Reflections on a College Launch: CorkShare and Case Western Reserve University
December 20, 2009Tags: startup tech case cwru
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So the dust has had time to settle after our launch at Case Western Reserve University. Our overall feeling is that the launch went very well with many new users joining! The holiday season gives us a (much needed) break now to prepare for future launches, and a chance to reflect on how we can improve.
What Did We Do Well?
The CorkShare team did a great job building hype at the school. Since we knew many people at Case, we were able to spread the word and ensure it got passed on. Going forward, we will have to work with people attending each university we launch at (or maybe recent alums) to be spokespeople for CorkShare - word of mouth is invaluable.
We were able to utilize channels that made sense for that school such as the school newspaper The Observer and the university daily e-mail newsletter. Each school has its most popular mediums for reach out to students, and its crucial to take advantage of them. Many times it just takes a friendly request to get an article - nothing too complicated.
The CorkShare team also did a great job of interacting with users on CorkShare as they joined. A link to a “Feedback” section was heavily used in the first week after the launch - allowing us to talk through CorkShare with users and gather invaluable feedback.
What Could We Have Done Better?
While the “Feedback” section facilitated great conversations, having a way to talk in real-time would have been nice - like a chat room. Comments back and forth can be difficult to follow when the conversation is fast-paced.
Also, after the initial launch, user activity dropped off. Following up with some e-mails to the beta users to let them know what the CorkShare team has been up to would remind them to come back and play around with the site some more. Some of the drop off is likely due to fact the site is still in private beta. Once it opens up to the world and is more heavily integrated with the other social media tools we use every day, users will be much more engaged.
In addition, there’s work to do on explaining how to use CorkShare. We had a text-based explanation on the initial entrance to the site, but that isn’t effective in explaining a very visual web application. A video would be much more appropriate, or some sort of widget tutorial app.
Next Steps
On the to-do list: making the tutorial video or widget that users see on startup, and also improving the entire user sign up process. Signing up is a crucial time to get necessary information from users and spark the user to be engaged. If the user doesn’t immediately find the site useful or exciting, we can expect to lose many people in the confusion - people that may or may not return to try again later.
We can also work on encouragements for certain important activities. Things like uploading an avatar picture, following some boards, and leaving some comments are key - and we need to help users to do so. If interested in learning more about user encouragement, I’d recommend checking out J. Boye’s great presentation on “Hot Triggers” and user ritual.
Finally, the CorkShare team needs to refine the entire user experience. That means conducting usability testing (maybe with tools like Silverback) and conduct more analytics. Where are we losing people? What user interface components get used a lot, and which get ignored or unnoticed? We’ll be seeking answers for these questions and more.
Get Excited!
We’ve got some major development efforts happening behind the scenes at CorkShare, so you can look forward to those coming soon. And don’t forget to join the conversation (or just ask us for a beta invite :-P) on Twitter @CorkShare and our Facebook Fan Page!
