Thanks to easy-to-use platforms like WordPress, building a website has never been easier. However, at some point, you may want to be reimbursed for all your hard work.
That’s where membership sites come in. By putting your best content behind a paywall, you should have no problem covering your performance. expenses and maybe even profit.
In this post, we’ll take a look at what membership sites are and why they could be the secret to increasing conversions, engagement rates, and your bottom line. Then we’ll show you how to plan and create the perfect membership site. Let’s get started!
Introduction to Membership Sites
A membership site is a website where you place content behind a signup form. This is different from selling subscriptions. A subscription gives customers access to a product or service for a period of time, while a membership gives users access to closed content.
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Each membership site is unique. However, there are some features that you will find in the most effective membership websites. This includes a registration form where new visitors can sign up.
You must provide a form login for people who have already taken the time to register on your site. This allows members to access restricted parts of your website, edit their user profiles, and perform other member-only activities.
Many membership sites feature exclusive content. This can take many forms, including online courses, premium support forums, and webinars.
Other memberships grant access to additional benefits. This could include discount codes for your e-commerce store or even entry into a members-only prize draw.
You can even offer access to special events. For example, many clubs and income run membership websites.
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Why You May Want to Create a Membership Site
Membership sites are a great way to monetize your content. After completing the initial setup, a good membership plugin or platform should automatically perform many of the daily membership tasks.
This includes creating new accounts, processing payments, and distributing exclusive resources for members. Therefore, a membership site can help you make a profit without adding a lot of tasks to your to-do list.
Alternatively, you can offer your memberships for free. For example, you can use private content to generate leads by requesting the person’s email address as part of the signup process.
Registering on a website takes time and effort. After going through all these troubles, your members probably feel compelled to visit your site regularly to get a good return on their investment. To drive engagement, you can even use your members’ contact details in your email marketing campaigns.
If your membership functionality manages to boost your traffic and increase engagement, this will send positive signals to search engines. . This means that a membership site can indirectly improve its search engine rankings.
While many membership sites operate solely online, some physical businesses use memberships to improve the customer experience. For example, if you have a gym, you can give new clients the option to sign up online. This is much more convenient than forcing them to visit you in person.
How to Create a Membership Site (In 5 Steps)
Now that we’ve covered the benefits, let’s look at how you can monetize your content, generate leads, and improve the visitor experience. Here’s how to build a membership site in five steps.
Step 1: Identify your target audience
When starting a new business, it’s tempting to target as many people as possible . This may seem like the ideal way to maximize your profits. However, when you try to appeal to everyone, you often end up attracting no one.
By focusing on a specific niche, you can create highly engaging content for this exact audience. You can also tailor every part of your membership site to resonate with this niche. This includes everything from your site’s design to price and the type of content you’ll offer.
When you have a narrow target audience, you can often market your membership site more effectively. This involves tailoring your message to speak to the deep and specific needs of your customer. Depending on your audience, there may even be niche communities and platforms where you can advertise your membership site. This is all great for your conversion rates.
When deciding who to target, it’s important to find a niche big enough to support your growing membership site. Here, you can use Google Trends to measure how many people are searching for keywords related to your target audience. This can help you estimate the size of your potential customer base.
It can also help identify other membership sites that they are targeting the same demographic. If these sites seem to be flourishing, then this may turn out to be a profitable niche.
Step 2: Decide on a membership model
Before creating your site, you’ll need to decide on a membership model. membership. This means identifying the content that you will offer to your customers. Your exclusive members-only content can include everything from online courses to informative webinars, exclusive blog posts, product samples, reward points, or free shipping on all orders.
So, it’s time to decide whether to offer a single membership or create multiple levels. If you go for the latter, your audience will typically unlock more content and benefits as they purchase higher membership levels.
Next, you’ll create a pricing model. Some sites use memberships simply as a way to capture contact information and drive engagement. If these are your goals, you may want to offer a free membership.
If you decide to charge a fee, it can be a one-time payment or a recurring cost. One-time payments are great for generating a sudden influx of cash. In the meantime, recurring payments are often the key to providing a stable and reliable income that can sustain your membership site in the long term.
If you decide to charge a fee, it can be helpful to identify several membership sites that you operate. within your industry and offer similar content. You can then examine your pricing and use that to inform your membership model.
