First, ezboard must update their business model to reflect a shift in their target end user. It should not have been a surprise to the ezboard management that a shift occurred in its user base from an 18 to 25 year-old male to a 25 to 45 year-old female as well as a shift in discussion board topics from gaming and music to parenting, health, social support and television. Ezboard must first understand who is using their board before it changes its business model in order to reach revenue goals. Ezboard must then convince these users that being part of a network of discussion boards is better then being a member of a stand alone board because of the ability to reach out to other users like themselves.
Of the 75,000 active discussion boards in 2004, 23% subscribed to the Gold Community but Gold boards represented 65% of the page views on the site. Pricing terms for gold board subscriptions had not changed since their introduction in 2001 but ezboard should implement a pricing strategy to charge for viewing gold boards. Ezboard was willing to negotiate better rates for boards receiving 1 million views per month. It also states that roughly 4400+ users contribute an average of $23.26 to Community Chests on behalf of those large board administrators. Ezboard might want to work with the administrators of medium boards dealing with popular issues if they launch a new subscription model to encourage their users to contribute to their Community Chest in exchange for more features for that administrator. Large boards are less interested in attracting new members but incentivizing medium board administrators with additional features based on users might help increase discussion board membership.
With less than 1 percent of ezboard’s 10 million users considered paid users, ezboard needs to further establish the gap between registered users and non-registered users. Non-registered users should have “bare bones” features with no ability to personalize and limited time only access to boards before they must at least register as a non-paying user. The collected demographics will then be used to attract advertisers and increase revenue in that arena.
2. What services should they consider offering with the new Version 8.0 software?
- Users do not want a wide spectrum of services rolled out at once beyond their discussion boards. They are interested in specific functionality. It is important to roll out new version in phases.
- Users do want ezboard to add specific social networking functions i.e. the ability to create a friends list for sending messages easily to specific users
- Implement script-like software that is as good as if not better than script. Roll this version out to administrators of large boards first since they are the first to “jump ship” because of the ease of use of script software
- Keep and enhance the ability to make the discussion board highly personalized in design
Allow users to opt out of advertising as part of their subscription fee - Keep the functionality that board administrators can set up Community Chests so that members can help pay for large boards
- Allow users a forum to leave constructive feedback. Because word-of-mouth is so important to growing ezboard’s user base, ezboard must listen to its current users and be proactive in adding features, etc. It is important that ezboard identify how management will proactively use this feedback.
- Target ring advertising to that user based on search criteria or profile. Link ads to the search function. This increased advertising revenue 20% in 2003.
- Add blogging capabilities as a feature for gold boards or for paying users
- Because word of mouth attracts the most new users, incentivize current subscribers to invite friends in exchange for a discount on renewing their subscription
- Require registration of free users when they read a discussion board more than 5 times.
