Hi I just made a new forum then in a topic I told nairalanders to share their sites and forums on nairaland.com so everyone would visit other people's websites and sign up for their forums , but I noticed some things on the websites that made me change my mind, this are some things to do to prevent others from changing their mind

1. Finish all your website design before inviting potential members

This is one of the most important when guest visit your site what they see at that time should be what they see when they visit later if your theme is going to be blue colored make sure you colour it before inviting members when you change theme colors while users are browsing they tend to get frustrated and will probably not come back

2. Get some of your friends to sign up

Charity begins at home and so does many other thing when your friends sign up and start participating it makes things interesting for them and they inviting their friends this causes a chain effect

3.Allow for a referral program

I don't know about smf but mybb has a referral program users want people to know they were initiated by them and this make things interesting

4. Insert social share button on your threads

If users are interested in your topics they share it and that invites more people on my forum if they are just two users online and I share a topic this number just skyrockets

Five and most importantly

We are in this age where we humans have grown annoyingly impatient and we don't want to waste time signing up for a website that is not popular so my advice is if you can edit registration fields

Remove some and Leave this fields Name, email, password and any verification process to block stammers and also allow users login without verifying their email that makes it a one step process and people will register more and also allow guest posting it makes them Come back and soon enough they will register

6. Make a ranking program

If you remember 2go the reason why we used it was because we wanted to go high in 2go star, if your Forum. has a ranking people would participate more

7. make a mobile friendly version of your website

In my website mentioned below when I made a mobile version my ranking on Google increased and am sure users on mobile found it easier to use

Bonus
Make a thread like this on a popular forum and advice the members to register on your Forum by posting your Forum register link www.naijawords.cf/member.php?action=register&referrer=1
And thank them in advance for registering

Nice post op. I just started a forum www.naijacashforum.com and these are great tips to get sign ups. And to add to your points i think instant messaging will also boost sign ups because users like chatting. Www.naijacashforum.com has instant messaging,audio and video calls and even screen sharing for its vip members, and also vip members can earn if they refer other vip members.

I'm giving Verified badge to the first 20 hiipeeps users from nairaland. After signup just follow and add ass friend username @bigajeff. Sign up now www.hiipeeps.com/join