(Retention suggestion) Let new users choose communities they consider to be a part of during registration and first-spawn them in specific community gateway based on their choice

[lucagrabacr]

Since people are more likely to stay if they meet people they can relate or comfortably talk with when they first joined, why don't we let users choose communities (or community) they consider to be a part of during registration, and then first-spawn them in a specific community gateway that's catering to that community? The social islands are great and they teach people the technical basics of SL pretty well, but after that the users are left with these portals (assuming they don't know how to properly search for a place yet) which lead to places that might not necessarily accommodate their specific interests.

So since we have these community gateways and the community gateways program, why don't we let new users to first-spawn in these places if they opt to do so during registration? It might be better than first-spawning them in social islands where they might feel estranged (or even to some degree, harassed, or weirded out) by people they can't comfortably talk or hang with. 

Or maybe even put their age group in consideration? Let community gateway applicants choose the prominent age demographic of their community / places, and let that be another determining factor of where someone first spawned when they first joined. 

What do you guys think?  

[Ethan Paslong]

49 minutes ago, lucagrabacr said:

Since .........joined. 

What do you guys think?  

i'm not sure it will not be a improvement, who want to be put in a specific direction for start of his SL?... it would put me in the group that leaves in the first minute.

SL should try to find it;s old roots a bit again, you could ask everybody you met for advice or help, after the big youngster invasion that went down and it got a very individual place.

Also the age thing... it's SL, no datingf agency or facebook ... i really hope LL is wise enough to stay away from this kind of separation.

[lucagrabacr]

4 minutes ago, Ethan Paslong said:

i'm not sure it will not be a improvement, who want to be put in a specific direction for start of his SL?... it would put me in the group that leaves in the first minute.

SL should try to find it;s old roots a bit again, you could ask everybody you met for advice or help, after the big youngster invasion that went down and it got a very individual place.

Also the age thing... it's SL, no datingf agency or facebook ... i really hope LL is wise enough to stay away from this kind of separation.

I personally agree with you on your first point, as I personally admire the diversity of people that you can meet on SL, but from my observation, I believe that people are more likely to stay if their first impression of SL is accompanied with people they are comfortable to be around with and can comfortably talk with.

About the age thing, I'm not in any way suggesting a separation of users based on their age group, I said let people's age be a part of the determining factor for which community gateway they first spawned in relative to that community gateway's community's prominent age group, as I'm sure most people are most comfortable around people in their age group. 

[Deann3]

Back a while ago when i first joined SL with an old, now retired avatar, there used to be something similar to what you're suggesting. Mind you, i originally joined back in 2007, so ....

[Penny Patton]

Yeah, I remember what Deann3 is talking about. I think they were even called "Community Gateways". Some of them were really good, but overall the quality was inconsistent. The main problem is how do you curate them so the communities in question are offering a good new user experience and not pushing people away? A community gateway that is super laggy, broken, or just filled with unfriendly people and lacking in moderation can be a worse experience than what LL does with new accounts now.

Also, in a way, LL still does something similar. In "Social Island", the sims where new avatars are dropped, there are teleporters to various locations. I think they might be chosen from the Destination Guide, but I'm not sure.

To be clear, I don't think the idea of community gateways is bad, just that there still needs to be a solid new user orientation (something SL has always lacked, partially because SL itself lacks the features necessary to make a proper new user experience) which then in turn offers up a selection of community gateways based on the resident's interests.

And the gateways themselves should have some form of curation because we're talking about a new user's first impression of SL.

[Whirly Fizzle]

The Community Gateway program was reinstated a year ago.

If you want to try the Firestorm Gateway new user experience, you can create an SL account here: http://www.firestormviewer.org/join-secondlife/

Our orientation island is locked to new users entering through the sign up link above, plus LL also send a percentage of their new signups through our gateway.
The other regions in the gateway are open to all SL Residents.

 

 

[iamyourneighbour]

Not bad, that beats getting dumped in noobland with tons of prims. I think when I tried to get into SL few years ago that kinda held me back, signed up again 2 years ago and seeing good locations instead of ad littered land made me stay. Just my 2 cents, it should have great theme focus with no ad boards.

Edited April 26, 2018 by iamyourneighbour

[Penny Patton]

Really nice to know LL brought this back.

Still, I look at the tutorial signs in the video and can't help but think the information they convey should be delivered by the UI itself. Like a videogame tutorial. You log in the first time and you get a prompt to use WASD to move, etcetera. You could do it with Experiences now and that would work well, but then you still have to accept an experience which a new user won't know anything about. Maybe there could be a universal experience specifically for tutorials and such that all accounts have right off the bat? And given how important experiences are for interactions like that, joining an experience should be a part of the new user tutorial.

