No doubt you’re part of many different communities in your life at home, at work and all the places in between…and these days, perhaps without even realising it, you’re a member of many online ones, too.
As I’ve been working with Wix on the community aspects I wanted to share some of stuff we’ve been doing and what I’ve learned with you.

We designed Wix so that we could help you build your own web-life and landscapes, no matter where you are based, what language you speak or which web-demographic you belong to…

The coolest thing about being able to launch in Beta, and then Open Beta, is that we’re still small enough to listen and be in dialog directly with you. At first, we met you only through your emails, and your awesome creations.

As you’ve grown, we’ve integrated more communications structures piece by piece: pages on MySpace, Facebook and twitter, a forum from vbulletin, blogs via wordpress, and soon, a wikimedia support wiki that will include content supplied by you – videos, articles and more! And as we’ve done this, you’ve increased your communication with us, giving us feedback and more along the way. And even cooler, you’ve started sharing what you’re learning with the rest of the community, just last week a few of you put more tutorials on YouTube :)
And all this dialog means we are able to shift to your needs, and create better products for you. For instance, the latest version release of Wix included features driven by your suggestions, and countless bug fixes you picked up!
This is all part of what I’ve learned about community building on the web:

• Simplicity grows with, and in response to, the community. In Wix’s case for example, we add features based on your needs.
• Consistency: you should always know where you are and what your next step is
• Decentralized community: members of online communities are often scattered around the globe. So it’s important that to talk to users in their own place, in their own language…
• Closing loops – it’s important to close communication between users and communities, and between the site and the service.
• Respect: on Wix for instance, we do this by crediting users for their contributions, sharing, promoting and giving and receiving feedback. Respect can also relate to features like: favorites, rating, explore, most viewed & popular
• Attitude and transparency – always answer, share plans with the community, ask for their opinion and respond to the outcomes from this dialog

These aspects in turn influence the business model because the business is driven by, and built with, you, the community.

Amit Knaani