January 2009 Newsletter

Table of Contents

1. Spread The Word
2. You Have A Voice
3. Life Just Got A Little Richer
4. New Groups & Committees
5. Site Sponsors
6. Calendar Archives
7. Upcoming Changes

Spread The Word

As a small, self-funded internet start-up we don’t have much of an advertising budget so we truly rely on our customers to help get the word out. If you find HOAInTouch.com useful please tell a friend (or ten!). They will appreciate being more connected to their neighborhood and we will love you for it! If you have a blog please consider giving us a quick shout out or if you are into Twitter toss us a tweet.

Speaking of blogs and Twitter, if you want to stay up to date on what we have going on you can subscribe to our product blog via email or RSS updates or follow us on twitter at @hoaintouch.

You Have A Voice

We are very excited to let you know that we have partnered with UserVoice, a company providing a new twist on user feedback, to provide a forum for our customers to request new features, submit bug reports and help control the overall direction of the service. To get started simply click the blue feedback button aligned vertically on the left side of the window.

To get the ball rolling we have seeded the feedback forum with some of our most requested features. Feel free to vote up the ones you would most like to see or to add entirely new ones. We hope you enjoy this new feature and we look forward to hearing from you!

[Read More]

Life Just Got A Little Richer

One of our most requested features has been the ability for users to richly format the content posted to their community. In December we released enhancements to our Community News and Community Events modules that allows residents to format the content of these items and their comments.

The new rich text/html editor enables content authors to change the font face, size and color of the text as well as providing the ability to make the text bold, italic or underlined. The new editor also allows for the creation of ordered and unordered list and hyperlinks.

As we have all heard at least a few times, a picture is worth a thousand words so check out our product blog for some screenshots showcasing the new feature using the Community News module.

[Read More]

Groups and Committees

I must confess that I have never been super happy with the Groups & Committee feature, so we decided to throw it out and rebuild it - nearly from the ground up. I am very pleased to let you know that earlier this month we released a new Groups and Committees module of HOAInTouch.

This release contains several new features – namely public groups and group member titles - as well as enhancing existing features by improving ease of administration and usability.

[Read More]

Site Sponsors

The mission of HOAInTouch has always been to improve the level and quality of communication in your homeowner association. To that end, we are constantly striving to find ways to improve and create a better experience for your residents.

Based on a combination of customer feedback and an evaluation of the current and future market conditions for local online advertising we have greatly reduced the amount of advertising present on each page. This makes for a much cleaner design with dramatically less “noise” and the site loads much faster. Certainly a better experience for our customers.

[Read More]

Calendar Archives

In December we also released a small update to the Community Events module that allows residents to browse prior community events.

On each Community Events page there is a new Archives tile on the right of the page that provides links for each Month / Year and indicates the number of events for that month - i.e. December 2008 (2). Clicking the link will display all of the events that occurred in the given month.

[Read More]

Upcoming Changes

We are extremely excited about a number of changes we have coming in February. We will be providing enhanced moderation for our Community News and Events modules as well as greater control over system notifications. We have also started work on a new classified ads module that will provide residents with a great place to advertise their goods and services.

Lastly, due to the current economics conditions and general softness in the online advertising environment we are going to be making a handful of changes to our Free plan. Namely, we will be removing the document library feature and email notifications of news posts and calendar events. Additionally, a number of upcoming features will only be available to paid subscriptions.

We really struggled with this decision but feel it is necessary in order to ensure that we remain a viable service for our existing and future customers. If you are affected by this change, you are more than welcome to continue to use the free service. We have also provided a special coupon code below to save 50% off the first month should you choose to upgrade. However, if you feel that our service isn't a good fit for your community right now we certainly understand and hope you will keep us in mind if your needs change.

Upgrade and Save

Use coupon code UPGHOA01 to save 50% off your first month of any upgrade!  This code is good through the end of February 2009.

Thanks for your business and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

First 30 Days Are On Us

I am pleased to announce that the first month of any new, paid subscription plan is now free!  This change gives our customers an entire month to get their community setup, residents registered and take the site for a spin at no cost and no risk!  This is in addition to our 90-day money back guarantee! 

With zero risk, why not create a website for your HOA today? Use coupon code JAN200901 when setting up your community and get 20% off your first month! This offer is good through the end of January 2009.

Thanks and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

Coupon Codes

We pushed out an update to our subscription payment process today that enables us to accept coupon codes. Customers can enter a coupon code when creating a new community or upgrading their existing free subscription by entering the coupon code on the Subscription Payment Setup screen.

Enter code JAN200901 to receive 20% your first month! This offer is good through the end of January 2009.

Thanks and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

Groups and Committees

I have a confession to make. I have never been too overly excited about our Groups and Committees feature of HOAInTouch.  I mean, it worked but it just felt a little “off”. The interface always seemed a little clunky and inefficient - kind of like it was bolted on instead of being a first class feature of the application.

