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AndreaH
Community Manager
Community Manager
‎03-19-2018 02:11 PM

Sitter Community beta testers - please share your feedback

Hi Rover sitters and walkers,

Thank you for visiting our new sitter community!  You are among the first to test-drive the community before we roll it out to all Rover.com sitters and walkers.  

Over the next two weeks, please take some time to browse around and familiarize yourself with this community.  You can try reading blog posts, creating a profile, posting questions, answering questions, providing kudos to answers that you think are particularly great, and more.  Or, just stop by the Welcome board and introduce yourself! 

After you’ve had the opportunity to get a feel for the site, please head back to this post and tell us in the comments what we can do better so that we can make improvements.  Here are some questions to answer as you’re providing thoughts and feedback:

  1. What do you think of how the community is structured?  Are there any categories that we should consider adding? (Either now or down the road)  
  2. What do you think of the community guidelines?  Is there anything you would suggest we consider adding?
  3. Did you notice any bugs that we should fix? If so, please describe the bug and tell us what device and browser were you using. (ie, Apple iPhone - Safari)
  4. Is this community something that you think you’ll continue to use on a regular basis?  Why or why not?

Thank you - we appreciate your time and feedback, as we want to make this community  something that is useful to you. Please stop by this board any time if you have more community-related ideas or feedback to share!

Andrea and Bea

Your Rover.com Sitter Community team  

1 Solution

Accepted Solutions
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AndreaH
Community Manager
Community Manager
‎03-28-2018 04:01 PM

Re: Sitter Community beta testers - please share your feedback

Hi everyone,

First of all, thanks to all of you for participating in the community beta test and helping us work out the kinks in this platform before we roll it out to all sitters.  Your feedback has been SO valuable, and has allowed @Bea and I to make some very important modifications to this community.

I wanted to take a quick moment to summarize some of the ideas and feedback that we received from you all and report out on progress made against those ideas:

Ideas that you shared that we implemented:

  • Create a “start here” post to quickly help new users navigate through the community (thanks, @terradawn!): You can see the “start here” thread that we created here.
  • Require members to create a login before they write out a post (not after, so they don’t risk losing the post they drafted) (thanks again, @terradawn!): Done!

Ideas that you shared that we haven’t yet implemented, but are considering in the near future:

  • Adding a link between performance on the Rover.com site and status in community (thanks @Flowseidon69, @Cthomas79, @DanielaMKE): I love this idea and am going to spend some time thinking through the best way to do this.  There are creative and development partners that we need to engage to help us implement this level of profile integration, so it isn’t anything we can do soon, but know that we’re working on it.
  • Local discussion rooms that allow you to connect with other sitters in your specific area (thanks, @KTM71, @ChristineR, @kellee6): This is a great idea, and we have added it to the short-term community roadmap!  In order for local boards to be effective, we need a large enough member base in each city to ensure that each board receives enough conversation from members and doesn’t become a “dead zone”. So once we reach that point we will begin rolling out local boards.  
  • Highlight one sitter per week (thanks, @Erica214): Love this idea - @Bea is working on pulling this series together.
  • Add dog emojis! (thanks, @Cassielite)  Wow, you are totally right. We have cat emojis, but not dog emojis... What gives?!  We’ll work on creating some. Also, for those of you who visit the community from your mobile device, in addition to using the community emojis you can also use the emojis that your phone offers.  

Ideas that you shared that we aren’t implementing:

  • Nested threads (thanks @Ghoulia, @Sarah, @Cthomas79): A lot of you shared the desire to have nested threads.  I connected with our platform vendor, Lithium Technologies, and unfortunately they do not offer the capability to do nested threads at the present moment. (I agree that it would be super helpful, and I’m going to keep my ears open in case they launch this feature as an option down the road).    
  • Bring in more color (thanks, @nanc0555): Thanks for the suggestion, but our brand team put a lot of thought into how this page is designed in a way that complements our Rover brand, so we are going to keep the design as is for the time being.  
  • A mobile app version of this community (thanks, @Eryn): While I think this is a GREAT idea and something that I personally think would be a huge value add, I connected with our platform vendor and they unfortunately do not offer mobile app capabilities at this time.  They are constantly introducing new products and updated features, though, so I’m going to keep my eye out and see if this is a capability they’re able to offer down the road.

