New Staff?

[Omniscient]

I won't change this theme. I know I can add more enticing items to the header though. Possibly a news bar or some other information bar.

Even adding social networking buttons like twitter/facebook somewhere will give the forum a more modern and approachable feel.

All these FB addons ons and plugins imho are a big forum mistake. You're just giving away your traffic and control. You might as well just redirect your domain to FB.

Currently I'd bet over 60% of traffic from Google don't give the website much of a chance because they are turned off in general. Big changes (a new theme) and little changes (a news bar) will change that.

Bounce rate is a huge problem. I wish it was 60% but it's actually more like 81%. A year ago we were at 60% and we had a lot less search traffic. What's happening is that visitors and search traffic are increasing disproportionally to actual activity.

I have what I think is a good idea. My approach will be to target the type of activity we want here and go from there. I won't say more but I do believe what I have in mind to entice activity will greatly help. Incentives can work. I personally believe the SF Feather Award was a great value to the site but it's now past its usefulness and we need something new to go to the next level of activity. I really do think my idea is strong. For now I'll keep it to myself until it's ready to be implemented. I need to think it out a bit more.