When's the last time you walked a mile in your users' shoes? 👠🩴👞

Shauna

So often, we look at the community from our admin views, and forget to check out what our members are actually seeing — how does that shoe fit? Is it comfy and sturdy, ready to set your users off on the right foot 🤭 (I can't miss a good pun like that, come on!) for their community journey, or are there some awkward parts that leave some room for improvement?

https://media.giphy.com/media/kGABMRdGVWKgE/giphy.gif

How does it look to a guest?

First, I like to check out the guest view.
When reviewing the community as a guest, a few things to consider:

• Are there CTAs (calls to action) telling me about the community's value and reasons to sign up?
• Is the site inviting for guests?
• Is it easy to sign up?

Some communities might have a great deal of private content, but you always restrict guest views while still showing off a great homepage.

You can read more about curating CTAs here:

https://success.vanillaforums.com/discussion/1641/tiptuesday-curating-widgets-pockets-for-different-roles-in-your-community

Check out the User Journey

Once you've reviewed how the site looks to guests, go ahead and sign up
I know, I know, but you can either create a 'fake' email by appending +something to the end of your email address, for example smcclemens+1@higherlogic.com will still deliver to my email, as will smcclemens+userjourneytest@higherlogic.com — if your company uses g-suite or ms office, this will work for you too!

If you want to use a non staff email, you can get a free gmail, outlook etc account in just a few minutes as well, lots of options!

You can read about the emails they will get in this article:

How are you welcoming your users?

Butttt, there is nothing do you quite like actually going through and testing it out yourself — what pages do you land on? If you use a basic registration, what widgets do you see when your email isn't confirmed, when you're waiting to be approved, etc?

• If you're using SSO, how is the 'hand off' — do you land on the right page?
• Do you go back to community immediately or do you need to do another click?
• What do the in between pages look like?
• What kind of emails are you getting?
• Are they up to date?
• Do they look good?
• Do they need more emojis 😎 (always my fave)?

It's amazing how often I check out a site and their welcome email is a bit dated, or has some room from improvement.

Did you find any quick wins when checking out your user journey? Have you changed anything that has landed well with your community? Share with the class in the comments! 👩‍🏫