WP WishList Membership Site Plugin: A Review
Struggling to start and run your own membership site? Made several attempts but for some how you’re not able to start and grow your membership site all because you’re not able to make the technology work for you.
If this is the case my friend..you’re going to love this post.
Over the years I have started and managed many membership sites. Some of them were successful and some of them were colossal failures. Even to this day I struggle with finding the right technologies and platforms that could fit my marketing needs.
Just to give you some idea I have membership sites that run membergate and amember, have a couple of sites that run on wordpress and protected by Amember( Thanks to Ryan Deiss & Dave Moskovitz)
As an information marketer I have advocated the essence of “speed to market”. If you have an idea you need to act on it fast, real fast. Many marketers spend a lot of time thinking and just thinking and in the process they lose out on the market opportunity, myself included sometimes..:)-
Most recently I was introduced to a WordPress plug-in called WP WishList that could convert any wordpress blog into a membership site in minutes.
My initial reaction was, no way I’m going to let a plugin run from the core of my wordpress blog that is not yet proven or has no developer backing.
How many times you have bought a plugin that promises you the earth & heaven and the next thing you heard is, its not supported with your
wordpress version or the theme you are using.
When I I found out that this plugin is developed by Stu McLaren and Stacy Childers, whom I have known for years. I had to give it a shot.
I bought a multi-site license and tested the plugin on several of my sites. Different sites, different membership levels and different purposes altogether.
It was very easy to get started and I even got the 1shoppingcart integration to work.
Last week I attended a live seminar on WishList in Las Vegas during the event I asked several questions on all aspects of the product and get to know the plugin well.
Stu and Tracy assured me that the product is coded to the standards and they are going to ensure that all the future versions will be compliant with wordpress. Apparently they are already working with Corey Miller and Brian Gardner to ensure the plugin will gel well with leading wordpress themes.
(The older version of the plugin used to login the user directly into the membership area upon the purchase, while this worked fine from a usability
perspective, it restricted me to test the conversions using google pixel tracking code. I requested Stu & Tracy for help and in the current version they introduced “after registration” and “after login” pages)
Here are some enhancements I suggested to Stu & Tracy
Support for WordPress MU. (Imagine running a membership site where users can create their own membership sites and you make a small commission) similar to wordpress.com. Make it compatible with Buddypress. Man you are now dominating the social media.
Ad-serving Platform: Create an ad serving program which triggers banners or text that’s based on membership levels. Stu did talk
mention some upsell enchancements to the plugin that they are planning in the upcoming releases.
Additional content delivery How about delivering selective content(audio, video, e-books, special reports selectively to specific members who are on the same membership level(not at a certain time interval, but by choice at a random). Now Wishlist plugin can do sequential content upgrade and content drip is coming in the next release, but selective content delivery to a specific member is something that is widely supported on amember.
(Stu, can you confirm if Wishlist can do this?)
MoveableTypes Support Extend the plug-in to other blogging platforms such as MoveableTypes. How about MTWishList?
Tight integration with all the plug-ins that amember supports today. Such as open source applications like PHPBB forums etc.
Some of the attendees did raise the point that Stu and Tracy are selling this plug-in for a lot less. To some extent they are but I also think, from an overall product strategy stand point and the WordPress community perspective the $297 multi-site license is a good starting price point.
As I conclude this post here is what I recommend you should do.
If you’re a blogger and if you’re thinking of starting your membership site you should start with WishList plug-in. Wp Wishlist is capable of handling many off the membership site needs. This is a plug-in that has been coded by marketers for marketers and in my opinion you can handle all kinds of front-end and backend offer.
Also when you invest in the Multi-User license make sure you use them on your own sites not your client sites or for someone whom you are building a blog. If you need to build something for your customers, ask Stu for a reseller license.
To see a live functioning site that uses Wp Wishlist visit FastBlogTraffic.com/
To get your own copy of WP Wishlist Plugin visit www.membershipsiteplugin.com
Already using Wp WishList? Your comments please..
OwenJonesGroup.com: A Site Review
Creating a brand site, an e-commerce site or a personal blog are relatively easy when compared to creating a site that must have a big presence and yet appeal to corporate executives and small businesses at the same time.
Howard Jones site is the subject of my review today. Howard tries to bridge this gap pretty successfully and positions himself as an authority in a highly competitive ???Business Consultancy Services??? arena.
Howard Owen Jones??™s agency, in addition to many other things helps companies to manage projects by providing executive consultancy services.