Still, using an experience for this seems clunky, too. I think it would work better if it were built right into the UI so the tutorial couldn't be messed up by common issues like lag, waiting for textures to load, etcetera. But that's a current limitation of SL, one LL should maybe be thinking about.

Sorry, just "thinking out loud" as it were on how to make the new user experience a little more intuitive and engaging.

[JaJanna]

I think newcomers should be treated as adults if they are adults. They had a reason for joining so just let them.

Give them the info they need, I was forced to do tutorial but not inclined so i skipped thru.
I ended on a social island I really did not like.
Then thru website search I found other places.
WWhat was missing on the website where you can immidiately go to a location with either your own account or not being a 2nd lifer at all.... it gives not enough information. Some of those places even have requirements and can ban your account if you go there.

I mean this page: https://maps.secondlife.com/

Edited April 26, 2018 by JaJanna

[Klytyna]

3 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

You log in the first time and you get a prompt to use WASD to move, etcetera.

Frankly, I've NEVER been impressed with the *cough* "Tutorials" *cough* that LL offers.

Just as an example of the kind of problems with LL's new user info, many of them when they actually arrive on a "real" sim, are "Run-B4-Rezzers".

They run everywhere, because the tutorial used to tell them how to turn always run ON, but neglected to tell them how to turn it OFF again afterwards.

They'd leave Noob Island, land somewhere in the grid and run around, velocity interpolating into walls they couldn't see yet, and giving up on places because nothing had rezzed there before they had run out of range to see it before it could be seen.

Flying... Why teach them that at all on Noob Island, again you see people scream past, a few hours old, and they are out of range of local chat before you can type "Hello Noob", then they assume that since nobody is "speaking" it's all "bots" and they push off elsewhere, and at the end of their first evening in SL, they decide it's a dead place filled with silent NPC's where there's nothing to do or see, all because the STUPID damn tutorial teaches them to vanish before things rez in and before people can type a greeting at them.

LL's assorted incarnations of Noob Island are probably one of the biggest single factors in "Instant Retention-Fail".
 

[Cindy Evanier]

7 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

They run everywhere, because the tutorial used to tell them how to turn always run ON, but neglected to tell them how to turn it OFF again afterwards.

Ohhhhh that's what it is!!  

[JaJanna]

2 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

Frankly, I've NEVER been impressed with the *cough* "Tutorials" *cough* that LL offers.

Just as an example of the kind of problems with LL's new user info, many of them when they actually arrive on a "real" sim, are "Run-B4-Rezzers".

They run everywhere, because the tutorial used to tell them how to turn always run ON, but neglected to tell them how to turn it OFF again afterwards.

They'd leave Noob Island, land somewhere in the grid and run around, velocity interpolating into walls they couldn't see yet, and giving up on places because nothing had rezzed there before they had run out of range to see it before it could be seen.

Flying... Why teach them that at all on Noob Island, again you see people scream past, a few hours old, and they are out of range of local chat before you can type "Hello Noob", then they assume that since nobody is "speaking" it's all "bots" and they push off elsewhere, and at the end of their first evening in SL, they decide it's a dead place filled with silent NPC's where there's nothing to do or see, all because the STUPID damn tutorial teaches them to vanish before things rez in and before people can type a greeting at them.

LL's assorted incarnations of Noob Island are probably one of the biggest single factors in "Instant Retention-Fail".
 

This is giving me my argument, ty.

When new on SL on the website you can search for help and information.
Without having to learn the movements and looking like a fool jumping instead of trying to respond someone normally.

So you log out (keep on trying, you can find it) and go website for something practical that might help and find :

38 minutes ago, JaJanna said:

this page: https://maps.secondlife.com/

And look for a nice place to do the stuff auto didact.
A lot of adults are autodidact and prefer to be not treated as helpless.
The problem though with that page is

40 minutes ago, JaJanna said:

it gives not enough information. Some of those places even have requirements and can ban your account if you go there.

This way me personally, after 4 days I came on this forum where I met you all.

Now maybe I should do an open application @ ll to help make above page a real good info page for newcomers so they could opt to meet with themselves first in SL.
Communities and relations and groups etc etc etc only if and when they like. Also... if people come and leave, that does not necessary mean their visit was without meaning. Not all lifes are equally long.