Step 3: Choose a platform
When it comes to choosing a platform, you have a couple of options. For example, you can buy a solution ready to pay a subscription to upload your content, like the Teachable platform.
This can be a great way to launch a membership site quickly. However, there is often limited scope for customizing an out-of-the-box platform.
Alternatively, you can go with a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress. You can then enhance this platform with plugins that add the necessary membership features.
This approach allows you to bring your creative vision to life and tailor the standard platform to meet your exact needs. However, this process may require you to research various third-party solutions and spend time configuring and maintaining these additional plugins.
After choosing your platform, you may need to consider web hosting. Choosing the right hosting plan is essential for any website. However, it is particularly important for membership sites, as they typically feature a lot of personalized content. Your site may also need to display this content to a large number of users.
This can put your website under significant pressure. For this reason, you should choose a hosting plan that can keep your membership site running smoothly, regardless of the pressure. At Kinsta, we provide performance-focused hosting that can easily support resource-intensive membership sites.
Ideally, you’ll want to choose the hosting provider Right from the start, however, if you need to upgrade your provider, our team of experts can help you migrate your dynamic membership site to any of our hosting plans.
Step 4: Create member-only content
To drive conversions, your membership site must offer value to your target audience.This value can lie in the uniqueness and quality of your content.
Alternatively, you can offer an experience more convenient For example, you could offer customers the option to sign up for your club online.If your competitors require people to complete the membership process over the phone, you immediately become the more attractive option.
Whenever possible, it is advisable to create your membership content and benefits before accepting any registration. This ensures that new signups can start enjoying your exclusive content and exclusive member benefits right away.
By preparing your content in advance, you can also enhance the membership experience. If a visitor spends on membership and is greeted by an empty site with no content, this could damage your brand image and reputation. Some people may complain, and some may even request a refund.
Step 5: Monitor Your Membership Site’s Performance
The performance of your membership site can have a major impact on your conversion rates. If your site is slow to load or has lag, visitors are unlikely to take the plunge and become paying members.
Even if you can convince visitors to convert if your site has a poor performance, customers can quickly drop their memberships. This churn rate can have a huge impact on your bottom line.
Harvard Business School estimates that if you reduce your churn rate by as little as five percent, you could increase your profits by as much as 95%. If you can convince members to stick around, this could translate into a lot of additional revenue for your business.
As a membership site, you’ll typically offer a lot of dynamic content. This already puts significant pressure on your server, which means you’ll want to do everything in your power to optimize your site’s speed.
Here’s access to a good performance monitoring tool it is vital. Kinsta customers can monitor the performance of their membership sites using Kinsta APM. This custom tool was explicitly designed to diagnose problems with WordPress websites.
By choosing Kinsta APM instead of a generic performance monitoring tool, you can identify the specific problems affecting this popular CMS. This puts you in a strong position to wow visitors with your lightning-fast page speeds.
Best Membership Website Platforms
The right platform can set up your membership site for success. You can go for a dedicated membership website builder or a multipurpose CMS. Let’s look at some options.
YourMembership
YourMembership is a dedicated membership website builder. It offers everything you need to build a membership site, plus a few extras you might not find in a generic website builder:
Using YourMembership, you can set up automated workflows for common membership tasks. This includes scheduling renewals, confirmation messages, and thank you emails. You can also automatically generate and send invoices.
To make sure you’re providing a good experience for your members, it’s important to closely monitor their behavior. You can track your audience using a generic tool like Google Analytics or even an activity log plugin.
However, YourMembership provides a more detailed view of your customers. In particular, it allows you to track the entire membership lifecycle, from non-member to retired member. This puts you in a strong position to identify customers who are going offline and who might cancel their membership.
YourMembership has not published its pricing. However, you can contact their team to discuss your needs or schedule a demo.
Squarespace
This popular drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to create a variety of websites. It also puts a selection of professionally designed templates at your fingertips.
The core of The Squarespace platform is priced at $12 per month when billed annually. However, Squarespace does not provide member-specific features out of the box. If you want to host members-only pages from the back-end of your Squarespace website, then you’ll need to invest in member areas.
If you plan to do email marketing, member areas can connect to Squarespace email campaigns and profiles, allowing you to manage your email list from one central location.