Recently Howard approached me to write a review and provide an unbiased opinion about his site. I spent several hours to compile this review. Before we move any forward, I suggest that you visit OwenJonesGroup.com and take a quick look at Howard??™s site.
Howard,
The foremost thing I observed about your site is that the Business Consultancy Services niche is over crowded. A broad phrase search on google for the keyword ???Business Services Consultancy??? returns about 45 million pages. The term ???Executive Consultancy Services??? returns 27 million pages.
The good thing is certainly there is competition and that means there is money to be made. Given that ranking high on google for your keywords would certainly take time and patience. You had this domain name for a over eight years now, given its seasoning it should rank fairly well on search engines.
Talking about domains.
I suggest that you detach your own name from your domain name. While its true that companies like KPMG Peat Marwick LLC, Earnest & Young and UniLever went on to become strong brands despite their names tied to individuals
Over the years I have met several solo entrepreneurs whose personal businesses have gone up to become mega ventures, these entrepreneurs had a hard time exiting from their businesses at the helm because a significant part of their income was coming from their personal branded websites to which their own name were tied to.
I too made this change most recently in my business. When my personal blog SriniSaripalli.com started getting traffic I started a parallel blog gorichonline.com. I will probably never be able to sell SriniSaripalli.com but GoRichOnline.com could easily be sold, if I ever decide to do so.
But again that is completely up to you.
Navigation and Color Scheme
The color scheme is good. But a good design should not only attract eyeballs, it should also sell.
Email address, contact phone and professional code on the top of the page, less prominent and are hard to read, increase the font size.
Also the top navigation ???Funding???, ???Consulting” etc are relatively small compared to the overall size of the page.
Also your site title or slogan ???Think Validate Act??? is somewhere lost at the bottom of the page with no visibility. Bring it to the top and make it obvious.
Turn Your Site Into A Dynamic One.
Today owenjonesgorup.com is a static site with hardly any new content published on a daily basis. Interactions with your visitors and search engines are the key to online success. The only way you can interact with both is by converting your static site into a blog.
Blogs naturally attract traffic and rank higher on search engines. There are many CMS(Blog platforms) in the market that you can explore. WordPress and Moveable Types are my favorites.
Research your market, decide on keywords and leverage a CMS platform to set your site up such that you can attract natural traffic from search engines.
A Powerful Opt-in
The index page contains an email optin form with a headline ???Our Newsletter Signup???. To be honest it??™s not cutting it. An opt-in offer has to be exciting and benefits driven.
While you are assuring people of their email security by displaying ???safe subscribe??? Logo an overall strong Call-To-Action is missing. Think about this, why would someone give you their email address? What do they get in return for doing so? How about a special report such as..
Seven common deadly mistakes most companies commit in hiring Interim C-Level executives.
How To hire a top executive level consultant for your business in 3 easy steps.
I certainly do not know what resonates well with your audience, but those are some ideas that you can try, also do research your competition to see how they have structured their optin boxes. Also do optin into all those sites and see what kind of follow-up communication they are doing.
An optin box placed on the top of the page, right side bar or left side bar tends to convert well instead of center bottom. See if you can move it.
To better personalize the follow up communication, you should collect the First Name and Last Name of your visitors along with their email address.
Social Proof
You come across as a person with passion, commitment and integrity. Your photograph on the site further amplifies that. But along with integrity online folks need social proof. A critical element of any website??™s success is its ability to gather and exhibit social proof.
I suggest you start posting some testimonials and cast studies from your past engagements. While it ture that you have an entire group of people working in your business, your site only reflects you. Include the bios, qualifications of other partners and make your ???About Us??? Page more compelling.
In Conclusion
Howard, Overall you have a good site and a good market to go after. My review was to provide you with precise insights which can help you further improve your site. Nothing is right or wrong, you have test and see what works best for you, for your audience and your market.
I strongly suggest that you promote a FREE 60 minute 1:1 strategy session as a gateway to attract better qualified prospects. Instead of offering this session FREE upfront, price it about $297 and make it free if and only if they fill out an evaluation form.
This evaluation form should be a comprehensive questionnaire that truly gets into the core business of your prospect and provides you the required information to engage. I have seen questioners build tremendous affinity and ease the sales process.
I made several observations about http://owenJonesGroup.com and I am sure you too have made some. If you did I suggest that post your findings here in the comments section. That way Hoaward can benefit from our collective observations.