Community-related questions that you asked:

  • Is there a help section on how to use this community? (thanks, @4pawsvacations) Yes, check it out here!
  • Will we continue to operate both this site and the Rover.com Sitters Facebook group? (thanks, @Sarah) For now, yes, we will continue to operate both communities.  However, we recognize that both communities serve a similar purpose, so we’d love to hear from you all what kind of value you’re getting from this community versus Facebook.  
  • Can I post photos from my mobile phone? Yes, you can! When looking to add a photo to a post, just click on the little camera icon above the text screen.

Thanks again, everyone, for the great ideas and feedback that you provided.  We hope that you continue to stop by and use this community!

- @AndreaH and @Bea, Your Rover.com Sitter Community Team

View solution in original post

32 Replies
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Katz
Rover employee
‎03-19-2018 05:29 PM

Re: Sitter Community beta testers - please share your feedback

I got an email about the Founding Members badge but the image was broken in the emailScreen Shot 2018-03-19 at 5.29.11 PM.png

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AndreaH
Community Manager
Community Manager
‎03-20-2018 04:04 PM

Re: Sitter Community beta testers - please share your feedback

Awesome, thanks for the heads up.  I connected with our tech. partner and they shared that this is due to the fact that the community is currently password protected (the e-mail can't pull the image because it hits the HT access).  Badges should work fine in e-mail as soon as we remove the password.  I'm going to keep an eye on this, though.  

0 Kudos
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terradawn
Dog fanatic
‎03-21-2018 09:56 AM

Re: Sitter Community beta testers - please share your feedback

YAY! I love this!!  :D   I actually help create communities in my day job, so this is right up my alley!  

I have a lot of poking around to do (and a few posts to add) but the ONLY suggestion I have so far is creating a "Start Here" thread.  You can close it to comments and use it as a quick start guide with rules and links to update users profiles.  

What a fun idea, though!!  I'm excited to explore! 

EDIT:  When I initially responded, I typed the above paragraph and it took me to a "register" page.  I entered my screen name...but it never posted my response.  I hit the back arrow until I got to the still filled in response page and hit "post"...and that worked fine.  BUT, headsup that you might want to post a warning to register BEFORE you start typing a response.  :) 

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AndreaH
Community Manager
Community Manager
‎03-21-2018 10:02 AM

Re: Sitter Community beta testers - please share your feedback

That's a great idea, @terradawn - thanks for sharing!  I'll go ahead and get a start here thread up in the next couple of days.  

Have fun poking around, and please let me know if you have other ideas or feedback!

Andrea

0 Kudos
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Flowseidon69
Dog fanatic
‎03-21-2018 10:07 AM

Re: Sitter Community beta testers - please share your feedback

I would suggest having some correlation between the sitters performance on the app with their status in the forum, i.e. sitters with large numbers of clients and experience being given recognition over here. I believe that would help with communication of practices and knowledge and ensure that reputable sources are utilized for information transfer. I think it would also be useful to include as a separate metric than the normal forum title (mine probably says newbie under my name) related to how prolific a poster one is in the forums.
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Doc
Dog fanatic
‎03-21-2018 10:08 AM

Re: Sitter Community beta testers - please share your feedback

Great idea here Rover Team!

Just added two questions that I have wondered about!!!

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Sarah
Dog fanatic
‎03-21-2018 10:09 AM

Re: Sitter Community beta testers - please share your feedback

This is a great idea! When I started in Rover the community area was less than ideal and I had no idea there were Facebook groups, this is a great tool for new folks.

Will the group that Bea is heading on FB be directing people to the community or will they be running simultaneously? There’s a lot of overlap.

Thanks for working this out, looking forward to checking it all out after my walks this afternoon.
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Ghoulia
Dog fanatic
‎03-21-2018 10:09 AM

Re: Sitter Community beta testers - please share your feedback

This is a fantastic idea.
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Ghoulia
Dog fanatic
‎03-21-2018 10:11 AM

Re: Sitter Community beta testers - please share your feedback

Is there a way to have nested comments for replies? It’s confusing to scroll through all responses and hard to keep track of conversations

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