Your time would probably be better spent link-building and marketing the site.

Unless you have a really big base of customers/visitors, not worth the effort imo. Building a forum community from scratch is extremely time-consuming. Even if you do, it's hard to get real tangible benefits from a forum.

Afraid I'll have to disagree strongly with those points. ;-)

Forums can be extrememly valuable add-ons to sites, especially sites where community plays a big role in the site's reason for being, and/or, where information exchange related to using goods or services provided by the site is helpful. Many times I've seen forums be a substantial contributing factor to a site's growth.

Also, they do not need to be huge amounts of work. Some work, sure, but if you get decent admin(s) and mods in early and establish groundrules and a forum persona, then it's mainly a matter of keeping the technology of the forum humming, and providing guidance to the mods as needed. There are a lot of highly motivated, involved people out there willing to contribute their time and effort for free to areas they care about.

I'm well acquainted with the owner of one medium sized site who rarely goes into his forum anymore, because his mods are so great. So he just focuses on the rest of the site. And he credits the forum for helping to put the site over the top in terms of profitability, because the forum members are frequent users of the rest of the site.

I agree there's little point blindly wacking on a forum but let's say you offer help to your visitors through e-mails.

Why not have all support on a forum for all to see?

Also, you'll get posts based on slight variations and things related to your service. Before you know it you're helping lots of people and helping yourself.

It's not a definitive answer but it might help. Again depends on context.

Also, they do not need to be huge amounts of work.

Have you ever built a forum from scratch before? I've done it twice, and in my experience it's no walk in the park :) I think it'd be even harder on an ecomm site like the one described.

#1 - You need at least a few hundred quasi-intelligent posts with replies to get ANY newcomers to stay. People don't stay on forums that look deserted. So you're gonna need to dedicate some significant time/resources to that.

#2 - Getting reliable mods is no easy task. Sure, an authority site like Webmasterworld probably has a backlog of volunteer admins. A new ecommerce store will have zero, and recruiting/retaining them is a job unto itself.

#3 - To get an active forum going, you need to dedicate at least a few hundred hours and a few thousand dollars. The time adds up: figuring out how to monetize it, updating software, custom skins, managing moderators (not to mention being the mod for the first few months).

#4 - The money/time that all this takes would be better spent making a newsletter, improving the site, building links, working on PPC campaigns to sell products. If you have a bunch of interns sitting around with nothing to do, a forum might be a good way to keep'em occupied.

Plus, projects that don't directly contribute to the bottom line tend to be neglected when resources are stretched. Forums seem to get sidelined frequently because of this.

Sorry, that was a bit long-winded...

Have you ever built a forum from scratch before?

Yes. First time was only a few years ago. For a long while I feared it largely based on the sorts of things you're saying. But then something came up that essentially forced me to set one up. After that my entire perspective changed. It was a lot easier than I antipated. Not easy. Easier, and worthwhile. But a lot of judgement is required.

#1 - You need at least a few hundred quasi-intelligent posts with replies to get ANY newcomers to stay. People don't stay on forums that look deserted. So you're gonna need to dedicate some significant time/resources to that.

Getting the posts is easy. Hire writers to get the thing going. IF the existing site has users, promoting them into the forum once it's populated is also easy.

If the site owner is not comfortable outsourcing work: Don't start a forum. Outsourcing/delegating is essential for obvious reasons.

#2 - Getting reliable mods is no easy task. Sure, an authority site like Webmasterworld probably has a backlog of volunteer admins. A new ecommerce store will have zero, and recruiting/retaining them is a job unto itself.

First, no sense in comparing to WebmasterWorld. We're mainly a forum. The OP's question is about adding a forum to an ecommerce site.

As for getting mods, that was the easiest part in the projects I am/was involved with. It takes some time in the beginning getting to know the mods and weeding out those who don't get it. But I'm always amazed how many are willilng to contribute ... and I am one.

Having said that I'm sure it depends on the site, the vertical, etc... and in those I was involved with, forums made a lot of sense.

For new sites, if the forum is not the main reason for being, it won't always be as easy. My personal preference is to start the forum, if it makes sense at all, once the site has come critical mass. It's just easier that way. But I've seen new sites launch them successfully also.

