Customize the Membership Forms

Customize the Membership Forms

You can customize the member experience for members who are joining, members who are logging in as well as your admin view of member information.

There are 3 membership form templates:
  1. Member Sign-Up – this is the template used when a new member is signing up. [Sample]
  2. Member Manage – this is the template used when an existing member is signing in to manage their account.
  3. Member Admin – this is the template used for the member’s Profile tab in your administrative interface.
Having separate templates for these forms allows you to have fields or features on one form but not another. For example, data fields that are for administrators only would exist only on the Member Admin template.

General Rules for Customizing Templates

How to Add Fields

  1. Go to MembershipWorks > Customization > Member Sign-up*.
  2. Click + Add Field on the right.
  3. Add the “Description” for example, “What is your favorite color?”
  4. Type any 2 letters in “2-letter identifier” that you haven’t used for another custom field.
  5. Click OK.
  6. Click Save Template on the left to finalize the change
* You can go to MembershipWorks > Customization > Member Manage or MembershipWorks > Customization > Member Admin to edit one of these templates instead.

How to Delete Fields

  1. Go to MembershipWorks > Customization > Member Sign-up*.
  2. Click on the field on the right that you’d like to delete.
  3. Click Remove.
  4. Click Save Template on the left to finalize the change.
* You can go to MembershipWorks > Customization > Member Manage or MembershipWorks > Customization > Member Admin to edit one of these templates instead.

What Types of Fields You Can Add

Things To Watch For With Custom Fields

Do not create custom fields for business name, first name, last name, city, state or province, country. Your membership levels do not need a field either as they will be populated from the levels you create in Labels & Membership.

For address fields, our system automatically encodes and stores street, city, state/province, zip/postal code and country information as part of the field. Attempting to separate that information into custom fields will cause the encoding and map locations to not to work properly.

The main “Address” field is considered the address on the account, and is the address used for tax computation. Please be aware of this before creating additional custom address fields.

Name Fields

The Account Name field is the primary name associated with the account. We also provide a Organization Name field and Contact Name field that can be used. It is not recommended to use all 3 name fields. Typically you would use the following combinations:
  1. If your members are businesses or organizations, you would store the business/organization name under the Account Name field and optionally, the contact person’s name in the Contact Name field.
  2. If your members are individuals, the individual’s name should be stored in the Account Name field. Optionally, you can use the Organization Name field to store their business/organization affiliation.
  3. If you have both individual and business members, we recommend using just the Account Name field to avoid confusion. Businesses would normally fill in their business name since they would want the membership associated with the business. Similarly individuals would normally fill in their own name.
The Account Name field is used for all renewal notices, receipts, administrative notifications, invoices, etc. Do not split the account name up with a custom field (for example, changing account name to first name and creating a custom last name field), this will cause many functions to show only a partial name.

Note that our system does automatically compute first and last names (from the contact name if available, if not the account name) when exporting to CSV, so that information will always be available for you to do a mail merge, or for export to other third party applications requiring separated names.

Field Types

When creating custom fields, you can select a number of different types:
  1. Text Input is a standard one line text input.
  2. Simple Text Area and Rich Text Area are multi-line text input boxes. Rich Text Area allows for rich text editing features such as Bold, Underline, etc.
  3. Address allows you to store addresses. All addresses are passed through Google Maps and encoded with street, city, state/province, zip/postal code and country information as part of the field.
  4. Check Box creates a simple on-off check button.
  5. Select lets your users select a option from your pre-defined options. Note that users can only select one value, they cannot select multiple options at the same time. If you want users to select from several options, create a Check Box field for each option.
  6. Display Value Stored In Field lets you display a value on the form, but not allowing the user to edit it. This is great for admin only data that you may want to display to your members but not allow them to edit.
  7. Required Waiver/Terms lets you display your terms/conditions/waivers. Users will need to acknowledge by clicking on a check box or filling out a text input box.
  8. UTM Code/Parameter lets you record UTM codes passed on by referral or ad links (such as from Google Adwords). These fields are invisible to the member/user but can be viewed by the admin.

