4 Critical Mistakes to Avoid When Building Your Membership Website

If you are thinking about creating a membership website, then there are things that you can do to ensure that you find success. However, there are also things that you need to avoid when building your membership website. Here are four critical mistakes that you want to try to avoid doing when you are creating your first membership site.

Mistake #1 Ð Not Providing Enough Value
Whether you have a free or paid membership site, you have to provide your members with a reason to be members and a reason to return to your site and login again and again. Fortunately, it is relatively easy to keep them interested. By setting up a blog or a forum and then encouraging discussion and participation from your members, youÕll provide them with the value they are expecting. The key to remember is that content is king, so you need to make sure that you give your members a ton of it to keep them coming back. 

Mistake #2 Ð Designing a Complicated User Interface
If you design a site that needs a Ph.D. to navigate, then you'll probably turn off a lot of members. While it may seem uncomplicated to you, if your members can't quickly browse it, then they will go somewhere else. To ensure that you have a simple, easy to navigate site, have some objective people play with it and provide you with feedback. You have to remember that you need to give your members what they want, not design the site that you want.

Mistake #3 Ð Providing Poor User Experience
If your site is slow to respond, has broken links, or images that take days to load, your website is not responsive. If you want to run a successful membership site, then you have to strive to provide a stellar user experience. Get people to test your site and let you know of any issues that they come across. If your poor user experience continues, your members will get frustrated, and they will quickly leave and not return.

Mistake #4 Ð Providing Bad Customer Service
It doesnÕt matter if you have a free or paid site, or if you are doing it for a hobby or a business. If you want your members to stay with your site, you have to provide them with excellent customer service. This is how you can differentiate yourself from your competition.

Running a successful membership site takes a lot of effort. However, if you can avoid making these four critical mistakes, you'll be well on your way to building a membership site thatÕs successful.  
