Changes To Pricing Plans

Moving forward with the changes we announced in the January newsletter, last night we released a number of updates to our pricing plans. As we discussed in the newsletter, we really struggled with this decision but, given the current economic conditions and general softness in the online advertising environment, feel it is necessary to ensure that we remain a viable service for our existing and future customers. With that said, we want to reassure you that we aren't going anywhere! These are preemptive changes we are making to ensure we will be able to weather this economic storm.

Last night we also released stronger moderation features for the Community News  and Events  modules as well as increased control over resident email notifications. Community administrators and content moderators now have complete control and final approval of news and events that are published to their HOA website. They also now have greater control over when residents receive email notifications.

Below are the new pricing plans as of 02/02/2008. The most significant changes were to the Free plan. If you are affected by these changes, we welcome you to continue to use the free service and have provided a special coupon code - UPGHOA01 - 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.

HOA Website Pricing Plans

*All paid pricing plans include content moderation and email notification features.

Ultimate Plan

• Unlimited Residents
• Unlimited Groups
• 2GB Document Storage

Premium Plan

• Up to 500 Residents
• 10 Groups
• 1GB Document Storage

Standard Plan

• Up to 250 Residents
• 5 Groups
• 500MB Document Storage

Basic Plan

• Up to 100 Residents
• 3 Groups
• 250MB Document Storage

We also still have the Free plan with up to 25 residents and 1 group but no document storage, email notifications or content moderation.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding these changes please feel free to contact me personally at mitch.rupp@rdcweb.com or by phone at 913.710.8103.

Thank you for your time and we truly appreciate your business.

Greater Control And Flexibility

Last night we released a number of changes that greatly increase the content moderation capabilities of our HOA websites.  Additionally these changes also provide community administrators and content moderators greater control over when residents are sent email notifications.

New Moderation Features

First let's look at the new moderation features. In the past, residents were able to post news and events directly to their HOA website. This was great because it removed barriers to getting them involved and helped to engage the community.

Unfortunately, it also enabled residents to email every other resident in the neighborhood without a filter. Needless to say, this made some HOA board members and property management companies nervous. 

Now residents are still able to add news and events but they are first routed though the community administrators  and moderators for approval. When residents post new items an email will be sent to administrators and content moderators notifying them that an item is pending their approval.

After following the link provided in the email notification, administrators and content moderators now have the opportunity to preview and edit news posts and community events prior to publishing them to the site. Once approved or "published" the items will then appear on the live HOA website. 

Optional Email Notifications

As administrators or moderators are approving the item they also have the opportunity to optionally notify residents of the news or events via email. Prior to yesterday this was the default behavior and there was no way to prevent the email notifications from being sent. We made these changes for two reasons.

First, not all news or events are important enough to interrupt the residents. Too much communication and residents become annoyed and start to tune it out. Not enough communication and residents are not engaged and participation declines.  Every community is different and we now enable you to find the right balance for your HOA website.

Secondly, these changes now allow administrators and content moderators to send residents email notifications when news or events are significantly edited. Previously, if a change was significant enough to warrant a new email notification the item would need to be deleted and the edited version re-posted as a new item.

We hope you enjoy the greater control you now have over resident email notifications and the content published on your HOA website. Both of these enhancements came directly from our feedback forum so please keep the ideas and votes coming. We are listening to you!

Thanks and we will see you 'round the neighborhood!

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!

Calendar Archives

We released a small update to the Community Events module tonight 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. Below is a screenshot to better illustrate.



Hope this helps! Thanks and we will see you 'round the neighborhood!

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 thier community. Tonight we released enhancements to our Community News and Community Events modules that allows users 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 below are some screenshots showcasing the new feature using the Community News module.

The first screenshot is a news post that was created before the new editor was available.

The second screenshot is a shot of the news post in the new edit screen.

Lastly, a screenshot of the updated news post with the richly formated content.



As you can see, the resulting news post is formatted much cleaner and is more aesthetically pleasing. It also more easily conveys the critical pieces of information such as the web address, due date and contact information.

Hope you enjoy this new feature and please keep the feedback coming! Thanks and we will see you 'round the neighborhood!

You Have A Voice

Tonight we pushed out an update that I am very excited about. 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 site.

To get started simply click the blue feedback button aligned vertically on the left side of the window.


This will open the feedback window which allows quick access to the forum and provides the ability to quickly submit a bug.


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!

