Tailoring websites to increase contributions to online communities

Many online communities experience insufficient contributions from their members. In order to encourage contributions to the community, we examined a website tailoring approach to fit a community's website interface with the motivations of the community. In particular, we used the characteristics of other websites as a method of gauging user motivation. We built two different websites with financial and altruistic themes, and conducted an online experiment with 122 users to test the impact of both segmenting and tailoring on contributions to a recycling community. Preliminary results show that both tailoring and segmenting techniques were effective with altruistic users. Keywords Online communities, website design, user modeling ACM Classification Keywords H.5.3 Information interfaces and presentation: Groups and Organization Interfaces, Web-based Interaction.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Min Kyung Lee, Tawanna Dillahunt, Bryan A. Pendleton, Robert E. Kraut, Sara B. Kiesler
• Keywords: CHI 2009, Experience Insufficient Contributions, Human Computer Interaction, Keywords Online Communities, Website Tailoring Approach