The main downside is that member areas require a separate subscription, with prices starting as low as $9 when billed annually.This tool also charges a four percent transaction fee per member.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that Member Areas can only protect pages on your Squarespace site and not necessarily the content on these pages. Each file you upload to your S quarespace site will have its own link. These links are not protected, so members could share these URLs with non-members, allowing them to access your content for free.
If you are creating members-only resources, such as videos and archives audio, this could be a major limitation. The good news is that Member Areas are not your only option. There are several third-party services that integrate with Squarespace, including the MemberSpace plugin.
You may use this third party software to restrict access to any page or resource on your Squarespace site. This should prevent non-members from accessing the direct link to your member-only resources.
WordPress
There are plenty of generic website builders on the market, but their one-size-fits-all approach for everyone rarely offers the best website for members. To set up your site for success, you may want to consider going with a customizable and extensible platform like WordPress.
<p By choosing WordPress as your CMS, you will gain access to a wide selection of free and premium membership plugins. This allows you to shop around and find plugins that tick all the boxes on your membership wish list.
Running a successful site isn’t just about implementing core membership functionality. For example, your position in the search engine rankings will determine the amount of traffic you receive.
With 60,000 plugins in the official WordPress repository alone, you shouldn’t have any trouble finding plugins that can help fine-tune each element of your membership site. For example, Yoast SEO is a popular plugin that promises to improve your search engine rankings.
The downside is that you will need to spend time finding and configuring these plugins. This is in stark contrast to dedicated membership platforms, which typically provide everything you need out of the box.
Top Membership Website Plugins
While there is no shortage of membership platforms, dedicated memberships , we believe WordPress has the flexibility and extensibility you need to create a world-leading membership site. If you opt for WordPress, the next step is to choose the right plugin. With that in mind, here are our top three WordPress membership plugins.
Members
You can use this free WordPress plugin to create a membership site without writing a single line of code. The Members plugin has an advanced permissions-based system that makes it easy to restrict your content based on the membership level of the visitor.
You can even deny capabilities to specific membership levels. This gives you more flexibility when it comes to building your system based on permissions:
The members plugin also has a home form widget dedicated session. You can add this to recurring elements of your site, like the sidebar. Members can then log into their accounts from any page on your site, which is great for the user experience.
You can even use Members to create a completely private site. This can be an easy way to monetize your entire content catalog. You can also use Members to create a specialized website, such as a private portal for employees.
However, what sets members apart from other plugins is the fact that it’s free. Members can be an attractive option if you’re working on a budget or want to experiment with monetizing your content before committing to a paid plugin.
MemberPress
You can use this advanced Membership plugin to create multiple membership levels, restrict access to your content and accept payments. Despite its advanced functionality, MemberPress is designed to be easy to use.
As part of the setup process, MemberPress can automatically generate all pages necessary to offer a functional membership site. This includes pricing, login, account, and thank you pages.
MemberPress also supports content dripping. This is a process where you post content in stages over days, weeks, or even months. By creating drip campaigns, you can encourage members to keep coming back to your site and maintain their interest in the long run.
If you want to create an educational membership site, you’ll be interested to know that MemberPress allows you to create and sell digital courses It also integrates with a variety of popular marketing software, including the Mailchimp email automation platform.
MemberPress licenses start at $179 per year. The company also offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.
LearnDash
If you want to sell courses online, you can check out LearnDash’s Learning Management System (LMS). . LearnDash has everything you would expect from an LMS, including the ability to create and distribute digital learning materials.
LearnDash also has learning modules membership so you can sell access to your resources. You can then restrict access to content based on the learner’s membership level.
In addition, LearnDash has full support for content dripping. This allows you to roll out new modules, levels, and even entire courses, as members successfully work on your learning materials.
In particular, you can use the tool’s membership features to encourage learning . For example, you can reward your members with badges and certificates. You can even create course-specific forums to help promote a sense of community.
If you don’t plan on selling content, LearnDash may limit you, as many of the features are designed specifically for educational membership sites. . . However, if you want to sell your courses as a member, this tool can be the perfect solution. LearnDash licenses range from $189 to $369 with one year of support and updates.
How to Create a Membership Website with WordPress and MemberPress (in 5 Steps)
There are many ways different ways to create a membership site. The correct solution will vary, depending on factors like your target audience and the content you plan to sell. However, WordPress and the MemberPress plugin are a powerful combination.
