The two most important communication and marketing capabilities we provide our customers are websites and emails. (See an example website we host with our first-generation website hosting for The Woodlands Marathon here). We are working (very hard) on rolling out a new generation of each over the course of 2022. We explained the plan for email in this earlier blog, and we will lay out the plan for the next-gen website capabilities below.
Our goal for websites is to offer our customers a free alternative that allows them to directly control their own websites:
- It’s free — includes hosting, SSL, and unlimited pages (not just a single event page).
- It features your brand, not ours — free of third-party ads.
- It’s easy to add content and images.
- It looks good on desktop and mobile, and it’s easy to customize the theme.
- It’s easy to add data components, like countdown clocks, donation goal meters, top fundraisers, participant lists, photos, event lists, results, etc.
- It has built-in calls to action.
This is a high-level view of our planned release schedule:
- Phase 1: Base Website for Tickets and Donations (Released)
- Content, images, video, one and two column page sections
- Multiple pages
- Cover page with data components, like donation goal thermometer
- Calls to action to buy tickets and donate
- Phase 2: Enhanced Website for Tickets and Donations (Q1 2022)
- Subpages for menus
- Easy edit of theme
- Improved dashboard layout
- Photo slideshow component
- Phase 3: Standalone Website (Q1 2022)
- Independent from any specific event dashboard
- Ability to create links and buttons to other websites
- Ideal for a general homepage that then points to multiple events and other resources
- Phase 4: Partner Website Replacement by Using a Standalone Website (Q2 2022)
- Event list component to display multiple events automatically in tiles or tables
- Results list and results component that allows for easy display of results from multiple events
- Registration, ticket, and donation page components so that one website hosts all of the pages for all of the events and fundraising campaigns
- Phase 5: Race/Registration Website Alternative to Standalone Website (Q3 2022)
- Ability to replicate all of the various automated pages in registration websites as components: event info, donation, fundraising, photos, results, find a participant, teams, refunds, sponsors, volunteers, etc.
- Phase 6: Sunset Current Registration Website (2023)
Phase 1: Website Builder for Tickets and Donations (Complete)
We have released the free website capability for tickets and donations. It allows you to add content, images, videos, and pages easily.
And the finished page:
Phase 2: Enhanced Website for Tickets and Donations
We are adding a number of nice enhancements. These are screenshots of what we have in in development for release early in 2022.
Page Groups and Sub-Menus
Content Blocks With Improved Formatting and Image Handling
Integrated Theme Editing
Phase 3 and Beyond
The next project will be creating independent websites. This serves the purpose of allowing customers to use all of the tools available to create general websites that can be used to coordinate the various events and fundraising campaigns they have across our platform, as well as other resources they want to host for their communities.
It also gives us a flexible foundation to incrementally add components that provide value and, over time, replicate and supercede the old partner website and registration website capabilities. As listed above, we will started with multi-event types of components — like a tile grid or calendar-like view of all of the events a customer might host or time. Eventually all of the many pages that are on the registration platform will be available directly on the website. The website will make it convenient to find and pick which events they manage that can be shown. It will also be flexible enough that a running store would be able to show all of the events within a 50-mile radius.
Summary
We are continuing to invest in providing our customers with the most powerful and impactful tools to market and produce events.