Your Guild Web Site Sucks
Or, Why I’m Not Going to Put in an App.
I spend a fair amount of time browsing through various guild web sites. Some are for guilds I’m in, some are for guilds I’m friends with, and many more are for guilds I’m either interested in possibly joining or happened to see linked elsewhere. Unfortunately, more often than not, I leave guild sites very quickly (within the first 30 seconds). Why? Because most of them suck.
Visitors to your guild’s web site will form an opinion not only about the site itself, but also your guild as a whole, within the first few seconds of arriving. Within those few seconds, visitors are going to decide whether or not they’re going to bother looking around your guild’s site for more information about your guild or how to join it, or move on to the next guild in a long list of possibilities. How your guild’s web site looks will–and should–be a reflection of what your guild community is like, and visitors will respond accordingly.
Information is Easy to Find
Whenever I’ve gone guild-hunting in the past, I’ve always done so by going to guilds’ web sites. (As opposed to through the WoW Forums, Guild Recruitment channel or via word-of-mouth.) What I find on your site will tell me whether or not your guild is worth my time.
Openings
Upon first arriving at a guild web site, the first thing I look for is recruitment information, whether I’m actually seeking a new guild or not. If I’m seeking a guild, then the reason for that is obvious–I want to know if you have room for me, or if I should move on. If it takes me more than 2 seconds to find this information, I’m leaving your site. Immediately.
Boss Kills
The second thing I look for is an indication of the guild’s progression. I want to see your list of boss kills. This information lets me know two things right off the bat:
- Whether you’re at my level of progression or not
- Whether you’re a guild that puts any emphasis on raiding or not
I want to know these things because I’m a raider. I want to know if I could reasonably put in an application with your guild. If your “highest” boss kill is Curator, chances are I wouldn’t have fun being in your guild–and I want to know that before I put my app in. On the flip side, if your guild is downing the Eredar Twins, I want to know that too; I don’t want to waste your guild’s time looking through (and inevitably declining) my application because my gear isn’t up to what your current focus is. This information is handy even to the most casual players, because it gives them at least some indication of how much focus your guild places on raiding.
Who the hell are you?
I want to know who you are, and where you’re from. You and your guildmates may know that you play horde-side on Feathermoon-US, but I don’t; I’ve never met you. Tell me this information up-front, even if it seems glaringly obvious to you. Your guild site gets indexed by search engines (even if you may not see a lot of traffic), and there’s a possibility that people may find you via search. Let these passing strangers know who you are.
In addition to stating your faction and server, post a small introduction describing your guild right on the index page of your site. Are you a friendly, G-Rated, family-oriented guild that just likes helping each other level, quest and do instances? Tell me these things. Are you a large guild of 20-somethings that raid six nights a week? I want to know. Does your guild encourage ERP and mass orgies? Well, I don’t really want to know the dirty details, but telling me that would at least let me know that your guild’s not a place I would want to call home. When people go to your guild’s web site, they’re trying to learn more about you. Give them what they’re looking for.
Say what?
I want a way to communicate with you. Typically, forums and/or contact forms are the best way to do this. Visitors to your site may want to contact you for reasons other than putting in an application, so give them a means to do that.
For example, another guild on your server may wish to contact you about forming a raid alliance, but not have the chance to catch an officer in game (or they may not know who your officers are in the first place). Give them a means to get the ball rolling.
If you decide to use forums, make sure that there’s at least one board that’s public, so visitors can communicate and interact with your guild. Make sure the public board isn’t a ghost town. Empty boards are uninviting and uninspiring. Show some good faith and use your public board for any guild communication that isn’t on a “need to know” basis, so that non-guildmate visitors to your site will feel more comfortable communicating with you. Just look at the Elitist Jerks site, if you need a good example. Few seem to even recall that the site is a guild site, not a necessarily a public community.
Functionality Over Form
I can’t tell you how many guild sites I’ve been completely disgusted with because they didn’t work right. My own guild is a great example. I hate, hate, hate going to my guild’s site. Every couple weeks, the index page breaks (although, I recently discovered that this issue is exclusive to Firefox–brilliant!) and half the page is unviewable. No sidebar, no scrollbar to find the sidebar, half of the news doesn’t show. It’s… ugh.
As a result, I very seldom visited my guild’s site. I used to visit my old guild’s site on an almost hourly basis. It wasn’t exactly gorgeous (I’m allowed to say that, I was the IT officer), but it worked right. I honestly don’t give a crap if your guild’s site is as Plain-Jane as they come, as long as it functions properly and the features of the site are easy to see and use.
How effectively visitors are able to use and navigate your guild’s site will determine how often they return. For new applicants, this could mean the difference between putting in an app or moving on to the next guild on their list. For current members, this could be the difference between signing up for raids and instances once a month or every couple days. If you want people to use your site, make it easy for them to do so.
Leave it to the Pros
If you want your guild site to be pretty, you have but a few options:
- Find a member of your guild that has experience designing sites, and has the time and desire to do it (and do it well)
- Hire someone else to do it
Crappy code gives birth to crappy sites. Don’t just hand some 14-year-old a book on HTML and tell them to go to town, thinking “It can’t be that hard”. Invariably, they will screw it up. And you’ll have wasted their time, and made them feel bad. (Way to go, Jerk.)
