Terms

"For us, membership is at the core of everything we are doing. You can't moonlight as a membership, it must be the main focus of everything," starts Dan Carson who is our Director of Product. "If there's a serious interest in joining We believe that this is the greatest combination of features. While we started with WordPress as the sole entry point to those options, this is no longer the case."

Dan clarifies that we're not going to eliminate the original features of the software for example, like the ability to integrate into WordPress: "If that's how someone wants to build their website for membership, it's the same as in the past - we're giving them a more straightforward on-ramp."

"There are lots of individuals using third-party tools, but not necessarily simply because they'd like. It's because they felt that it was the only option available," Dan adds. "People may have WordPress, but they've just made a fairly basic website or have MailChimp, but don't make use of 50% of the features."

They just need an opportunity to make it easier for people to join and later be able to email them with no nonsense cloud enterprise version. "Maybe they had signed up with Mailchimp in 2014, and they are still using it as that's where they are. Are they really the primary market to which Mailchimp will go?"

"We consider there to be people out there who would, if they could do it easily enough, would be able to combine all of these applications into one spot and have it be more well-integrated - so long as it still did all the things they needed to accomplish," Dan says.

Our email tools will have all of the features you want. The author adds: "We're not trying to provide enterprise-level marketing departments with tools. We're trying to serve creators who want an affordable and simple way to communicate and publish content to their followers."

We believe that it's not so much about the tools you have, and more about what you are trying to do. If you'd like people to to subscribe to your newsletter, we'll help facilitate that process and save you money because now you don't require the expense of other tools.

It's dependent on everyone's individual application, obviously. Many people desire the ability to integrate multiple Integrations, but some worry it's more expensive and harder to handle, especially when it's a single company. "Previously we'd just creating for one of the groupings. Now we're building for both of them," Dan says.

If you're a particular type of client, the 2014 version of MailChimp will be what you want; that's the version you fell in love with. "If I'm in the market for a straightforward web page, I'll probably choose not to go with WordPress. Even Squarespace can be overkill as a website that relies on subscriptions. The site isn't tightly linked to membership in the core," Dan adds. We thought to ourselves, "What would happen if there was a product that was entirely built around this?'.

That's our mindset for podcasting, and for online communities too. "We're not going to be creating a brand new Libsyn. We'll be building the basic version, which is easy to use and does the majority of the things you need, along with everything else and all at the same cost," Dan believes.

It seems to be an innate law that the longer software is in existence and the longer it is in existence, the more it would like to develop. It would like to be more complex and bloated.

The addition of new features isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it becomes a bad thing for customers if the target customer they are building to isn't you anymore. "People are hungry for software that does just what they need and isn't looking to become more than that. Like in jazz, sometimes is the note you do not play!" Dan laughs.

Making something simple is actually extremely difficult. Dan agrees: "It's about paring down to what's important in. The easy thing for us would be to add everything to the site and create an element and then customers could find it in a settings panel somewhere." However, we do not believe that's what our clients are searching for. Instead, we want to combine all our experience over a decade of developing the tools for membership, including customer feedback and distill it into simple tools.

"It's easy to underestimate the value of simple tools. Easy to use tools are an unmet need. The majority of things are much more complicated than they need to be." Dan adds.

The dashboard is updated.

One of the most noticeable changes this quarter is the manner in which we have reorganized the dashboard. Instead of having all options accessible at the top and the options organized according to feature, we took a step back and asked, "Why not arrange everything around the things you're trying to do in the moment and then organize everything around that?.

Based on our experiences, and talking with people who run membership businesses typically, you're doing work that falls into one of the following four areas that include designing and building your site, creating exclusive content, directing the activities of your members or increasing revenue. Dan says: "Everything you're doing as an operator of membership is likely to fall into the four categories. We thought it was an appropriate way to organize the features of ."

Website

It is intended for users who would like to create a membership site. Historically you may have needed to make use of WordPress or some other specific to. Now you can use our native website builder. The first part is about designing the site initially, customizing how it looks. as well as setting up your public-facing content. "You're making a place your users can go to," adds Dan.

Content

The second task is publishing information. A modern-day membership business usually involves publishing exclusive content for members, such as emails, posts or podcasts. "The other aspect is creating content or sharing exclusive benefits - it's about creating the 'value' that members get from your membership," Dan explains.

Members

The last task involves managing your members. "Part of running a strong membership is to have a tight connection with your audience which is a major reasons why they're backing you," says Dan. You need to be able be able to give customer service these people, including knowing their past relationship of working with you, as well as troubleshooting if things aren't working correctly.

Revenue

"If you're creating a membership website with , you're trying to make money and there's a myriad of tasks involved in that: setting up your website and determining what you should charge, and monitoring the health of your business to see the things that are working," says Dan. This section includes discounting in order to increase retention as well as running campaigns to acquire customers, plus referral programs.

"We've introduced a variety of new features throughout the years. The lack of organization caused it to be difficult to locate things, particularly for people who are new to the site. We wanted to reduce the time to learn," concludes Dan. This will provide a solid foundation to us when we introduce exciting features. We'll be able to more easily put things - this makes it much easier for users to locate and explore the new features, so that you can benefit from these features immediately.

Web Builder

The other major change this quarter was around the web builder. "We'd started to build these tools earlier in the year and wanted to get the needle moving towards the new capabilities, but not disrupt the previous techniques of utilizing it ," says Dan. "We tried to put ourselves in the position of a person who was seeking to create a membership website."

Now, the process of joining and registering for the service is a lot quicker; we offer users with a more sophisticated start point with standard options, plans for membership already designed and the layout of your website designed. What you need to do is create your Stripe account, and you'll be able to start your site in a matter of minutes.

Now, the editing user experience resembles an advanced WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You get) site builder. It is capable of connecting directly to your membership website. "You can directly type on the page, move objects around, conceal and display elements and will be able to view what the page looks as soon as you open it," says Dan.

Dan explains that this is only the start for future website-builder enhancements: "We had to redo the base of everything this manner, and Now we're able to kick off the accelerator in terms of developing the latest capabilities."

The concept has been introduced in blocks. They are basically content modules. Right now we have an element of content that is basic and a title banner that can be text or an image that has a button. Now this framework exists, we're working on creating new blocks, and creating various types of content on the page. You will be able to arrange those on the page and you are able to control who sees them based on what membership plan people are subscribed to.

Dan states: "It's everything you need to create a fully-featured website for membership. And it's all connected to subscriptions. Membership is at the core of the whole." What you get is a web-building experience that is easier to get started as well as more user-friendly and more in-line with what the modern consumer expects.

Final: A fresh way to make use of

"We have described previously as the glue that holds your membership together," Dan recalls. Dan. "But in the event that a machine is integral to your company having components bonded together doesn't always sound like something positive. Sometimes you want that they are welded as steel. You need it to be one part, not two parts joined," Dan says. Dan. Two pieces were built in tandem and joined from the beginning.

If you have your own successful WordPress site or a million users on your MailChimp list and you want to just increase subscriptions instead of starting again, that's still perfectly achievable. The tool is still available to drop in, to connect it. We don't believe it's the only way people want to construct anymore.

" is for people looking for a space for their people to come together, and a place for their audience and their users. Today, anything you could want, in terms of designing it to look and feel like your company and putting all your information at one location and accessible to all, is what you could make with it ," Dan concludes.