Terms

"For us, membership is at the core of everything we are doing. There is no way to be a side hustler in the field of membership; it has to be the main focus of everything," starts Dan Carson the Head of Product at our company. "If are serious about membership, we think has the greatest combination of features. We started out with WordPress as our primary entry point to those features, that's no longer the case."

Dan explains we're not removing all of the capabilities that were originally available including integration with WordPress: "If that's how you want to construct your website for membership, it's the same as prior to us - we're simply providing a simpler on-ramp."

"There are many individuals using third-party tools however, not simply because they'd like. It's because that felt like the only option available," Dan adds. "People may are using WordPress, but they've just created a basic site, or they have MailChimp but they don't even use 50% of the functions."

These people simply need an opportunity to make it easier for people to join and later be able to email them, without the fluff a cloud enterprise version. "Maybe they signed up to 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 will go?"

"We think there are those who were able, if the task was simple enough, would be able to combine all of these tools into a single place and have it be more closely integrated, as long as it still did everything they required to accomplish," Dan says.

Our email tools will have all the features you need. He adds: "We're not trying to provide enterprise-level marketing departments with tools. We're trying to help those who are looking for a low-cost and easy way to reach out and share content with their followers."

We believe that it's less about the products that you're using, but more about what you are doing. If you'd like people to be able to sign up to a newsletter, we'll simplify and make it cheaper because now you don't require the expense of external tools.

It's dependent on everyone's individual usage scenario, naturally. Many people desire the ability to connect multiple combinations, while others are concerned that it's more expensive and harder to handle, especially when it's a single user. "Previously we were kind of exclusively creating for one of the groupings. Today, we're building both," Dan says.

For certain types of customer the new version of MailChimp will be what you want; that's the one you fell in the love. "If I'm looking for a basic website, I may prefer not to utilize WordPress. It's true that Squarespace can be overkill for a subscription-based website. It's also not fully integrated with membership at the core," Dan adds. So we thought, 'What could you do if you created an entire product 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'll be building an easy version to operate and can do the majority of the things you want, and is integrated with your other tools all in one location for the same price," Dan believes.

It seems to be a law of nature that the longer software is in existence, the more it wants to develop. It would like to be more complicated and complex.

The addition of new features isn't necessarily bad, but it becomes unfavorable for customers if the target customer the company is building it for is no longer you. "People are hungry for applications that can do what they require and doesn't trying to be any greater than the best that it can be. Like in jazz, sometimes is the note you do not play!" Dan laughs.

Simple things can be quite hard. Dan agrees: "It's about paring down to the essence of something. It's easy for us to do is simply put everything in there and then make it an element and then customers could access it through an area where they can set it up." But we do not believe that's what our customers want. Instead, we want to synthesize all of our experience over a decade of building the tools for membership, including customer feedback, and distill that down into easy-to-use tools.

"It's easy to underestimate the value of simple tools. Being easy to use is one of the most unmet needs. The majority of things are much more complicated than they should be," Dan adds.

The new dashboard

The most obvious change this quarter is how we've reorganized our dashboard. Rather than having every option available at the top and the options separated by feature, we stepped back and thought, "Why not organize everything according to what you're working on in the moment and then organize everything around that?.

Based on our own experience and talking with people that run membership companies typically, you're doing work that falls into one of four jobs: building and designing your site, creating exclusive content, managing your members or increasing the revenue. Dan clarifies: "Everything you're doing as an operator of membership is likely fall under one of those four categories. So we thought that was a logical way to organize the features of ."

Website

This is designed for those who wish to create a membership site. In the past, you might have had to make use of WordPress or something customized. You can now make use of our built-in website builders. This is the first step in designing the site from scratch as well as customizing the appearance. And setting up your publicly-facing web content. "You're setting up the space that your viewers can go to," adds Dan.

Content

Another task involves publishing content. The modern day membership company typically entails publishing exclusive content for members. This includes emails, posts as well as podcasts, downloads and posts. "The second job 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 the members. "Part of managing a profitable membership is to have a close connection to your members and that's a big reason why they're supporting you," says Dan. It is essential be able to give customer service these people, including understanding their history of working with you, as well as troubleshooting when things don't work as they should.

Revenue

"If you're creating an online membership site , you're hoping to generate revenue and there's a myriad of tasks to consider: creating your plan, understanding what to charge as well as monitoring the health of your business to see the things that are working," says Dan. The section on discounting is to boost retention, and running acquisition campaigns and referral programs.

"We've added a lot of new features throughout the years. In the absence of a system for organizing them, it was making it too hard to locate things, particularly those who were new. We wanted to reduce the amount of learning required," concludes Dan. This will provide a solid foundation that we can build upon when we introduce innovative features. As we'll find more intuitive ways to put things - this will make it easier for users to locate and explore these additions so you can gain value from the features right away.

Web Builder

The other major change this quarter focused on the web builder. "We'd started to build these new tools last year and were trying to get the needle moving towards introduction of this capability however, we didn't want to disrupt existing methods of using it ," says Dan. "We placed ourselves in the shoes of a person who was looking to build the membership-based website."

The process of joining and registering for the program is significantly easier; we give our customers with an advanced start point with standard configurations, membership plans that have been created and the structure of the site already designed. What you need to do is set up your Stripe account, and then you can begin your website within only a couple of minutes.

The editing user experience resembles the modern WYSIWYG (What you see Is What You Get) web-based builder that is direct interaction with the membership site. "You can directly type on the screen, drag elements around, and hide or reveal elements, and then you will be able to view what the page looks as soon as you open it," says Dan.

Dan states that this is only the beginning for further website-building improvements: "We had to redo the basis of everything in this manner, and now, we are able to step up the gas to begin adding the new capabilities."

The concept has been introduced in blocks. Blocks are in essence content modules. We have at present an element of content that is basic and a title banner block that could be textual or an image with buttons. The framework is now in place, we're working on creating new block types and are creating different types of content to be displayed on the page. The user will be able to organize them on the page and you will be able to customize who is able to view them based on what members are enrolled to.

Dan states: "It's everything you need for a complete subscription site. And it's all integrated with subscriptions. Membership is the heart of it all." The result is a website-building experience that is easier to begin with as well as more user-friendly and more in-line with what people nowadays expect.

Conclusion: A new way to use

"We have been described before as the glue which holds your group together," recalls Dan. "But if a machine is integral to the business you run, having parts glued together isn't always something positive. Sometimes you want them to be welded together, like steel - you would like it to be one component, and not two pieces glued together," adds Dan. These two pieces that were constructed at the same time the membership element was always a part of the very beginning.

If you have a thriving WordPress site or a million people who are on your MailChimp subscriber list, and want to use to simply increase subscriptions instead of starting over, it's possible. There's still a tool available for you to add subscribers, and then put it all together. However, we do not believe that's the only option people have to build anymore.

" is for those who want a place for their people to come together on the internet, as a central point for their audience and their members. Nowadays, everything you would need, including designing it to look and feel like your company and putting all of your content all in one place could be what you create with ," Dan concludes.