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!