One of the big hurdles of any site, I believe, is getting people to come back for further use. I am starting this thread in an attempt to get ideas from everybody that could be incorporated that would, in your opinion, make people want to come back and use this site.

I think that is has to be driven by interactivity. For example, planning get togethers via the site that will keep people checking in. Organizing play alongs where a game is chosen and anyone interested plays on their own and posts their progress. Maybe something like high score or best time competitions for games. Those are the types of things that will get people to post in a fun way rather than making an obligatory check in once every week or so.

Mike I am just brainstorming here, so don't throw this on the list until we get a little feedback. What about the addition of a calendar of events. People could post gatherings like gaming nights. We can also post events like teh Louisville arcade expo etc. Thoughts ?

I think the addition of an Event Calendar is a good idea. I think it would best serve to show when the next Olympics are, any random gaming night, gaming expos, and even the possibility of maybe showing releases of new games.

I also suggested last night to Mike that putting in a "What game should I play" generator. If you're in the mood to play something but have no idea what you want to play, the generator will generate a game for you. I would assume you could put in some criteria (i.e. not finished) and have the system spit out a game that you should play.

..... and you should call it "Ask R.O.B." !!!!!

http://www.mariowiki.com/R.O.B.

Adding ideas that Mike and I have discussed

Weekly Polls
Community Dashboard
Activity Around Finishing Games
Being able to Thumbs Up someone finishing a game or even other activity
Achievements/Trophies/Badges

I'll be pushing a new release out this weekend and the activity logging for finishing / completionating games will be in there. I just checked the code in!

Well, it's been 6+ months since this thread was posted in and retention continues to be a problem with the site. I wanted to bump this thread and see if anyone out there has thought of anything new that might help with this.

Did the email have any effect on people returning to the site?

Also, I know this is probably not in the works for quite some time, but what about a mobile app for iOS and Android? The couple guys I work with said that if there was an app, they'd probably be on more.

You're right, there will not be a mobile app for a very long time and most likely never :P I really have no interest in learning mobile development since it's not something I deal with at my job and I have more than enough to keep me busy on the website side. That being said, I really do try to keep with a responsive design pattern so the site SHOULD work okay on mobile devices. I know there are a few quirks here and there, but generally speaking, it should work.

Some remarks about mobile as it doesn't work. It doesn't load wel on my tablet or phones. You can navigate but complexer functions don't work, dialogs are often too big and the UI doesn't scale that well. You apply bootstrap but only use some fluid (v2) classes which are not really designed for use with mobile. That said switching to v3 of boostrap could help but that would be a fair amount of work to rewrite stuff.

Perhaps your employee should give you some mobile work ;-)

I definitely found some issues with tablets since I recently acquired one, so I'll try to fix those gradually. I already made a few changes to the Collection Search page so it scales a little better (though not perfect by any means) on tablets. It should go out with the release this weekend.

I've been considering a move to Bootstrap 3, but like you said, it would be quite a bit of work. I'd like to do it before I build up TOO much functionality, but I'm not quite sure where I want to draw that line.

Hey Great to hear you fixed some issues.
( I hope the lists are working now so I can tag\categorize my collection on the couch. :D )

Unfortunately, I haven't fixed the lists on touch devices yet :( I looked into it and it appears to be a global issue with all of the Bootstrap dropdowns I'm using on the site. I tried a few different things, but nothing seemed to fix it. I'll try again with a fresh set of eyes next weekend, but it might become another reason to go ahead and do the Bootstrap upgrade. Still not looking forward to that :P