I’ve been kicking around an idea to build a "web site builder" and online marketing tool for clubs. I know that AOPA has a club initiative going on and they have several tools to help with clubs but they don’t have a tool to help a club market itself online. AOPA has a guide on how to put together a club but the only direction they give on web sites is to go to Weebly and get a free site.
I’ve assumed up until now that most clubs that have a web site have a member that has built their site. How many clubs have used a service like Weebly or even Wordpress.com? I’ve had several point me to Wordpress.com when pushing back on my idea to build the tool. Are any clubs finding the existing tools to be a hurdle?
What I’ve found is that having access to building a site for free and actually building the site are two different things:
Ideally this tool would have pre-written content that just needs to be customized for a particular club. The type of pages (about us, contact us, our planes, membership, etc) would be defined. Each site would have a contact us form and membership form that a site visitor can fill out and the contents would be emailed to a club member for follow-up.
To get going you would:
Pretty simple and straightforward, no technical knowledge really required. With most content not needing to be updated there wouldn’t be an admin area to learn. Clubs would just email any changes and they’d get applied within a few days. There would be a limit to the edits but most clubs would only need a few hours per quarter I would think.
I’d also like to eventually include a club asset scheduler for planes and CFI’s, a member’s only forum where the members can communicate, and an area where club documents can be uploaded but only accessible by club members. These seem like natural compliments.
Everything I’ve outlined here can be done today with different tools and for free but it seems like no one has put it together in one package specifically for aviation clubs. Pulling all of these various tools together would take time and some level of technical acumen.
I’ve looked at https://www.aircraftclubs.com also and it seems to provide a lot of these features and a lot more, I’d almost venture to say that they’d be the next step from a tool like this. They do so much more with their tool that it seems to really run your whole club minus the web site and marketing.
I trying to figure out if there is an actual need for a tool like this or if I’m just making up the demand in my head.
I’ve assumed up until now that most clubs that have a web site have a member that has built their site. How many clubs have used a service like Weebly or even Wordpress.com? I’ve had several point me to Wordpress.com when pushing back on my idea to build the tool. Are any clubs finding the existing tools to be a hurdle?
What I’ve found is that having access to building a site for free and actually building the site are two different things:
- People are busy with day jobs, this is a hobby after all.
- There is still a technical hurdle that has to be overcome, not everyone is as adept at taking a photo and uploading it, no matter how simple the web form is.
- Writing the content takes time to focus and some people have a lack of confidence in their writing abilities (you’re probably better than you think you are).
Ideally this tool would have pre-written content that just needs to be customized for a particular club. The type of pages (about us, contact us, our planes, membership, etc) would be defined. Each site would have a contact us form and membership form that a site visitor can fill out and the contents would be emailed to a club member for follow-up.
To get going you would:
- Sign-up and fill out a questionare
- Respond via email to any follow-up questions and provide image assets (pictures of the planes, members, etc).
Pretty simple and straightforward, no technical knowledge really required. With most content not needing to be updated there wouldn’t be an admin area to learn. Clubs would just email any changes and they’d get applied within a few days. There would be a limit to the edits but most clubs would only need a few hours per quarter I would think.
I’d also like to eventually include a club asset scheduler for planes and CFI’s, a member’s only forum where the members can communicate, and an area where club documents can be uploaded but only accessible by club members. These seem like natural compliments.
Everything I’ve outlined here can be done today with different tools and for free but it seems like no one has put it together in one package specifically for aviation clubs. Pulling all of these various tools together would take time and some level of technical acumen.
I’ve looked at https://www.aircraftclubs.com also and it seems to provide a lot of these features and a lot more, I’d almost venture to say that they’d be the next step from a tool like this. They do so much more with their tool that it seems to really run your whole club minus the web site and marketing.
I trying to figure out if there is an actual need for a tool like this or if I’m just making up the demand in my head.