Over the years, websites can go stale.
Take Location 180 for example. This site has looked pretty much exactly the same way for the last 4 years.
At the time I launched the new design, it had a sweet custom Thesis setup and looked great.
However now you can get a $50 dollar theme for some place like Theme Forest which will look much better and have way more functionality.
There comes a time with every site, business, and brand when you need to switch things up.
And I've reached that point.
So while this site is in certain need of a revamp, that will be phase #2.
Phase #1 is updating our flagship product and community, Location Rebel.
In this post I'm going to share with you 10 reasons why I decided now was the time to update Location Rebel, and why I chose to use Rainmaker as my solution of choice.
The goal with this, is hopefully to help you assess your own sites and decide if now is a good time for you to hit the refresh button, or if you're just getting going, to help you decide if Rainmaker might be a good solution for you.
Note: I did a preliminary review of Rainmaker here.
1) If you're not responsive, you're living in the stone age.
How often do you frequent a site that's not responsive? My guess, is probably only during the times you're on my sites.
With at times over 50% of traffic coming from mobile devices, there's absolutely zero excuse for not having a site that caters to this. This site has a half-assed plugin that does the job (hi, all you mobile readers!), but Location Rebel has been much more difficult to view anywhere other than a computer for the last four years.
Today all of that changes, and we bring the site into the 21st century!
2) Show off "The Desk"
We released The Desk in November, and it was easily the biggest video project I've ever embarked on. I've gotten absolutely phenomenal feedback from everyone who has seen it, however I haven't been able to make as big of a splash with it as I wanted.
The new design will bring this to the forefront, which I think does a good job of letting viewers get a sense of my personality and what our community is all about.
Still haven't seen it? Check it here:
3) More stable, managed hosting
Hosting has always been a challenge with Location Rebel. Because of some our services (forum, affiliate program), it didn't work with many managed WordPress solutions. So it was on a custom setup, that was less than ideal.
Now it should run faster, and if something goes wrong, there's a team of people at the ready to make sure it gets fixed immediately.
4) Give users more flexibility with forums
We went with Vanilla Forums initially for Location Rebel and it was great for awhile, however as the site and my goals grew, it just didn't quite perform.
With the new forums we're able to segment topics more easily, create different restricted levels of forums (for instance a new forum for more advanced users), and make it easier to search through old posts and content.
5) A stronger platform to launch new products
We have two products that are completely done and ready to be released – and we've just been waiting on the new site to launch them.
This new platform makes it easier to create high quality landing pages, and track member's access levels and accounts. We're really excited to be able to use this as a launch platform for some of our new initiatives.
6) Better automation and email integration
With Rainmaker and Convert Kit we'll be able to do some really powerful stuff with automation for our members.
For instance, as you're working through the blueprints, we'll be able to send specific emails based on where you are in each course – so we'll know if you're stuck and be able to provide the right bit of encouragement at the right time.
The LMS system that Rainmaker has built into it is super powerful, so over the long term, this is going to provide a much more effective user experience for our members.
7) Integrated analytics and reporting
No longer will we have to turn to multiple different services to track things like member payments, split testing, and conversion rates. Everything is all built in, on one very sexy dashboard. So at a glance we'll be able to see how we're doing from a sales stand point and get an idea of whats performing and what needs to be improved.
8) Time to rekindle the affiliate program?
Way back when we had an affiliate program, that we removed for a few different reasons (not the least of which being technical reasons).
As I look to do more joint ventures and really spread the word about our incredible program and community, having an affiliate program that's designed to work and play nicely with all of the other components of Rainmaker will be huge.
9) Make it easier to roll out updates on a regular basis
Working with Optimize Press could sometimes be a bit cumbersome, and updates could be difficult to roll out if you didn't really know what you were doing.
With Rainmaker, everything is really intuitive, and because it's all integrated together, I don't have to jump all over the place to make updates – it's all right there in the same dashboard, which I love.
10) Potentially serve as the hub for everything I do online
For the last year or two I've been thinking about really shaking things up with my sites. I feel like there's still a disconnect between Location 180 and Location Rebel.
There isn't enough cohesion in the brands, and people often get confused about what's what.
So I've thought for awhile about combining everything into one brand on the Location Rebel domain.
All the blog posts, all the videos, all the products – everything in one spot.
I'm still looking into the feasibility of it all, but this is the first step in making the transition possible.
So there you have it…
Those are ten of the reasons why I'm really excited to announce the new Location Rebel.
Things are only going up from here, and I can't wait to see what our new and current members are able to do with the new site.
from Location 180 | Build a Business, Live Anywhere, Achieve Freedom http://ift.tt/1Kq07iK
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