With that in mind, let’s look at how you can create a membership site using these two popular pieces of software.
Step 1 : Create a Basic Membership Site
To get started, we recommend installing a professionally designed membership theme. There are many options, but the OceanWP theme is a popular choice.
This multipurpose theme comes with a selection of demo sites that have built-in membership functionality. For example, their Gym demo offers customers a choice of membership levels.
Alternatively, if you plan to sell learning materials, Bartender grants members access to a variety of courses. After selecting your theme, you can install and activate the MemberPress plugin.
Next, go to MemberPress > Settings. On this screen, you can enter your MemberPress license key. Once you have successfully activated this plugin, select the Pages tab.
MemberPress can generate automatically all the pages you need to deliver a working membership site.To create these pages, make sure Automatically create new page is selected in all the Reserved Pages dropdown menus. Then simply click Upgrade Options and MemberPress will create a login, account, and thank you page.
Step 2: Add your payment gateways
Sometimes you can use memberships simply as a lead generation tool. However, if you plan to charge a fee, you’ll need to set up at least one payment gateway. To accomplish this, click the Payments tab, followed by the + button.
Next, open the Gateway dropdown menu and select the payment method you want to add. MemberPress is compatible with Stripe, PayPal Express Checkout, PayPal Standard, and Authorize.net. It also supports offline payments.
MemberPress will now display all the settings you need to configure the payment gateway chosen . For example, if you select PayPal Standard, MemberPress will ask for the email address associated with your PayPal account.
To drive conversions, it’s a good idea to offer an opt-in payment options. You can add multiple gateways to your site by clicking the little + button.
Once you have set up all your payment gateways, click Update Options. Customers will now be able to sign up using any of their chosen payment methods.
Step 3: Create your membership levels
Next, it’s time to create your membership levels. It can be a single membership that grants access to all of your content, or multiple levels. On your dashboard, go to MemberPress > Memberships > Add New.
You can now set this membership level . This includes entering a title, setting the price, and specifying the billing type.
Once you are satisfied with the information you have entered, click Publish. If you want to offer a choice of membership levels, simply repeat the steps above.
The next step is to define what content will be accessible for each membership level. This requires you to create rules, so go to MemberPress > Rules > Add New.
You can now configure your rule. For example, you can specify that all content assigned a specific tag should be accessible only to Bronze level members:
Once you have completed all the fields, save your rule. Rinse and repeat to create multiple rules for your membership site.
Step 4: Implement Your Pricing Plan
Assuming you’re charging for membership, you’ll need to create a pricing plan. . This is a page where potential customers can see all of your tiers and compare your prices.
A well-designed pricing page can capture the visitor’s attention and communicate all the information they need to make a buying decision informed. . In this way, your pricing page can improve the visitor experience and your conversion rates.
To create this important page, go to MemberPress > Groups > Add New:
Give this page a descriptive title, such as Pricing Plans, to get started. Next, scroll down to the Group Options section and add all the memberships you want to display on this web page. You can then choose the theme for your pricing page.
Once you have set all the options, click the Publish button. Your pricing page is now available.
Step 5: Add a login form
Every membership site needs a login form. Since it’s such an important element of your membership site, it’s a good idea to make sure this form is always close at hand.
MemberPress gives you the option of adding a login form user through a widget. This is perfect for adding this form to recurring elements of your site, like the footer or sidebar.
To add the login widget to your site, go to Appearance > Widgets. You can then add the MemberPress Login widget to any widget-ready area:
To drive conversions, we also recommend adding the pricing page to your main navigation menu. This ensures that interested visitors are just a few clicks away from your pricing information.
To edit your site’s menu, go to Appearance > Menus. You can then select your main navigation menu and add the pricing page you just created.
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Summary
Unique sales are great, but the key to a successful business lies in recurring revenue. You can set up a secure and reliable income stream that can sustain your business for months or even years selling memberships.
Let’s quickly recap how to build a membership website in five steps:
- Identify your target audience.
- Decide on a membership model.
- Choose a platform, such as WordPress.
- Create some members- content only.
- Monitor the performance of your membership site using a tool like Kinsta APM.
Have questions about running a successful membership website? Let us know in the comments section!
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