 

[JaJanna]

Sorrie!
I must add forum moderation.

Where I come from Original Poster has the right to ask moderators to look into posts that go against OP's meaning.
(edit) As OP you can ask a lock on your thread.

I have seen thread derailing on two threads by newcomers here on forum since I am here.

 

Edited April 26, 2018 by JaJanna
explain difference better. this i would have done on mine after my ban was removed

[Fionalein]

6 minutes ago, JaJanna said:

Sorrie!
I must add forum moderation.

Where I come from Original Poster has the right to ask moderators to look into posts that go against OP's meaning.

I have seen thread derailing on two threads by newcomers here on forum since I am here.

 

I think that is a matter of point of view, some think OPs own their threads and others consider them in public ownership

[JaJanna]

You guys did not let me own mine.

I had a laugh, you know I did but it is true.

The other thread though was a sad story.

[JaJanna]

And you explained to me how it works here. It has advantages as well, I felt actually welcomed with all that attention.

but the other thread, the guys was treated real bad, a thread like that should maybe even be removed tomorrow.

Or is it tradition for everyone's first post on forum?

[Fionalein]

3 minutes ago, JaJanna said:

Or is it tradition for everyone's first post on forum?

I hope not, but some forum divas are easily offended, a newcomer comes in, posts a question and someone will take it as an personal insult... oldschool (that is pre-web 2.0) social media require you to grow a thick skin pretty fast.

[JaJanna]

Well I still have not started investigating what my 30 minutes ban meant.

And why the ban was only 30 mins, it was   `` 1440 minutes so inworld told me.

Is it conspiracy-thinking my posting here had something to do with me being able to play again within 15 minutes after posting? I ofcourse don't mind if someone saw my post and changed it. I am a curious person and would have liked a message or something on my account.

 

[JaJanna]

And another thing.

Is there a thread specially for newcomers to ask any sort of noob question?

Wouldn't it be nice to have the possibility to ask your question there anonymous?

Edited April 26, 2018 by JaJanna

[Fionalein]

6 minutes ago, JaJanna said:

And another thing.

Is there a thread specially for newcomers to ask any sort of noob question?

Wouldn't it be nice to have the possibility to ask your question there anonymous?

Nope but there newbie advice places are places in world with helpers that have the wisdom to keep the conversations confident (the two I know allow no adult stuff though, so you're out of luck with adult questions)

Edited April 26, 2018 by Fionalein

[animats]

As someone who entered SL six months ago, I've done the current onboarding process.  It's not bad until the end. 

There's avatar selection, with a few unimpressive avatars. That's OK. Then there's a walk-through tutorial on basic movement and commands. That's OK. Then you end up in a large new user space full of people being jerks in voice chat. There's no suggestion of what to do next other than some posters which teleport you to a few currently popular destinations. That's the problem.

There needs to be something else at that point. I'm not sure what. But that's where the onboarding process breaks down. Some, clear, fun. well-chosen options need to be presented. Not an overwhelming number of them, or new users will freeze up with decision paralysis.

Edited April 27, 2018 by animats

[Cindy Evanier]

3 hours ago, animats said:

There needs to be something else at that point

When I made an alt last month, there were lots of portals at this point to start exploring different subjects.  

[Penny Patton]

That's the trick, is't it? What do you have new residents do after the avatar selection and tutorial? SL isn't a game per-se, not in the typical sense at least, but it's not really Facebook, either. It's both, neither, and something altogether different.

Providing teleports to user created areas is one idea, but LL's been doing that for years and I'm not sure how successful it's been. I've checked out the teleporters at Social Island and every destination they spat me out in was empty. Few were impressive by SL standards, and none were particularly engaging without other residents around.

A big part of SL is socializing, but when there's no newbie-friendly people around to interact with SL is about as engaging as a damp sock. And it's very difficult for any place in SL to maintain that "critical mass" of activity without some sort of content to act as kindling. Interactive elements not dependent on other people being around. To keep explorers hanging around long enough for people to begin piling up at the location.

Whenever this gets suggested the "SL is not a game!" crowd storms in to naysay, but such interactions don't necessarily need to be wholly videogame like. They can be like an automated, interactive tour. They can be educational. They can be passively entertaining, like watching a virtual play or a concert performed by NPCs. You can have game-like elements that do appeal to the SL crowd, such as activities that reward a new avatar with accessories. I've seen some Linden and Resident created areas that touch on these ideas, but none that fully succeed at them. A part of that is the lack of interactivity features, which LL finally seems to be addressing with features like Experience Tools as well as the upcoming grid-wide Experiences and even elements of the expanded Windlight feature set will have new, and long overdue, tools for content creators.

