Terms

"For us, the concept of membership sits central to everything we do. There is no way to be a side hustler in the field of membership; it has to be the primary focus of your business," starts Dan Carson, our Head of Product. "If you're serious about membership it is our opinion that we have the most comprehensive set of options. While we started with WordPress as the only 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, such as integrating to WordPress: "If that's how you want to construct your website for membership, it's possible to do it as prior to us - we're simply offering an easier on-ramp now."

"There are many individuals making use of third-party software However, it's not always simply because they'd like. This is because it was the only option," Dan adds. "People maybe are using WordPress However, they've created a basic site, or they have MailChimp and don't utilize 50% of its functions."

The people who need to sign up simply require an opportunity to make it easier for people to sign up, and be able to send them emails without all the bafflement of a cloud enterprise edition. "Maybe they signed up to Mailchimp in 2014 and so they still use it because this is where they are. But are they still an ideal target for the direction Mailchimp is going?"

"We consider there to be people out there who were able, if the task was simple enough, could simplify all these different instruments into one place and have it be more well-integrated - so long as it still did all the things they needed to accomplish," Dan says.

Our email software will come with all of the features you require. He adds: "We're not trying to help enterprise marketing teams. We're trying to help creators who want an affordable and simple way to communicate and distribute content to their audience."

It's for us less about the products that you're using, but much more about what you're striving to achieve. If you'd like people to be able to join a newsletter, we can simplify and make it cheaper as you do not need to purchase external tools.

It's dependent on everyone's individual use case, of course. Some people want the ability to integrate multiple Integrations, but some worry it's expensive and more difficult to control, particularly as an individual user. "Previously we were kind of exclusively building for one of those groupings. Today, we're building both of them," Dan says.

For certain types of user the new version of MailChimp is actually what you want; that's the one you fell in over. "If I'm in the market for a straightforward web page, I'll probably not want to use WordPress. In fact, Squarespace could be too much for a subscription-based website. The site isn't tightly connected to membership at its core," Dan adds. We thought to ourselves, "What could you do if you created a product that was entirely built around this?'.

That's our mindset for podcasting or online communities too. "We're not creating a brand new Libsyn. We're going to be building an easy version to use and covers 80% of what you care about, integrated with all your other stuff, in one place for similar prices," Dan believes.

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

The addition of new features isn't necessarily bad however it can be a bad thing for clients when the person the company is building it for is no longer you. "People want products that do exactly what they need and isn't seeking to do more than this. In jazz, often is the note you do not play!" Dan laughs.

Making something simple is actually extremely difficult. Dan says: "It's about paring down to what's important in. One of the easiest things for us is to add everything to the site and create an element and then customers could find it in the settings section somewhere." We aren't sure that's the kind of thing our customers are looking for. We want to bring together all of our experiences over the last decade of creating membership tools, incorporating feedback we've learned from customers, and distill that down to simple-to-use tools.

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

The new dashboard

The most obvious change this quarter is how we have reorganized the dashboard. Rather than having every option accessible at the top, with the capabilities divided by feature, we stepped back and asked, "Why not arrange everything around the things you're trying to do during the time or moment?'.

Based on our own experience as well as talking to people who run membership businesses, you're usually doing something that is a part of one of four jobs including designing and creating your site, publishing exclusive content, directing your members, or growing the revenue. Dan clarifies: "Everything you're doing as member-based business is bound to fall into one of these four categories. So we thought that was a logical approach to categorizing the benefits of ."

Website

It is intended for users who would like to develop a membership-based website. In the past, you might have had to use WordPress or a custom. Today, you are able to utilize our website builder natively. 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 visit," adds Dan.

Content

The second task is publishing information. The modern day membership company typically includes publishing exclusive content to members such as emails, posts or podcasts. "The other aspect is creating special content or sharing advantages - it's about making the 'value' that members get from your membership," Dan explains.

Members

The last task involves managing the members. "Part of running a strong membership is having a really intimate relationship with your customers and that's a big reason they're a part of your team," says Dan. You need to be able to provide customer service to the people who are members, such as understanding their history in relation to you and solving if things aren't working correctly.

Revenue

"If you're building an online membership site , you're hoping to generate revenue and there's a myriad of tasks involved in that: setting up your plans, understanding what to charge and evaluating the performance of your business to see what's working," says Dan. This section includes discounting for retention as well as running campaigns to acquire customers as well as referral programs.

"We've added a lot of features over the years. The lack of organization caused it to be difficult to find the right things, particularly those who were new. We wanted to cut down on the learning curve," concludes Dan. This will provide a solid foundation for us going forward in the future as we develop innovative features. As we'll find more intuitive ways to set things up - which allows people to discover and find this new feature, and you'll be able to get value out of these features immediately.

Web Builder

Another major development in this quarter revolved around the web builder. "We'd begun to develop the new tools in 2011 and we were trying to thread the needle of introduction of this capability however, we didn't want to disrupt existing methods of using it ," says Dan. "We placed ourselves in the position of someone who is seeking to create the membership-based website."

Now, the process of enrolling and joining the program is significantly quicker; we offer you a much more advanced start point with standard options, plans for membership already made and the design of the site already designed. The only thing you need to do is create your Stripe account and you could launch your website in only a couple of minutes.

The editing process is similar to an advanced WYSIWYG (What It is You see is What You Receive) website builder, connecting directly to your membership website. "You can type directly onto the webpage, change elements around, and hide or show elements, and you will be able to view what the page looks at a moment's notice," says Dan.

Dan says that this is just the start for future website-builder developments: "We had to redo the basis of everything in this manner; Now we're able to kick off the accelerator in terms of expanding the features."

We've discussed the idea of blocks. They are basically content modules. At present, we've got an element of content that is basic and a title banner that can be text or a picture with the button. The framework is now in place, we're working on new block types and are creating different types of content to be displayed on the page. You will be able to place them in the right order on the page, and will be able to customize who is able to view the content based on which membership plan people are subscribed to.

Dan states: "It's everything you need to create a fully-featured subscription site. And it's all linked to subscriptions. Membership is the heart of the whole." The result is a web-building experience that's easier to begin with, more intuitive, and in line with what people nowadays expect.

Conclusion: A brand new method to use

"We have been described previously as the glue that keeps the members together" recalls Dan. "But when a machine is integral to your business and has parts that are glued does not always seem like something positive. Sometimes you want them to be welded together, like steel - you need that it be the same component, and not two pieces glued together," says Dan. Two pieces were constructed at the same time: membership was integral from the very beginning.

If you're a person with your own successful WordPress site or a million people who are on your MailChimp list and you want to just create subscriptions, rather than starting all over again, it's possible. The tool is still available for you to add subscribers, and then put it all together. We don't believe it's the only option people have to construct anymore.

" is for people seeking a platform for their people to come together on the internet, as a central point for their followers and members. In the present, all you need, including designing it to look and feel like your brand and having everything you have to share in one place, is what you can make with it ," Dan concludes.