Serving to you Get and Maintain Extra Patrons, Half 1

We’re excited to kick off a collection of product enhancements over the subsequent a number of months with two targets in thoughts: serving to you get extra patrons, and ensuring the patrons you might have are glad and sticking together with your membership.

To tee up this challenge, we’ve spent the previous few months speaking to patrons and creators, and analyzing information, to provide us some clues about the place we will have probably the most influence. And within the course of, we’ve uncovered some issues that creators can do to achieve these targets, and a few areas the place Patreon may also help.

On this weblog collection, we’ll share our learnings and plans, beginning with the issues Patreon will work on that will help you get and preserve extra glad patrons.

Your creator web page

We sat down with potential patrons to get their suggestions on the present creator web page and examined a couple of ideas, and right here’s what we’ve realized: the web page as we’ve designed it’s arduous to learn and perceive, particularly on cellular. The About part is just too lengthy generally. The tiers are pushed means over to the facet, and you must scroll rather a lot to learn all of them and perceive what’s being provided. Additionally, the web page is attempting to do too many roles. It’s attempting to elucidate to potential patrons what membership is, and what you because the creator are providing. And it’s attempting to be the house the place you ship posts and advantages to those who are already patrons.

What if we tried one thing completely different — a public web page for non patrons, and a separate web page for patrons solely?

Based mostly on our analysis, we predict we may also help you get extra patrons by tailoring the web page for non-patrons to be extra streamlined and readable, particularly on cellular units. In order that’s what we’re going to work on within the subsequent couple months.

However quite than simply rolling out an entire new design directly, we’re going to begin slowly, with gradual adjustments that we will take a look at earlier than shifting ahead. Beginning this month, for those who’re logged out of your account it’s possible you’ll discover that your web page seems to be a bit completely different, as a result of we’re attempting some small tweaks that may solely seem to non-patrons.

For instance, we’d like to check a brand new placement for tiers that makes them simpler to see, in addition to an expandable About part, so folks aren’t overwhelmed by an excessive amount of textual content. These adjustments will solely be seen to a fraction of the non-patrons that go to your web page, which permits us to measure the influence of the adjustments, and ensures that they really work to develop what you are promoting. As soon as we see that one thing is working, we’ll roll it out to everybody, and we’ll preserve you knowledgeable alongside the best way.

Discovering and having fun with advantages

One other factor we realized is that many patrons have a tough time discovering the advantages they signed up for. For example, new patrons usually must scroll by way of dozens of posts earlier than discovering the unique content material they’re in search of. We found that some patrons have been having hassle accessing their creators’ Discord communities, logging in to Patreon, and retrieving their membership advantages, normally. We additionally realized from analyzing information that if a patron goes to depart, they’re most likely going to depart of their first month.

Based mostly on these findings, we plan to enhance the post-pledge expertise, so it appears like patrons have unlocked a world of advantages which can be straightforward to seek out and to entry. We’ll take a look at Google Single Signal-on to enhance login points. And we’ll take a look at completely different approaches to serving to patrons uncover posts they’ll love.

We’re taking particular care to verify we don’t change something that may confuse your present patrons. We wish to make discovering issues simpler and extra apparent, with out disrupting what patrons are used to. Our purpose is to enhance patron retention (with a particular deal with that first month following a pledge to a creator).

Sharing Learnings

As this work progresses, we’ll share what we be taught with you thru this weblog collection, by way of e mail, and within the Patreon Neighborhood discussion board. We’ve already began the dialog within the discussion board the place we’ve requested for suggestions on the creator web page and shared some future design concepts. For those who’re not within the discussion board, be part of us in the present day and also you’ll be emailed a hyperlink to hitch. If at any time you might have questions on adjustments you’re seeing in your Patreon web page, you may ship us a observe right here.

We hope you’re as excited as we’re to make Patreon higher for you and your patrons.