I don't believe LL can solely rely on the userbase to generate such areas, however. Especially given that the tools we have are not exactly easy and intuitive.  You need a skilled scripter to create even basic elements like a working door, chair or teleporter. Creating such content could be simplified for non-scripters. Import a mesh chair, right click it and select "Add Function", from there select "Chair" and it pops open a new edit interface that allows you to add animations, adjust the avatar placement, even set up a menu dialog or button functions. BAM. Any resident, even one fresh off of Social Island for the first time, can make a working chair/teleporter/door/car/airplane with no scripting experience whatsoever. Of course, scripts would still be used and not lose any functionality. A skilled scripter could make this content and probably do it more efficiently and with more features. But basic interactive content would no longer be out of reach of people who don't know, or care to know, scripting.

But I'm going on a tangent here, my point is LL needs to see where the SL tool set is lacking, look at the type of content SL needs but cannot currently achieve. Make it so we can create more engaging experiences than are currently possible. Then lead the way with some basic new user zones utilizing these features. Once they do that I guarantee you'll see the community following suit with some amazing gateways, and a huge increase in new user retention.

[Coffee Pancake]

4 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

That's the trick, is't it? What do you have new residents do after the avatar selection and tutorial? SL isn't a game per-se, not in the typical sense at least, but it's not really Facebook, either. It's both, neither, and something altogether different.

That is the problem, and maybe SL should be more like a game or more like a social network.

The retention rates are so low, the typical user experience might as well be :

1. Join SL, download and log in.
2. Figure out how to move about  Oh no, that's easy.
3. (optional) maybe get off help island, find the grid ..
4. " WTF is all this and how the hell is it relevant to anything? ... Why am I here? "
5. Log off
6. Never come back. Ever.

Step 4 is overcome for a MINORITY by social bonds, existing friend(s) in world, a 5 minute chat on help island, preexisting expectations from outside of SL (websites, youtube, personal recommendations), stubborn determination ... humping avatars .. etc etc etc.

The point being the vast majority of signups never make it to first base, and this is where the focus needs to be in terms of working on retention. The fact we can't even define what first base is in these circumstances frames the problem perfectly.

This should be the new user experience.

Rather than some boring time consuming empty BS about moving or walking or flying or standing about with other newbies, or heaven forbid .. land on the mainland and trying anything. Might as well put a firepit at the first login location, drop the avatar in the pit and then drop terribly made prim sharks in with them. (I would be 100% up for making such a new user experience with LL for science and feel confident it would have exactly the same retention as all other new user experiences).

If SL were a game this would be easy. Step one .. here! Go do the thing! Punch a tree! Then do this other thing! Then kill a very specific number of bears and bring back their kneecaps.

If SL were a social network this would be easy. Hey do you have any friends here already ? Lets search your contacts for people we might know! How about a profile picture! Hey everyone ! Guess who just joined SL !!!

 

[animats]

6 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

That is the problem, and maybe SL should be more like a game or more like a social network.

The retention rates are so low, the typical user experience might as well be :

1. Join SL, download and log in.
2. Figure out how to move about  Oh no, that's easy.
3. (optional) maybe get off help island, find the grid ..
4. " WTF is all this and how the hell is it relevant to anything? ... Why am I here? "
5. Log off
6. Never come back. Ever.

Step 4 is overcome for a MINORITY by social bonds, existing friend(s) in world, a 5 minute chat on help island, preexisting expectations from outside of SL (websites, youtube, personal recommendations), stubborn determination ... humping avatars .. etc etc etc.

The point being the vast majority of signups never make it to first base, and this is where the focus needs to be in terms of working on retention. The fact we can't even define what first base is in these circumstances frames the problem perfectly.

This is good. We're converging on understanding the problem. Onboarding breaks down at the point the new user finishes setup and the tutorial, and is dumped into the help island crowd.

The Second Life landing page currently shows three pictures in rotation - "Have an Adventure", "Become a Creator", and "Make Money". They all look good, and new users sign up. Then they discover that a new user can't do any of those things easily, if at all.. The landing page pictures should re-appear on the help island, and should lead to experiences which let new users do those things, with visuals that look like the ad pictures. Then SL will deliver what they promised in the marketing material. Not doing that makes users feel cheated.

Whatever LL puts on the landing page should be something a new user can try in their first hour in SL.