Adjusting site layout for members versus visitors

I was reading an interesting thread over on Problogger.net about readers versus visitors, and who do you try to accommodate more.

It got me to thinking about my own site of course, and some changes I had been putting in place recently. About a month back I started to make some changes to my site(s) that focused on enhancing the user experience for members. Previously my site looked and acted pretty much the same for both visitors and members (registered users). I decided to make some changes that would allow me to toggle the use of valuable page real estate depending on if you are logged in or not.

My first change was to take away my newsletter sign-up block in the header of every page. Members have already been given the choice to sign up when they first registered. Why should I bother them on EVERY page regarding a decision they already made? So for my registered members, that valuable page real estate was converted into a navigation block allowing users to quickly get to where they most frequently go. I also added some messaging between members, and used this block for message notifications, etc.

My next change involved the meat of my content pages. In my old site, I would pretty much promote all the same ads and offers whether you were a visitor or a member. In my new version, I go a lot lighter on the ads for the registered members. They are the heart and soul of the site and the community. Advertisements can be annoying, cause slow page loads and be distracting. Why should I put my regular members through the loop over and over again. Most of them become blind to the ads anyway. So I cut down on my advertising to regular members. The result was a much happier user community who could not navigate the site much faster and more efficiently.

These are just a few examples. I realize this is not a new concept, but felt it was worth taking about. Sometimes you forget that site real estate can serve more than one purpose when you have a user base of registered members. I've learned over the years that my top priority is to keep my community members happy. They can make or break a successful site.