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!