Membership Page

Community resources General
1

Hey, what is the best way to create pages that are visible to someone that registers for a newsletter?
So they have to have a login page right? Webflow now has the membership option in Beta.
Anyone has used it? Should I give it a try or there are other free options?
Thank you

2

I think the behavior you’re trying to create is this pattern…

  • Bob visits your site
  • Bob is presented with “Sign up for our newsletter and get a free X!”
  • Bob gives his email
  • Bob is sent to a page where he can read / watch / download X
  • Bob is happy

In this flow, passwords and logins and account registrations and email verifications are too interruptive to make the UX flow work. They also don’t add value, because once Bob’s gotten X, what does he now need a login for?

You have several options for how to navigate your user through this. I’ll explain the differences and list the most popular first;

EMAIL AUTOMATION
Email automation is a feature of all major newsletter services including Mailchimp, AWeber, and Mailer Lite. When you sign someone up for a mailing list, an automation can kick off that sends them a “thank you here’s your X” email.

Here’s the flow;

  • Bob visits your site
  • Bob is presented with “Sign up for our newsletter and get a free X!”
  • Bob gives his email
  • Bob is told “Thank you, now check your inbox for X”
  • Bob checks his email inbox, and gets X
  • Bob is happy

To build this, all you need is your email signup form on your site, and a bit of setup in your newsletter provider’s app to create the automation, and the new subscriber campaign.

VARIATION
Rather than giving them X in the email, you can link them to X back on your website.
The advantage here is, you can create a nicer, brandier experience, styled to your site. It’s easier to update X, and you can do nice tracking and conversion analytics in your main site analytics.

This is the same flow as above, except…

  • … Bob is told “Thank you, now check your inbox for X”
  • Bob checks his email inbox, and reads the email
  • Email contains a link to his free X, which goes back to your site, to a hidden Gift Page
  • Bob clicks the link, and gets X
  • Bob is happy

You can password-protect that page if you really want to as well, but that’s rarely useful or user-friendly.

3

I decided to go a bit deeper on how to hide the gift page, so I’ve expanded on some details of building this here;

4

Gosh, so many different ways to approach this :smile:

There is no one answer, and the correct answer is the one that works best for you.

Here are some options, along with screencasts & tutorials that walk you through setting it all up.

The “hidden” approach:

If you’re looking for something simple, this is it.

I’ve used this often with good success.

When you create a new Webflow CMS item, you can have Zapier generate a slug with long random numbers that’s not realistically guessable:

https://my-awesome-site.com/user/45t5678de32d5tgrfgy5

Zapier sends the email they entered in the form submission to your newsletter service.

You either pop off an email directly to your new user with that link, or do what I normally do… just redirect them to that new link after the form submission.

Easy peasy.

Downside: anyone with the link can access it.

Similar approach with Make (Integromat):

You can use the free tiers on both Make & Zapier for this approach.

Using Webflow Logic is a bit more of a challenge, but still an option, and skip Zapier or Make.

Memberstack:

This is simple and you can gate as many pages as you like. Same idea as above but the user must enter a password to create an account.

Lot’s of benefits with this approach but it’s not free.

Webflow Memberships:

This is in Beta, but gives you all the basics. Like Memberstack, lots of benefits once you collect a full blown account (with password).

You can gate any static or CMS Collection page.

This is free.

You can combine this with Webflow Logic, Zapier, or Make to trigger when a new membership is created.