I must admit it was my least favorite part of the application and, while we haven’t received any specific feedback on it, the usage statistics appear to confirm that our customers agreed.

So we decided to throw it out and rebuild it - nearly from the ground up. I am very pleased to let you know that tonight we released a new Groups and Committees module of HOAInTouch.

This release contains several new features – namely public groups and group member titles - as well as improving on existing features by improving ease of administration and usability. Let’s take a look at the improvements to existing functionality and then we will present the new features.

Group Details Page

One of the biggest annoyances with the original design was that the group details and group members were on separate pages. This never really made sense and required residents make an extra, unnecessary mouse click to view basic group information.

To help illustrate the issue, below are screenshots of the group details and members pages before the update.

(Group Details Page)

(Group Members Page)

As you can see, the group details page was pretty thin in terms of content. Frankly, there was no new information presented that wasn’t already available on the groups homepage. Additionally the group members page wasn’t much better. We were consuming quite a bit of space to communicate a small amount of information. Yuck.

So the first thing we set out to improve was the presentation of the group members. We wanted a way to provide more information in less space. After tossing around a few design ideas we settled on a tabular grid format. Not only does this design provide a concise means of displaying the data, it also allows residents to sort the data thereby greatly improving usability for groups with many members.

With the new design taking up so much less space we decided to merge the group details and group members pages - thus eliminating the extra click to get to the member information. Yes, it is a small change but I feel strongly that small details like this really matter and are what separates a good application from a great one. Below is a screenshot of the new group details page. I am really happy with how it turned out and I hope you agree!

(New Group Details Page)

Group Administration

In the original design we allowed anyone to update the group description and add or remove group members. With the new ability to create public groups (more on this later) we thought it was best to move all of the group administration functions into the Administration section.

This move not only makes it much easier and quicker to manage groups but also ensures that community administrators maintain appropriate control over group details and members.

Below is a screenshot of what the Add Group Member widget looked like in the original design.

(Add Group Member)

And this is the new design for editing group information and group members respectively.

(Edit Group Details)

(Manage Group Members)

Much cleaner, much nicer, much better.

Public Groups

One area of the Groups and Committees module that we have received quite a bit of feedback on is the lack of visibility of groups for guests/visitors and neighborhood residents not signed in to the HOA website.

For example, several communities requested the ability to allow any visitors of the website to view their Board of Directors committee so that potential homeowners could contact them with any questions they might have.

I am pleased to announce that Groups and Committees can now be marked as public which will allow visitors and residents not signed in to view the group details and members. See the new  Edit Group Details screenshot above to see how to enable this feature.

Group Member Titles

Lastly, we added the ability for community administrators to add a title or role description to each group member. This will greatly assist residents in understanding how each group member fits into the larger group/committee and who they might need to contact with issues or questions. Refer to the new Edit Group Members screenshot above to see this new feature.

Overall this was a pretty significant release – one of the largest since we initially launched in November of 2006. I dramatically better about our Groups feature and can now consider it a first class feature of the system. I hope you agree but either way let us know what you think! Thanks and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

Site Sponsors

The mission of HOAInTouch has always been to improve the level and quality of communication in your homeowner association communities. To that end, we are constantly striving to find ways to improve and create a better experience for your residents.

As we have previously discussed, our business model has always been to partially subsidize the cost of our subscription plans via advertising. Today that changes somewhat.

Based on a combination of customer feedback and an evaluation of the current and future market conditions for local online advertising we have greatly reduced the amount of advertising present on each page.

Previously we had three large ad sections, a horizontal section across the top just below the menu tabs, a vertical section to the right below any tiles and a second horizontal section at the footer of the page. We would fill this inventory from a variety of sources including Google and other national ad networks, as well as local advertising and in house ads.

As of tonight all three of these sections have been removed. In their place we have added a small, text only Site Sponsors section in the lower right corner of the page (screenshot below). This makes for a much cleaner design with dramatically less “noise” and the site loads much faster. Certainly a better experience for our customers.

(Site Sponsors)

This change in direction is also a win for our advertisers. Moving forward we will no longer be utilizing Google - or  any other ad networks - and will only be displaying our own local advertising.  We are also limiting the number of sponsors per community to four and will only be displaying two ads per page. This decrease in inventory and competing advertisers will translate into increased page views and prominence for our local advertisers.

HOAInTouch is a tremendous opportunity for local businesses to advertise online and know that they are reaching their target market. If you are a real estate agent, lawn care provider, roofer, plumber, handyman, etc. please contact us so we can get your business in front of local homeowners. For only $25 per month you can reach homeowners in the neighborhood of your choice while they are already thinking about their homes.

Thanks and, as always, let us know what you think! We will see you ‘round the neighborhood!