Thanks and we will see you 'round the neighborhood!

Safari Compatibility

Tonight we pushed out a few updates to resolve some funkiness we were seeing with the Safari browser. As a reminder, HOAInTouch supports all of the major browsers including:

• Internet Explorer 6+
• FireFox 1.5+
  
• Safari 3+
• Opera 9+

Hope this helps and we will see you 'round the neighborhood!

Still Here

Just a quick post to let you know we are still alive and well. You might not have heard from us in a while but we have been busy continuing to improve HOAInTouch and providing homeowner associations with a great website and communication tool for their residents.

Earlier this week we pushed out an update to improve the performance of the site as well as improving compatibility with Firefox 3. This was a significant update that took quite a bit of time to implement and touched literally every page of the site. Since it was more of an infrastructure enhancement you really shouldn't notice any visible difference - other than the site loading faster of course - but we feel it was worth it and will allow us to leverage some pretty cool stuff moving forward.

Stay tuned as we plan to make several other enhancements to the site before the end of the year and are excited to get your feedback. As always, feel free to drop us a line and let us know what you think!

Thanks and we will see you 'round the neighborhood!

Local Advertising

Our business model has always been to partially subsidize the cost of subscriptions via advertising. To date we have used national ad networks such as Google to fill our ad inventory. However, as of last week we are now able to host and publish our own ads.

This means your community can now have local advertising that is inherently more relevant and useful to your residents. HOAInTouch.com is a great place to advertise for realtors, lawn care, painters, banks, restaurants, etc. Really any business that wants to attract local customers is a great candidate.

So why is this good for you? Starting May 1st, any community that refers two or more advertisers will be automatically upgraded to the Ultimate plan absolutely free! Contact us at sales@hoaintouch.com for more details or if you have any questions.

Unlimited Users For All Communities

At the beginning of the month we alluded to some major changes in the works that would make HOAInTouch.com an even more compelling choice for communities looking to (re)connect with their neighbors.

We are very, very excited to announce that we have removed the user limits on all plans! Now all communities – even those on the FREE plan – can add unlimited users and contacts to their community. It has never been easier to improve communication and participation in your neighborhood!

To make getting your entire community registered quick and easy, earlier this month we released the new Bulk User Import feature. It is a super, super simple two step process. Just complete a spreadsheet with three required fields (first name, last name and email address) and upload it in your administration section. We will take care of the rest. For more information check out a previous blog post on the feature.

Hope you are as excited about this change as we are! Thanks and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

Over 100 Communities

This week we passed a significant milestone! Just five short months after we launched, HOAIntouch.com is already helping over 100 communities communicate more effectively. We couldn’t have done it without your support so THANK YOU! We are extremely pleased to have passed this milestone in such a short amount of time and look forward to our next major milestone – 1000 communities!

Entering Phone Numbers

Since we launched in November of 2007 we have always required that phone numbers be entered in the traditional (555)555-5555 format. While a common format it is really a pain to enter phone numbers this way. It just doesn’t “flow” very well.

I am *really* excited to announce that as of today you can now enter phone numbers in a variety of formats. In addition to (555)555-5555, you can now use (555) 555-5555 (note the space after the closing parenthesis), 555-555-5555 or 555.555.5555.

Yeah, I realize this isn’t really that big of a deal but has been a personal pet peeve of mine - drove me absolutely nuts! I am happy now and I hope you can appreciate it even half as much as me. :)

Thanks and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

User Import Feature

Today we released a great new feature for HOAInTouch.com community administrators. Administrators are now able to easily import all or a subset of the residents in their neighborhood – and true to form it is super, super simple.

We will do a full post with screenshots on this feature at some point as well as create a video tutorial but essentially here is the process.

1. Download a very simple spreadsheet from inside the administration section of your homeowners association website. Currently the only required fields are first name, last name and email address. Optionally you can also specify the user’s password, home phone number and home address.
2. Upload the spreadsheet.

Yep, that’s it. Two steps. I told you it was super simple!

Once the spreadsheet is uploaded we automatically check the data for any errors, create the user accounts and display the results. We also send an email to each new user welcoming them to your homeowners association website and providing them their user name and password. With this new user import feature +90% adoption is easily feasible – and possible without your residents having to do anything! How great is that!

This is been a frequently requested feature and we worked hard to make it as simple and painless as possible. We are really excited with how it turned out and think you will be too. Try it out and let us know what you think! If you don’t have a HOAInTouch.com community yet then create your homeowners association website today and create those neighborhood connections!

