Have you ever thought about adding a members-only area to your site? This type of functionality isn’t just popular with ecommerce sites that process transactions. More and more websites are introducing member areas because of the inherent flexibility with that kind of setup.
Member sections can:
- Serve unique members-only content, such as PDFs, extra posts, or video
- Allow members to interact with each other, such as in a forum
- Provide a great incentive to get people to sign up for your newsletter
Depending on which website platform you’re currently using, and also on what features you’ll need from your member site. Basically, the more different your website looks to a member from a non-member, the more work there will be to do.
If you’re using WordPress, you’ll be happy to find that there are actually some very handy plugins that can take care of simpler member-area installations entirely.
MemberPress is one of the most popular plugins in this space. Installing the plugin on your site not only gives you a members-only area and account setup functionality—this robust tool actually has payment integration with Paypal and Stripe. So, if you’re not a typical ecommerce site users and you don’t have much experience with shopping carts, you likely don’t want to set up a very robust one because you’ll only be accepting very basic payments. MemberPress allows you to do all that at once, so you don’t have to worry about further payment processing integration. MemberPress is reasonably priced for the functionality it provides, at $129/year.
If you happen to already be running an ecommerce site, and are using the very popular WooCommerce plugin but don’t have member functionality, it’s worth it to check out the WooCommerce Memberships plugin. This one integrates really nicely with WooCommerce, giving you the capability to make membership a part of every purchase. You can also create products or even entire product categories that are only visible to members, or give members other special perks like free shipping. This plugin comes in at $149/year.
All hosting plans with CanSpace support one-click installation of WordPress – meaning you can get a WordPress-based membership site up and running in no time!
