Terms

"For us, it's a matter of keeping membership an integral part of what we do. It's not enough to just have an organization with a membership. It has to be a focus," starts Dan Carson, our Head of Product. "If there's a serious intention to pursue membership it is our opinion that we have the most comprehensive set of features. We started out with WordPress as the sole access point for those options, this is no longer the case."

Dan says that we're not going to eliminate the original features of the software, such as integration to WordPress: "If that's how you want to construct your membership site, it's just the same as before - we're just offering an easier on-ramp now."

Streamlining the navigation

"There are many people out there who are making use of third-party software However, it's not always simply because they'd like. It's because that felt like the only option available," Dan adds. "People maybe already have WordPress However, they've created a basic site or use MailChimp and don't make use of 50% of the features."

They just need a method to make individuals sign up to be able to send them emails without all the faff of a cloud enterprise version. "Maybe you signed them up with Mailchimp in 2014 and so they are still using it as this is where they are. However, are they the primary market to which Mailchimp is headed?"

"We consider there to be people that would, if they could do it easily enough, could simplify all these different instruments into one place and make it more well-integrated - so in the sense that it could still do all of the tasks they wanted to perform," Dan says.

Our tools for email will include the functionality you need. The author adds: "We're not trying to serve enterprise marketing teams. We're trying to help creators who want an affordable and straightforward method to share information and publish content to their target audience."

It's for us more about what products you have, and much more about what you're trying to do. If you're looking for people to be able to sign up to a newsletter, we can simplify and make it cheaper because now you don't have to pay for other tools.

This is dependent on the individual use case, of course. Some people want the ability to piece together several integrations but others worry that it's expensive and more difficult to handle, particularly when it's a single user. "Previously we were kind of exclusively creating for one of the organizations. Now we're building for both groups," Dan says.

The management of access rights for members to Posts and Pages

For a certain type of client using the 2014 version of MailChimp is the one you're looking for; it's the version you fell in over. "If I want a simple website, I may not want to use WordPress. Even Squarespace can be overkill as a website that relies on subscriptions. The site isn't tightly linked to membership in the base," Dan adds. So we thought, 'What if you had an item that was completely designed around that?'.

We're the same way about podcasting, and for online communities too. "We're not building a new version of Libsyn. We're going to be building an easy version to use and does 80percent of the things you want, and is integrated with everything else and all at the same cost," Dan believes.

It seems to be the law of nature that the longer software exists, the more it wants to develop. It would like to be more complex and bloated.

This isn't always a good thing However, it is unfavorable for customers when the person that they're building for is no longer you. "People are hungry for applications that can do what they want and isn't seeking to do greater than the best that it can be. As with jazz, there are times when it's not the notes you play!" Dan laughs.

Making something simple is actually very difficult. Dan says: "It's about paring down to the essence of something. One of the easiest things for us would be to add everything to the site and then make it a setting and customers can access it through an area where they can set it up." But we do not believe that's what customers want. We want to synthesize all of our experience over a decade of developing the tools for membership, including feedback we've learned from customers and distill it into easy-to-use tools.

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

The new dashboard

The most obvious change this quarter is how we have reorganized the dashboard. Instead of having each option visible at the top level as well as the features separated according to feature, we took a step back and thought, "Why not orient everything around what you're trying to accomplish in the moment or moment?'.

The dashboard has been updated.

Based on our experiences, and talking with people who run membership businesses generally, your work is something which falls under one of four jobs including designing and building your website and publishing content exclusive to your site and managing your members or increasing revenues. Dan says: "Everything you're doing as a member-based business is bound to fall into the four categories. Therefore, we decided that this was the most sensible approach to categorizing the benefits of ."

Website

is for people who want to build a membership website. In the past, you might have had to use WordPress or some other specific to. You can now utilize our website builder natively. The first area is dedicated to designing the site from scratch as well as customizing the appearance. as well as setting up your public-facing web content. "You're setting up the space that your viewers can go to," adds Dan.

Content

The other is to publish content. A modern-day membership business usually entails publishing exclusive content for members such as emails or posts, downloads, and podcasts. "The next step is to develop contents or sharing special benefits. It's all about creating the 'value' that customers get out of your membership," Dan explains.

Members

The last task involves managing your membership. "Part of managing a profitable membership is having a really tight connection with your audience and that's a big motive for why they're supportive of you," says Dan.

Management of members - download invoices

"You need to be able provide excellent the best customer service for these individuals, including understanding their history together, as well as diagnosing issues if something isn't going correctly," he adds.

Revenue

"If you're creating a membership website, you're hoping to generate revenue, and there are an array of things that go into that: creating your plan and determining what you should charge, and monitoring the health of your company to determine how it's performing," says Dan. The section on discounting is for retention and run acquisition campaigns, plus referral programs.

"We've added a lot of new features throughout the years. In the absence of a system for organizing them, it made it difficult to locate things, particularly for new people. We wanted to cut down on the time to learn," concludes Dan. This provides a better framework that we can build upon as we add more innovative features. As we'll be able to more easily put things - this allows people to discover and find the new features, so that you can benefit from them immediately.

Web Builder

Another major development in this quarter was around the website builder. "We'd begun to develop the new tools in 2011 and wanted to make sure that we were introduction of this capability however, we didn't want to disrupt existing ways of using ," says Dan. "We placed ourselves in the shoes of someone who was wanting to develop a membership website."

The process of signing up and getting into the program is much more efficient and we offer an advanced start place, including the default options, plans for membership already created and the structure of the website already built. The only thing you need to do is sign up your Stripe account and start your site in a matter of just a few minutes.

IFtWQKYe3Vls3PTpn6KK The builder of websites

Now, the editing process is like modern WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Receive) website builder, direct interaction with your membership website. "You are able to type directly on the page, move elements around, and hide or reveal elements, and then you can see what it looks like immediately," says Dan.

Dan says that this is only the beginning of future website builder improvements: "We had to redo the foundation of everything in this manner, and Now we're able to kick off the gas to begin expanding the features."

We've introduced the concept of blocks. Blocks are in essence content modules. We have at present an element of content that is basic as well as a banner title block which can contain text or an image that has buttons. The framework is now in place, we're currently working on new block types and putting different types of content on the page. The user will be able to organize them within the pages and will be able to customize who is able to view these based on the subscription plan the user is paying for.

J4UXZCXXVRVFxqRpCLFE Building using blocks

Dan says: "It's everything you need to build a full-featured membership site. It's also connected to subscriptions. Membership is the heart of it all." What you get is a site-building experience that's simpler to start with easier to navigate, a lot more intuitive and in line with the expectations of modern users.

Final: A fresh way to use

"We have described it in the past as the glue which holds the members in place," recalls Dan. "But when an equipment is essential to your company and you have parts that need to be glued together, it does not always seem like a positive. Sometimes you want the parts to be joined as steel. You want to have the exact component, and not two pieces joined," Dan says. Dan. Two pieces were constructed in tandem: membership was integral at the start.

If you're a person with an established WordPress website or millions of members in your MailChimp list that you'd like to just increase subscriptions instead of starting all over again, it's achievable. We still offer the tool that allows you to plug in and connect it. We don't believe it's the only way people want to build any more.

" is a place for those seeking a platform for their people to come together, and a place for their audience and their users. Nowadays, everything you would like, from designing it to look and feel like your company and putting all of your content all in one place, is what you can create with ," Dan concludes.