Field Settings

When creating custom fields, there will be a number of settings available (depending on the field type):
  1. Description is the text that appears to the left of the input in the form.
  2. Required lets you specify if a non-empty value is required (ie. it cannot be blank).
  3. Regexp refers to “Regular Expression” and if specified, the user’s input will be validated against the expression. Regular Expressions are a form of programming language and should only be attempted if you are familiar with it; incorrect expressions can prevent the form from working!
  4. Placeholder – for text input this is the grayed out text that appears in the box when the box is empty. Note that this does not display in Internet Explorer 8-9. For check box, this is the text that appears to the right of the check box.
  5. Pre-fill Value is the initial text value to fill the box with. Note that this is not the default value. The member must save the form once for this value to be updated to the account; ie. if the member never saves the form, that field would be empty.
  6. Error Message is the message displayed to the user if the input fails the regexp validation. Otherwise the default message “invalid” will be displayed.
  7. Choices for select fields, these are the options the user can select from.

Social Media Fields

We provide a number of social media fields. When used in conjunction with the “Social Media Links” box type in the directory profile, that will display your members social media pages through icons. Note that it is not possible to customize or add to the available social media icons/fields beyond what is provided. Please use the Additional Profile Links box to allow your members to add other links as needed.

Non-Taxable Field

If the Non-Taxable field is set for a member, it will remove all taxes from membership, events and form/cart/donation payments for that member, regardless of your tax rules.

Privacy Fields

We provide a number of privacy and opt-out settings that you can provide to your members in the membership templates:
  1. Opt-out From Email List setting allows your members to opt-out of your MailChimp email list, if you are integrating with MailChimp.
  2. Do Not List In Directory setting allows your members to opt-out of having a directory listing altogether.
  3. Do Not Show Street Address allows your members to hide their street address in the contact information box. Note that this will also remove their location pin on the map but they can still be found through a location search.
  4. Do Not Show Phone Number allows your members to hide their phone number in the contact information box in the directory profile.
  5. strong>Do Not Show Mobile Number allows your members to hide their mobile number in the contact information box in the directory profile.
  6. Do Not Show Contact Name allows your members to hide the “Contact Name” field in the contact information box in the directory profile.
  7. Do Not Allow Messaging setting allows your members to not be contacted by email through your members directory.
Note that there is no setting for your members to opt out of emails sent to them from an administrator, as well as transaction emails such as payment receipts. If you want to provide a way for members to opt-in or opt-out of group emails you send as the administrator, you can create a label for that purpose. Then use a “Add/Remove Labels/Folders” box in the Member Signup and Member Manage templates to let your members select or remove that label. Then use that label each time you send a group email to filter your members list accordingly.

How the Membership Form Templates are Set Up

Tabs, Boxes & Fields

Templates are organized as “Tabs”, which contains “Boxes”, which in turn contains “Fields”. Visually, this corresponds to the tabs, boxes and inputs in the account screen.



Each tab is given a 1-word name. There are also visibility settings, where the tab can be hidden or displayed depending on whether the member has specific folder/labels/membership levels, or whether the member chooses not to be in the directory. For example, the default template is configured to hide tabs/boxes that are not required for members who are not going to be in the directory – ie, deals, profile gallery, etc.

Note 1: The Member Admin template consists of just 1 tab and it is not editable.

Note 2: You cannot add more boxes to the first tab for Member Sign-Up and Member Manage templates, or setup visibility settings on the first tab.

Under each tab, you can have multiple boxes. Boxes either contain fields (a “Custom Form” box), or serve a specific/special function – billing, business card, profile gallery, deals, additional contacts, or user labels. You can provide a title and description for each box or leave those blank as well. You can also set the visibility of each box to hide or show it depending on the member’s membership level, labels or folders, or whether they are listed in the directory.

Fields are added to Custom Form boxes. You can add standard fields (such as name, password, address, etc) or your own custom fields.

Re-Arranging Tabs, Boxes & Fields

You can drag and drop tabs, boxes, or fields around to re-arrange them. Click and drag on the tab or box titles to move them.

Syncing Changes Between Templates

When you make changes to one template, the changes are not automatically reflected to the other templates. For example, when you add a custom field to the Member Sign-Up form, that field will not appear in the Member Manage or Member Admin templates until you add the field to that template.