I think the worst guild sites I’ve ever seen were ones that were cobbled together by someone who obviously didn’t have a clue how to code or construct web sites, and decided instead to just download every “neat” plugin the internet has to offer, and then tried to duct tape them all together into a cohesive whole. Sorry Jack, it don’t work like that. Your site will look like a trash heap.
If you want advanced functionality, either pay to have it done professionally, use a guild hosting service that provides those features automatically, or be lucky enough to have someone in your guild that knows what the heck they’re doing that’s willing to do it for you. Those are your options. If one of those three options are not available to you, tough noogies, live without the functionality you want or find a simpler work-around. Trust me, it’ll make life so much easier for those of us who visit your site.
Share With Me
Let me know what your guild has going on, or what you’ve been up to recently. Keep this information updated frequently. By showing visitors what your guild’s been up to, you’re providing them with a window into daily life for your guild. You’re giving them a clearer picture of what they could expect if they were to become a member. Also, what you choose to put as “news” on your guild site lets visitors know what your guild thinks is important enough to mention. If every one of your “news” posts is a boss kill, visitors will know that progression is important to you. (And, if dates are posted, it will give visitors an indication of how quickly you clear through game content.) If your news posts are about birthdays, contests, or baby pictures, visitors will see you’re more casually-oriented.
Its important to make sure that you update your “news” section on a regular basis. By keeping this section updated, you’re showing visitors that you care about the site and care about sharing what your guild is about. Also, this shows people how active your guild is in general. People don’t want to join guilds that aren’t at least active in some respect, so if your last piece of “news” was from two years ago, people might think that your guild has disbanded or that your members don’t play anymore and the site was just abandoned. Make sure you’re showing people that you’ve got stuff going on.
Summary
Creating and maintaining a guild site takes a lot of hard work, and making sure that your site is efficient, effective and functional can be even more difficult. A good site will promote more community interaction within your guild, and attract more new applicants. Do all you can to make sure members are coming back and new applicants stay to fill out a form.
- Show open recruitment slots
- Show boss kills
- Show your faction and server
- Explain who you are and what you’re about
- Provide a means to contact you
- Put functionality above all else
- Pay for advanced functionality if you don’t know how to do it yourself
- Post and update guild news regularly
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Comments
@Cambios - Yes, I would agree. There’s a reason why the saying “Keep It Simple, Stupid” came to be. 
@kasperlitheater - Yeah, there really, really are, lol. There are, thankfully, many guild sites that are actually beautifully designed though that give me hope.
The suspicious part of me notes you only posted this up after seemingly deciding to re-design your blog >.>
Suspicious!
@Kharthon - Actually, I posted it before that, though not by much. 
[...] Getting back to the topic of guild management, one key recruiting tool is a guild’s website.5 Lassirra from The Hunter’s Mark writes about what’s good and not so good about guild websites she visits. This article is just one example of why hers is a 5-Star Blog. (Oh, and generally, your guild website sucks!) [...]
Excellent tips and you cover a number of things that I’ve been considering while working on designing the website for my most recent guild.
As someone who has dabbled in web design for over a decade now, a lot of what you’ve said definitely rings true. In general, a website serves a very distinct function and if it can’t fulfill that purpose there really isn’t any point in proceeding.
That said, if you’ve got either the skill or the money to get a damned good site made get it done! Make something appealing to both current and potential members. By ensuring communication with your current members, you typically also adequately portray the guild to outsiders.
It’s really important to realize that a guild website typically has multiple focuses. A website should be used as a way to further bring a guild together; this can be done through forums, image galleries, or even something as quirky as a community blog. It also is an integral way to introduce others to your guild or provide valuable information.
Also, lose black backgrounds and red text; that’s so gauche and one of my biggest pet peeves. One of the things that I tried to do with The Regiment’s website was a bright, clean, minimalistic design that was completely different from a lot of the crap that I saw on other sites. Updates were automatically drawn from one section of the forums (meaning that people with the required permissions to create a thread there and no webskill could easily update the news while checking out the forums), the random quote generator was a bit hit within the guild, we clearly outlined who and what we were, and even included a couple of features that highlighted our particular niche in World of Warcraft: a small, friendly roleplaying focused guild that casually raided and engaged in frequent PvP.
Cynras last blog post..Amani War Bear Spotted!
>> Also, lose black backgrounds and red text; that’s >> so gauche and one of my biggest pet peeves.
Black backgrounds WITH red text may be gauche, but I don’t think black backgrounds in general are.
I often like reading sites with a black background - especially gaming sites.
I generally prefer solid, or mostly solid backgrounds to intricate designs or patterns.
Remember the early days of the web when everyone had those hideous fractical graphic backgrounds? LOL.
-Cambios
Blogging about Online Gaming and Virtual Worlds:
http://www.muckbeast.com
Cambioss last blog post..Summer Doldrums in MUDs, MMOs, Online Games, and Virtual Worlds
[...] Hunter’s Mark: Your Guild Web Site Sucks I might get around to reviewing some 3rd party guild [...]
Great advice for guild sites.
I’ll add one more: keep it simple.
You can waste a lot of time trying to make a site fancy or beautiful. Your members are going to spend most of their WoW time playign WoW. Make sure the guild site handles the important jobs it needs to handle (like those listed in this post) and only add “pretty” or “nifty” stuff here and there when you have free time.
-Cambios
Blogging about Online Gaming and Virtual Worlds:
http://www.muckbeast.com
Cambioss last blog post..If it ain’t broke, you better not fix it.