A membership site consists of a set of pages with secure content that can be accessed by a user after login. Its content is available exclusively for those individuals who have subscribed after paying a membership fee. Requesting members to login to the site allows you to personalize the user experience to every member. Such a restricted membership area offers a customized feel that boosts the interaction of the user with the membership site and raises engagement.
You can make use of a member site to retain videos, written content, worksheets or templates, recorded webinars, create interactive platforms or even perform live events. With no restrictions on the services and products rolled out, the membership websites are perfect for online tutorials and courses, community associations , video training and recurring members specific content. Actually, they can align with any topic or industry and there exists various kinds of membership based websites, each having its innovative model and layout based on the unique business needs.
Here we list out some of the key elements which every membership site should include to fulfil the needs of its members and keep high the interactivity.
# Retaining The Best Type Of Content
Online courses are the typical content that you get in a membership site. Whether you are mentoring on more than one topic with a particular beginning and ending point along with specific outcomes and learning goals, then patterning this into a course can serve the interests of your members properly.
Be it short courses of 30 minutes duration or epic ones stretching for several hours; offering a course option to help them reach their learning objectives is a way to pull in new members.
Live Webinars
In case you are not interested in creating your content in advance or your topic is not ideal for course creation, then running webinars or live training calls can be the perfect way to provide value to your subscribers or members.
The webinar presentation also promotes discussions among participants and the best arrangement for inviting guest experts that exposes members to wider expertise and reducing your workload of creating content.
Q&A Calls Of Members
This live layout of member Q&A calls also works perfectly and is also known as a “mastermind” call. Such calls relate to your members, extending them the scope to ask questions, and exchanging their success story.
Adding Content Archives
As live content is real-time and you are required to participate in it to draw the utmost from it “archiving” them in your membership helps people who have missed out the live session and also works like a resourceful back catalogue of study material, Moreover, it also becomes easily available to any fresh subscriber who joins and upgrades the value of the presentation of your membership.
An Element Of Community
Community helps to retains the subscription of your members for months and even for years beyond the point of course requirement or training content. Community element is an essential component of every membership site be it a huge forum or simply a discussion segment related to your training material.
Workbooks And Exercises
People want to subscribe to your site not only to gain knowledge just for its sake but want to attain a goal or an outcome. To accomplish it, they are required to translate it into practice. Offering action plans, exercises and worksheets as main content in your membership site is a useful method of performing it.
# Create Members Specific Online Communities
Building communities of like-minded individuals who support one another and also contest each other helps to generate sociability within your niche. An additional benefit is that membership communities can fulfil the wish that many consumers feel at some level that is direct communication with the person managing the business.
Online community helps to match community elements with any kind of membership program and utilize the channel to exchange “sneak peeks” of approaching releases, provide discounts for members only, or converse on issues with your followers.
A great aspect of an online community is its gaining maturity and growth with the passage of time and becomes eventually self-moderating. Previous members step in to implement the rules, reply to simple queries that they have seen earlier repeatedly and begin conversations personally.
To keep promoting that human interaction, you can even host group training calls or live coaching calls within your members section to maintain a high interactivity. The ideal community platform for your membership site be it a forum, any platform or a Facebook group revolves around your community engagement and the requirements of your members. Many online businesses blend both free and paid community sections, to offer a greater direct access to instructors and teachers.
# Host Evergreen Content In Your Membership Site
Maintaining a members area involves a huge amount of content creation. So to speak, a substantial content library is needed to assure your subscribers to remain active and continue logging in. Using an “evergreen” setting, lets you release content gradually over time and such dripping out of information makes the members return again and again and provides you the scope to share greater products with your members. The planning behind this type of membership model is that you can generously offer your free content but at the same time also create an upgrade course to present your paid offerings.An evergreen membership site is terrific if you are sharing information or posts that do not need regular upkeep. Your content can be uploaded and scheduled before hand and only need to be rolled out automatically.
# For Best Outcome: Present A Combination Of Free and Paid Content
It need not be all or not anything. There can be an adjustment between “paid” and “free”. You can extend an open segment of your membership website and also a closed segment that can be available to individuals who pay the subscription fee. Free users can be incentivized to click through and buy additional content.
Choosing The Best WordPress Membership Plugin
There exists numerous WordPress membership plugins but all of them do not contain specific features that can be used for creating your membership website. Few of them are great for selling subscriptions while the rest present distinct levels of membership and subscription management functions. Some plugins provide drip content characteristics that lets you gradually release new content to its subscriber. While different plugins are limited to only presenting hidden content. Plugins like LearnDash come with modern tools to smoothly arrange your membership content into groups and levels. You can easily sell and generate online courses and its advanced modules lets you handle learning material in an improved way compared to other WordPress membership plugins.
You also require to assess the payment gateway you like to utilize for your membership site. Do you prefer to accept credit cards exclusively, or PayPal, or both? The membership plugin you use should have integrations and payments gateways whether built in or via an addon.
Final Thoughts
Retaining these features in your membership site brings value for your subscribers. After all, your membership site should offer the best of both worlds solution for its members and should handle everything from delivering content, receive payments for the subscriptions, learning management, and incorporation with your platform for email marketing.
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