Websites V2 are powerful today; of course, we also have a Website V2 Product Roadmap. This blog lays out our near term and long term priorities.
Website Components
The first priority is to add Event Tiles to Websites V2. In 2022 we added even more event tile functionality, including background tile images. With Website V2, you will be able to place event tiles anywhere on any page.
We will later add fundraising leaderboards and header slideshows. Like the event tiles and all other existing website components, you’ll be able to feature them anywhere on any page.
We have two multi-event website components that we have continuously been working on. The first is the event list, which is available today on organization websites and ticket websites. The event list dynamically displays all of your upcoming and past races, ticket events, and P2P fundraising events. We will make the setup easier to choose which events you want to display, and then add the component to races. In addition we are adding more flexible layouts – including calendar driven event lists. These will help organizations that host a lot of events ditch manually updated/outsourced event calendars for RunSignup’s dynamic event list. The second multi-event website component that we are getting ready to release is a donation goal thermometer that rolls up donations across selected events and date ranges. This is a really nice feature for nonprofits that do multiple and/or annual fundraising events.
We expect a lot of customer requests for website components, including different layout options for more flexible designs, and will incorporate those into our product priorities on an ongoing basis. For example, a section that is laid out with 1/3 image and 2/3 text. We also have some strategic components that we want to incorporate, including a FAQ component that you can customize. The FAQ component would also automatically add questions and responses based on key features enabled. For example, if you enable participant transfers, we will automatically add “How do I transfer my bib to someone else?” with a link to our RunSignup participant transfer help guide as the answer.
To accommodate the growing number of website components that we will add, we will eventually implement a new UI for adding components in the Website Builder.
Website Templates
In addition to Event Tiles, the other near-term key feature we will add to Website V2 is website templates. Website templates will let you choose flexible layout options that incorporate your key event information. These are some of our early design ideas for website templates.
Once we have website templates, we will transition new races to Website V2 when they go through the race wizard. This will gradually phase out race websites over time. As part of this project, we will update the information and website template choices that are currently available in the wizard with a new Website step. With Image Gallery, we will be able to do really advanced design options in the long term. For example, let you choose from logos/banners uploaded from previous races. That will help us balance adding key items to the wizard to make sure all events have a complete and unique website, with making it fast and efficient to create a new race.
Furthermore, we will grow the ways we pre-populate your website based on settings. One of the initial design elements we will include in website templates is a donation goal thermometer on the homepage if you enable donations and enter a goal in the race wizard. And we will automatically add the Event List as a menu item if you link a payment account associated with other races, ticket events, and/or P2P fundraising events.
Partner Websites
Along with the improvements to the Event List, we will bring Website V2 to Partner Websites this year. This will allow all timers and event management companies to upgrade from their partner dashboard (organization websites offer a way to upgrade today).
Multi-Language Support
Towards the end of 2024, we will be spending a lot of time and effort on making our Website Builder multi-language. We will support Spanish and French initially and will do automatic browser detection for preferred language. This will immediately help the many US based races who have a large number of Spanish speaking participants. Multi-language will take some time as there are many places to change, and we want to architect this correctly and ensure we are not slowed down too much in releasing new functionality in the future. We will keep the back end dashboard pages all English, however over time we want to make all of the many front end pages multi-lingual.