Project Coordination
Throughout the
project I served as the primary liaison between Kidology.org's
Chief Creative Officer and the programming staff,
interpreting questions, issues, and problems to each
party. Having personal expertise in both church ministry
and Internet development, I was able to facilitate
open communication quite easily.
Membership Growth Strategies
As a membership-driven
website, Kidology.org desired to increase premium
membership sales. With this in mind, I provided consultation
regarding various upsell opportunities. Previously,
the client had created different portals of information
for each of their membership levels. However, this
did not provide members with a glimpse of what they
were missing by not upgrading to the next level.
Therefore,
I recommended bringing all site content together,
with each item classified for access by specific membership
level. Using this revised strategy, a user that clicked
on a content item disallowed by their current membership
access was presented with a marketing message encouraging
them to upgrade, along with a teaser of the content
they wanted to access. This tiered approach resulted
in a high conversion rate to the most profitable membership
levels.
Focused Marketing
Seeking other
ways to improve membership upgrades, I worked with
the client to redesign their e-mail newsletter communications.
Possessing a mailing list of both Kidology and non-Kidology
members, I helped the client shift their editorial
focus to emphasize content that could only be accessed
by more-lucrative subscription plans.
Building A People Network
Additionally,
I was tasked with introducing discussion forums on
Kidology.org. Again, this enhancement was marketed
as a membership upsell opportunity. Typically, a community
environment has a high number of lurkers, defined
as users who read discussions but do not participate
in conversation, typically because they choose not
to register. By integrating the forum login process
with the overall website login, the Kidology.org forums
were pre-populated with over 1,000 registered users
upon launch.
This improvement
resulted in above normal participation rates. Thus,
the Kidology.org discussion forums supported a faster
return on investment than traditionally seen in other
online communities. Simply put, once the technical
roadblocks were removed from community participation,
members were more prone to obtain information from
each other via online discussion instead of solely
relying on static website content.
Expandable Infrastructure
I advised the
client to implement a framework that allowed for dynamic
elements and affordable expansion through the use
of Microsoft's Active Server Page (ASP) technology.
Given Kidology's involvement in the continually changing
realm of child evangelism, this improvement was enthusiastically
embraced by their leadership team.
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