You can use the “Copy” button on the left side of the screen to copy the Member Sign-Up or Member Manage templates to the other templates.

Best Practices For Better Conversion

Every extra step in a form can reduce conversions between 1-5%. So when designing your form, always consider whether a piece of information (field) is truly necessary.

This is especially important for the first tab on the Member Sign-Up template. Each person who abandons that form, is one less member for your organization. So in effect, each extra field on this tab could mean 1-5% of your revenue. Therefore we recommend keeping only the fields that are absolutely essential on this tab. Less important fields can be moved to later tabs, past the point where the member has already signed up with your organization.

Having too many tabs, boxes and fields can be intimidating. Use the visibility settings to hide boxes and tabs where not necessary for members who are not going to be listed in your directory. Remove any boxes and tabs that contain features you are not planning to use (eg. if you are not going to publish Deals).

Save Time with the Copy Feature

Once you complete customizing the Member Sign-Up template you can copy it to the Member Manage and Member Admin templates. After you copy the template you can make any adjustments needed to specific templates.

How to use the copy feature

  1. Go to MembershipWorks > Customization > Member Sign-Up
  2. Click the blue “Copy” button
  3. Select “Copy to Member Manage”
  4. Repeat for the “Member Admin” template


Info
Note that when you copy a template, it will delete any custom fields on the template you are copying to in order to make it an exact replica of the template you are copying. So it is best to first copy and then add fields that are specific to just one template.

If you copy the Member Sign-Up template to the Member Manage or Member Admin template, you’ll want to add back in the system Password field to those latter two templates so that members and admins will be able to continue to edit member passwords for support reasons.

How Can I Have Different Questions for Different Membership Levels?

You can create both tabs and boxes that are specific to membership levels. The very first box at the top of the Member Sign-Up template is where you will put the questions that are the same for all your members — for example Name, Email and Address. After completing that, the member will enter in their billing information and then be taken to the Profile tab to answer further questions which can be specific to their membership level.  Saving these questions for subsequent tabs helps you keep your join form short, which increases your form conversion rate and therefore boosts dues revenue.
  1. Go to MembershipWorks > Customization > Member Sign-Up
  2. Scroll down to the bottom of the Profile tab box
  3. Click on + Add Box
  4. Add a Title and/or Description if desired
  5. The Box type should be “Custom Form”
  6. Next to Visibility, check the box “Show only for accounts with these folders/labels”
  7. Select the membership level that the question(s) will apply to (it will turn green to show it’s been selected)
  8. Click OK
  9. Click + Add Field to add in your first field
  10. In the Field dropdown, you can either select a field you have already created or use the “New custom field” to create a new question. If creating a new field, you’ll need to create a 2-letter identifier
  11. Click OK
  12. Click Save Template
  13. Repeat Steps 9-12 for any fields that should appear for this level of membership
  14. Repeat all steps above to create unique Boxes for each level of membership; simply select a different level in step 7. Note that you can drag and drop Boxes higher in the template.
  15. Join as a test member (you can create a check payment option so you can join for free) to see how it works and test
If members also need to be able to edit this information, copy your Member Sign-Up template to the Member Manage template. To be able to read member’s replies to these fields, also copy your edits to the Member Admin template.


Template-Specific Instructions

How the Join Process Works for Your Members (Member Sign-Up template)

The member will go to the join page on your website and fill out their basic information. This is all the fields in the About box on the Member Sign-Up template. They will then select their membership level and billing option (based upon what you set up in MembershipWorks > Labels & Membership > Membership Levels). At this point the member will click the join button and be taken to complete their profile. You can see an example of a member join page here.

You can set the order of the membership levels on this page by updating the shortcode (WordPress) or HTML5 (Weebly, SquareSpace, Wix, HTML5) snippet on your join page. Here are the directions:

For WordPress

  1. Go to MembershipWorks > Help > Website Integration > Integrate with WordPress > Integrate Our Features into Your WordPress Website
  2. Click the blue "WordPress Shortcodes" button 
  3. For “Select feature” choose “Membership sign-up form”.
  4. Under “Optional – display only following specific levels in order selected (none selected = display all from most expensive to least expensive)” click on the membership levels in the order you’d like them to display.
  5. Click Generate Shortcode 
  6. Click Copy to Clipboard 
  7. Replace the current shortcode on your join page with new one.