One thing I see a LOT of: People adding forums or directories or blogs to their site because they think they 'should' or are told it's 'good for seo'. Ack! It has to make sense for the site. For most sites, a forum probably doesn't make sense. Can't tell you the number of times I've heard complaints about stuff like this, then I go to the site and find the addition made no sense in the first place. In the case of a forum, IMO at least, it's best to have a built in base of involved users with the site, or, high enough traffic with potential affinity for the subject of the site to be able to source some of them as mods, contributors, etc. One other option: A site with a service or product sufficiently new and differentiated that right out of the gate there is good potential for involvement among the user base.

I got hired to do SEO a year or so ago for someone who had a niche hobby site, but she had only a few hundred visitors a day. The topic of the site made sense for a forum, but there were much larger sites in the vertical already doing that, and she had neither the traffic nor the unique idea needed to make it go or differentiate it. So we closed it down.

#3 - To get an active forum going, you need to dedicate at least a few hundred hours and a few thousand dollars. The time adds up: figuring out how to monetize it, updating software, custom skins, managing moderators (not to mention being the mod for the first few months).

A few thousand dollars maybe. But hundreds of hours? Eeek. You can have a very basic forum set up on your site by a decent programmer who knows the software in a couple of days or less. We're not talking WebmasterWorld here. That's a bit more complex. ;-)

Also, not all forums need to be monetized. Some add value by building loyal users, repeat use/purchase, getting links to the site and a host of other ways. Updating software can be a pain but it need not be done very often for basic forums. Get a good programmer and keep them on call as needed.

#4 - The money/time that all this takes would be better spent making a newsletter, improving the site, building links, working on PPC campaigns to sell products. If you have a bunch of interns sitting around with nothing to do, a forum might be a good way to keep'em occupied.

Again it depends. But if that were true in black and white as stated, there would be no smallish or medium sites with active, interesting forums, and that is certainly not the case.

And if I have a bunch of interns sittiing around, I'd put them wherever it made most sense for the site. Might be forum posts, link building, email capture and newsletter dev, blogging, article writing, partner requests...

Always more to do. :P

My personal preference is to start the forum, if it makes sense at all, once the site has come critical mass.

Me too, that's why I qualified it with "Unless you have a really big base of customers/visitors, not worth the effort imo." =-)

I definitely agree with a lot of what you said:

Forums can be extrememly valuable add-ons to sites, especially sites where community plays a big role in the site's reason for being, and/or, where information exchange related to using goods or services provided by the site is helpful.

But for a new ecomm site like the OP's, I can't think of many instances when a forum would be a valuable use of time. Eventually some sort of customer service/ticket system might be good, but the user mentioned a general forum related to the site's topic.

I think there's a good reason most ecomm sites don't have forums: You probably end up with mostly whining customers/competitors asking where their order is, or saying your products stink :) People seem more apt to complain about bad product experiences than write about good ones (there are certainly exceptions).

My experience with starting new forums was obviously more trying than yours Caveman, but the OP should realize that there's a lot involved. Depending on how involved you get, it'd be easy to spend a few hundred hours to make the forum a success.

If you do outsource the original forum postings, be selective. Poor-quality posts are almost as bad as no posts at all.

Amazon makes good use of user generated content on their product pages but those aren't forums.

I am involved with three different categories of e-commerce where forums are working well for some sites: One very Web based, one very every-day-consumer-product oriented, and one for "afficionados."

We generally do not allow mentions of specific categories here at WebmasterWorld, but I'm going to make a rare exception. I can image certain areas of e-commerce that might work for forums beyond those I'm directly involved with: Certain areas of travel, car buffs, certain kinds of tech, and other high involvement areas.

But for every one forum that works, there are probably countless ones that never quite get off the ground.

IMO, it all comes down to whether or not a real need or service can be addressed with the forum, whether or not other similar ones are already hopping and successful, and whether or not you can differentiate yours.

Speaking of which, I'm wondering how we can help the OP a bit more. walmslei, are you thinking of it just for SEO reasons? Or is there a real good reason for one that your site can effectively offer.