Thanks and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

March Statistics

First of the month again – time to fire up the ol’ calculator and take a look at some stats. HOAInTouch.com is now helping 80 homeowners associations (+26.98%) create more active and vibrate neighborhoods! Below are the stats for the month of March 2008.

Application Statistics:

Number of users: 216 (+34.16%)
Number of contacts: 303 (+31.74%)
Number of groups: 27 (+3.85%)
Number of news posts: 146 (+23.73%)
Number of community events: 173 (+19.31%)
Number of documents: 201 (+11.05%)

Traffic Statistics from Google Analytics:

Visits: 989 (+20.32%)
Unique Visitors: 652 (+8.67%)
Page Views: 4,013 (+26.39%)
Pages / Visit: 4.06 (+5.05%)
Time on Site: 5:14 (+34.47%)

Wow! What a great month with strong growth across the board. We are really excited about our growth and are talking to more and more homeowners associations every day about the benefits of an HOA website. We also have some really great new features in the works that will make HOAInTouch.com even more compelling to homeowner associations looking to (re)connect their neighborhoods.

March marked the end of our first full quarter as well. Hard to believe we launched just a short four and a half months ago! Big thanks to all of our existing customers – we couldn’t have done it it without you! If you haven’t created your HOA website yet then give us a try!

Thanks and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

HOAInTouch.com in the Press

We received our March 2008 copy of 435 South, a local magazine focused on Southern Johnson County, over the weekend and were pleasantly surprised to find a small article on HOAInTouch.com! Their site appears to be under a redesign right now so I can’t link to the article but I have included the text below.

Local Company Keeps Neighborhoods Connected
Leawood-based Rupp Development & Consulting recently unveiled a new product called HOAInTouch.com. This innovative web site gives subdivisions and communities a way to keep in touch like never before. The social network provides a forum for posting news and events, sharing documents and facilitating communication between neighbors. There are four key features to this program: Community News keeps everyone informed on what is happening; Community Events tells what meetings, events, garage sales and such are going on in the area; Community Directory is a great way to keep everyone’s contact info handy; and Local Weather, provided by Weather.com, makes weather information easily accessible at the click of a mouse. To search for your neighborhood or for more information, visit www.HOAInTouch.com.

Couldn’t have said it better ourselves! We have already noticed an uptick in visits to the site and are very excited about being featured in a magazine focused on our target market.

February Statistics

It is that time of month again! Below are the stats for the month of February 2008.

HOAInTouch.com is now helping 63 communities (+40%) in 62 zip codes (+37.78%) and 23 states (+43.75%) communicate more effectively with their residents and neighbors! We have also had zip code searches from 43 different states (+7.5%).

Applications Statistics:

Number of users: 161 (+26.77%)
Number of contacts: 230 (+29.94%)
Number of groups: 26 (+13.04%)
Number of news posts: 118 (+31.11%)
Number of community events: 145 (+36.79%)
Number of documents: 181 (+2.84%)

Traffic Statistics from Google Analytics:

Visits: 822 (+68.10%)
Unique Visitors: 600 (+80.18%)
Page Views: 3,175 (-0.19%)
Pages / Visit: 3.86 (-40.62%)
Time on Site: 3: 53 (-9.97%)

We continue to experience tremendous growth in our user base (+26.77%) and communities are really utilizing the community news (+31.11%) and events (+36.79%) features. We are very pleased with these growth numbers especially considering we are focused on local markets which are inherently more difficult to grow.

Not surprisingly, our site traffic isn’t necessarily following the same growth trend – and this is actually by design. When we set out to create HOAInTouch.com we didn’t want our users to have to constantly check and scour the website to stay informed. Who has time for that? Our goal was to enable them to stay current on the community without changing their current behavior.

This is why our Community News and Events features email the residents each time an item is posted. We include all the information in the email and also provide deep links directly to the content so they don’t need to login to view the news item in their browser or download the event to Microsoft Outlook.

Our visits (+68.10%) and unique visitors (+80.18%) growth supports that this is working. 80% growth in unique visitors is phenomenal and extremely exciting. More and more residents are finding the site useful and recommending it to their neighbors. We love to see this and added the Invite a Neighbor page last month to help spread the word.

Overall, February was a great month and considering it was only our third full month since we launched we are extremely pleased with our growth and how far we have come.

See you ‘round the neighborhood!