can deal with much more specific content than traditional journalists who have to focus on attracting a crowd of people (Rosen 2003). The growing popularity of weblogs shows in a study that in 2004 the weblog readership increased by 58% in the US and 27% of ‘on-line Americans’ read weblogs (BBC 2005).

An example of a weblog that demonstrates the variety of content that is available is the weblog, ‘A star from Mosul’, in which a 16-year-old girl writes about her daily life in post-Saddam Iraq (Abdullah, 2005).

Attractive graphic design is a key element in making interfaces more enjoyable to use (Shneiderman 2004), which enhances the user experience. The importance of consistency (Brannon et al. 2000) and design is crucial for the user experience (Tedeschi 1999) (Lynch et al. 2004). Before the final design was developed several other possibilities were considered (refer to Appendix C). In order to unify the design (Graham 2001, p.84) a three-column grid was used (Graham 2001, p. 112). The decision to use ‘cold colours’ was made because of their relaxing effect on the viewer (Birren 1984, p81). Blue also stands for ‘a sense of balance, calm, and security’ (Lu, 2004), which are attributes that seemed appropriate, as ideas can be very personal (WorldNet, Definition ‘idea’). The minimal use of controls in the top navigation with the only options to choose ‘Home’ or ‘Forum’ emphasised the community features (Hearst 2005). A system for news categories was implemented which should become personalised in the beta phase. Additional fields to add links to news were implemented in the news administration to increase the functionality. To give guests a reason to become a member, the link and the download section were filled with content and became a members-only section. Furthermore, the news arena panel, with additional news for members, was implemented.

The initial concept was focused on creating an aesthetically designed website (sight experience), establishing an online community to provide users with the opportunity of a co-experience and to create switching barriers through social interactions. Furthermore, the website should motivate users to engage creatively (think experience) in one of the seven forum categories (refer to Appendix D). The main goal was to establish a loyal user base for the field study.

Figure 3: First version of the website.