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Multi-product Community owners out there.

The multi-product nav is alive on the roadmap

But I want us to think for a minute about radical simplicity: Like 1 parent category per product.

Have you considered?

Like for e.g. only 1 parent category for Digital Hub, the walls between all these feature-categories are lifted so Customers just go to the Product Category ‘Digital Hub’ to Post a question about any of the modules (Comm. Admin, Customization, Analytics & Reporting… etc)?

Apart from the ease of that usecase, do you see any potential tradeoffs?

Also, since the sub-categories  merged, no one will be subscribed to specific sub-categories… how do you see that impact people getting notified for the new discussions and hence answering them?

How does it affect moderation?

 

P.S. ‘Ideas’ is a different beast, for ingesting Ideas per Feature ares and I wouldn’t necessarily propose that for Product Areas.

 

 

 

To get this going, specifically tagging multi-product Community friends @revote, @Suvi Lehtovaara, @Daniele Cmty, @Kgastaldo, @Anitahg, @aluciani, @bjoern_schulze.

Yes I’ve glanced at what you have currently and would like to hear if you have ever pondered this idea for hosting Feature Discussions for your Products, but only

One Discussion Category per brand?  

If you really can’t do without having a few sub-categories how would you partition?


Hi @anirbandutta,

I think we would still benefit from having subcategories underneath each Product. I think it would be best to give each community the choice whether or not keep that kind of classification, or otherwise not make use of it.

..or do you mean something else?


a 💯. ‘Choice’ is the keyword for most cases for sure. Nothing can be a 1 size fits all.

@Daniele Cmty for your case could you break down the who and what of the benefits you see?


Hi @anirbandutta is this as part of Product Research or are you just asking as a Community Manager out of curiosity? 😇 Just checking, now that you’re at Gainsight i’m not sure if your role has changed.


Fair point friend @Daniele Cmty 😃 let’s see..

I’m not officially a part of the DH product team so can’t claim this is some undercover user research… but as a multi-product Community manager myself, this is pretty 🔥 on by drawing board for an improved info architecture, so I’m evaluating polar sides of the solution.

  1. Neatly organizing to maintain our immaculate Product module sub-categories that we’ve always had with the multi-product UX update, while at the same time challenging myself to think…
  2. If not having the Customer to worry about Product A > Feature C category mapping to post their first question 🙋‍♂️ should should be the angle I should look at from  

Both a. and b. can be argued for and that’s exactly what I’m welcoming on this thread :) 


This is how I approach this topic: 

I think it would be best to give each community the choice whether or not keep that kind of classification, or otherwise not make use of it.

 

Additionally, we have products where one category is enough and then there are products (or product areas) whats definitely need several categories.

One category per product, if this is mandatory structure I think it will make difficult to the users to follow the topics they are interested.

What comes to the Mega menu and the Idea, I am not sure is this current Mega menu ok or not, two level Mega menu would be much shorter than the current one but but.

I am not sure did you get anything from me for this…? 😀


Totally @revote - Some product areas are as massive as an entire Product by itself.

I wonder if that delineation overhead to Submit a Question in the appropriate place on the sitemap, should lie upon the end-user, or they should just be able to submit a Question for Product A and just tag it with a couple of standard tags and the experienced users and the co. Moderators take care of it

… and did I see something cool in that regard? ;) 

I think it will make difficult to the users to follow the topics they are interested.

I think you highlight the usecase I’ve heard relayed by many users is users losing “following topics they are interested in” capability by dissolving the sub-categories they were Subscribed to.

The “Follow Topics” is a Big usecase for a personalized usage experience, over and above this discussion, and we have a seperate Idea and other threads expressing:

 @Aleksandra@Sebastian might comment on plans ⬆️ 

Btw, have you tried looking into Subscription numbers for your Community revote?

I hadn’t earlier but purely for this exercise have the no.s for our 9k strong GameChanger Community, and the Subscription numbers per our Product feature categories came out pretty low… like I’m saying about 16% of our MAU on an avg.


I wonder if that delineation overhead to Submit a Question in the appropriate place on the sitemap, should lie upon the end-user, or they should just be able to submit a Question for Product A and just tag it with a couple of standard tags and the experienced users and the co. Moderators take care of it

No. Users should be able to submit a question to the correct place by themselves.

Structure should be so easy, to figure out where I add my question.

Of course it would be the most easiest way for the user to submit a question, just by typing the title and question and some tags. Nothing more. But I think this isnt issue with the online communties. It isnt superusers or moderators task to move questions to the right place. Response is, but not moving them all the time.

If question is moved to the another place, it sounds like community is just a place where to add tickets and thats about it.

Sorry, I dont get the point here 😃

 

Btw, have you tried looking into Subscription numbers for your Community revote?

I hadn’t earlier but purely for this exercise have the no.s for our 9k strong GameChanger Community, and the Subscription numbers per our Product feature categories came out pretty low… like I’m saying about 16% of our MAU on an avg.

Honestly - no. I dont know where I can find the number of subscribers? Also, inSideds subscription feature, when you subscribe a topic, isnt so handy because you have to jump to the community all the time, so I think there isnt so many subscribers out there. Least we dont have. I dont know how it will work if you subscribe a category (sorry).

Personally, I am not a fan of subscriptions. I would like to see the notification center instead.


Totally with you @revote

From the point of view of Product categories serving primarily for Product Support:

  1. Making it super simple for users to Submit questions. That means more straightforward Category structure as partitioning introduces decision making. Keep it to a min sub-category fragmentation if it has to have.
  2. Since it seems ‘Category Subscription’ hasn’t exactly been a popular choice, the lack of it wouldn't be missed much; so that’s one consideration less.
    • You have to request Support for creating these reports.

Notifications is the way to manage subscriptions indeed - so great to know that is on the nearterm roadmap.

 


As we enter into the Community merger from Monday Dec 11

Let’s give you a sneak peek of how the dropdown site nav is going to change.

One category per Product, some new categories and some re-grouping of your favorite categories.

 


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