If you’re a longtime user of RunSignup you’re probably familiar with our clubs platform. RunSignup Clubs was an early release for us and has served many clubs well over the years. Though it was functional, it became clear to us that Clubs were in need of an update. Which is why we’ve released our 2nd generation platform for Membership Organizations (you can learn more about them here).
In this article we cover the basics of how to set up a new website for your membership organization, as well as some of the new features, and customization options available.
Building your memberships website
Our new websites for Memberships are powered by Websites V2, our new website builder. If you’ve created a site on TicketSignup, it’ll look familiar to you. If not, there are a few things to know before building. Note: Websites V2 are coming to RunSignup Races this spring!
Migrating an existing clubs website
Before diving into the overall build process for a new memberships website, we do want to touch on migrating an existing clubs website.
To start the migration you simply click the “upgrade” button on an existing clubs website. You can read more about that process here. After doing so your website and url will be switched over to our new memberships website platform. As mentioned above, all of your content won’t automatically migrate, but you can still access previous content by selecting the “Legacy Content” tab in your main dashboard.
The key items you need to re-configure are:
- Custom website content
- All email marketing settings, templates, lists, etc.
- Coupons
- Donation settings
- Store settings, items, and orders
- Non-director club access (all directors with full access will carry over, but partial access will need to be reset).
When you select the “Legacy Content” tab you’re able to see all the content that was on your previous site. You copy and paste over text content into new sections you add – more on that below. It is a fairly manual process, but should go relatively quickly. You’re also able to download images so you can add those manually as well.
If you’re curious to learn more about who should consider migrating an existing page, we have a helpful article on that very topic you can read here.
Color and header options
There are a number of design options you have when building your memberships website. For example, you can set a color theme for your membership page. To do that you select the “theme options” dropdown and then “color scheme.”
It sets things like background color, as well as different button colors. Some of those are customizable per section, but the color theme sets the default color. There are a number of prebuilt color themes available, or you can choose your own colors to match existing branding, or preferences.
Along with the color scheme you can also choose your homepage and page banner. The homepage banner is what displays at the top of your main website page. The page banner is what shows at the top of all your additional pages.
You can choose to use an image for your banner image, or leave it as the default banner (a colored background). Once you choose to use an image you have some additional options to choose from like the layout of the image – default or stacked. You can also choose to show name, event, and location information on top of the banner, as well as links to social sites.
You can choose to set all of those to:
- Default – default pulls in existing information you’ve already provided.
- Custom – customer lets you add in additional information (this isn’t offered for social).
- Hidden – hidden makes it so that information isn’t visible
Adding a new section
The primary building blocks of the new memberships websites are sections and components – which we cover after this. Sections are essentially content blocks. To add a new section you simply click the “Add new section” button at the bottom of your page.
When adding a new section to a page you get the option to do a single column or two columns. Single columns go the width of the page, where two column set ups split it in half. You can add components to each half to design the page a little more and increase visual interest.
You can also reorder sections by clicking the box grid in the upper left hand corner of the section and dragging the section, or by clicking the up and down arrows (also in the upper left hand corner of each section).
Components
By default all membership websites have one section, with a number of different components. Components are essentially the building blocks you use to create your website. There are currently 17 components available.
Below is the list of the current components and a brief description of what each does:
- Contact form – This is a basic form where people can send in questions. Form responses go to the admin email address associated with your membership page.
- Text – This is a text block. Text blocks can include Headers and paragraphs, with the ability to customize the size of all text.
- Button – This is a customizable button you can set to either go to a page on your membership site, or an outside webpage.
- Image – This component lets you add an image.
- Image, text, button – This component is a combination of the image, text, and button components.
- YouTube video – This component allows you to embed a YouTube video on your page.
- YouTube Playlist – This component allows you to embed an entire YouTube playlist on your page.
- Apple Music playlist – This component lets you add an Apple Music playlist to your page.
- Spotify playlist – This component lets you add a Spotify playlist to your page.
- Slideshow – This component lets you add a carousel of images.
- Cards – This component lets you add hyperlinked blocks called cards. You can have up to four cards in a deck.
- Countdown – This component shows how much time is left until an event. You can manually set the date the clock is counting down to.
- Event description – This component shows the club description you wrote in the setup wizard.
- Map location – This component allows you to show a specific location on a map (like the meeting point for your running club).
- Event location – This component shows the location you set in your setup wizard (like a standard meeting point for your club).
- Membership levels – This component pulls in the different membership levels you’ve added, and displays them on your site. Visitors can also click on them to sign up.
- Strava Map – This component allows you to add an interactive Strava map of your run course. Additionally, if you have a Club on Strava, you can direct people to your club to grow your community.
Adding pages and submenus
Along with adding sections and components, you can also add additional pages and submenus to your membership site. On the right hand side of the builder you’ll notice a section titled “Navigation.” This shows all the current pages on your site and is also where you can add new pages and submenus.
To do so you click the plus sign above, or below the current pages. After doing so you’re prompted to select the type of page you want, or submenu. If you select to add a page you need to add the publish date and title for the page. You can also add a meta description for the page.
After filling in those details you’re taken to the new page. Any page you add that isn’t a system page has the same content by default and can be edited to your liking. System pages are standard pages that are created from the information you added in your setup, like “Become a Member” or “Donate”. System pages cannot be edited.
Submenus
Submenus are useful to house additional pages that all fall into a certain category. Basically a submenu creates a dropdown in your website header. You can add specific pages to the dropdown. Those pages are accessible when someone selects the dropdown, whereas standard pages are visible in the website header.
Moving forward
With our new and improved memberships product you’re able to create an outstanding website that’ll make people excited to join your club. The flexibility and functionality ensures you’re covered for anything you might need and the design features make it easy to create an on-brand digital home for your club.
If you’re ready to get started on your Membership website, you can create your Membership Organization for free here.