For Weebly, SquareSpace, Wix, HTML5

  1. Go to MembershipWorks > Help > Website Integration > select the appropriate content management system article such as "Integrate with Squarespace" if you are using Squarespace 
  2. Click the article "Integrate Our Features into Your _ Website" 
  3. Click the blue "Feature Snippets" button 
  4. “Select your feature” choose “Membership sign-up form”.
  5. Under “Optional – display only following specific levels in order selected (none selected = display all from most expensive to least expensive)” click on the membership levels in the order you’d like them to display.
  6. Click Generate Snippet
  7. Click Copy to Clipboard 
  8. Replace the current snippet on your join page with new one.
One thing to note with this solution is that you will need to update the shortcode/snippet if you add more membership levels in the future.

Customizing What Current Members See When They Login to Manage Their Accounts (Member Manage template)



You can customize what fields the members can see when they log in to renew or update their accounts. This is done the same way that you update the Member Sign-Up template. The only difference is that you go to MembershipWorks > Customization > Member Manage rather than MembershipWorks > Customization > Member Sign-Up.

To see what members see when they log in:

  1. First create a test member account if you do not have your own member account in the system (this will be different from your admin login). If you have a member account already, go to step 2.
    1. Go to MembershipWorks > Folder: Members and click the Add link at the top of the page.
    2. Fill in the required details; it’s best to use an alternate email address that is not the same as the one you use as an administrator so that there’s not confusion when you log in.
    3. Click Add Account. This will take you to the Profile tab in the member’s account.
    4. On the Profile tab, scroll to the Password field and click “Change”. Enter a password and click Save.
    5. Click the Membership Billing link at the top to assign yourself a membership level. Choose Unassigned/Manual billing and click Save.
  2. Open a different web browser or if you are in Chrome, open a New Incognito Window. You want a different browser or incognito mode so that you are not logged in as an administrator when trying to view your site as a member.
  3. From this new web browser/incognito mode, go to the member manage page on your website. Enter your member email address and password (not your admin credentials) to log in. You can now see what a member experiences. As you use your other web browser to make changes to your Member Manage template on the admin side, be sure to refresh the window with the member view to see the results.
If you want to change the order of the membership levels as displayed when a member logs in to manage their account, follow these steps.

For WordPress

  1. Go to MembershipWorks > Help > Website Integration > Integrate with WordPress > Integrate Our Features into Your WordPress Website
  2. Click the blue "WordPress Shortcodes" button 
  3. For “Select feature” choose “Membership sign-up form”.
  4. Under Optional – display only following specific levels in order selected, click on the membership levels in the order you want them to appear on the form
  5. Click Generate Shortcode
  6. Click Copy to Clipboard and in a text editor (e.g. Notepad) replace the text “join” within the shortcode with “myaccount”
  7. Place the new shortcode on the Manage Account page in WordPress.
One thing to note with this solution is that you will need to update the shortcode if you add more membership levels in the future.

What is the Difference Between the Member Sign-Up, Member Manage and Member Admin Templates?

Member Sign-Up

This is where you add the questions you’d like to ask when a member first joins, or applies to join your organization.

Member Manage

This is where you add the questions you’d like members to be able to answer or update when they log in to manage their accounts.

Member Admin

This would only be seen by the admin when they log into the backend of their MembershipWorks account and look at their member profiles.

Tips & Recommendations

In many cases the information you like on each of the above templates would be the same. When this is the case using the copy feature will save you lots of time and effort.

We recommend you walk though your join process and member login process to make sure the fields are set up correctly. When doing this you should be on a different browser (Safari, Chrome, Firefox…) than the one where you are logged in as an admin.

A lot of our customers like to add a History tab to the member manage template. This will allow members to view, print and email receipts for their membership, event, donation and cart payments. Here are the directions to do this.
  1. Go to MembershipWorks > Customization > Member Manage.
  2. Scroll down on the right and click + Add Tab at the bottom of the page.
  3. Give the tab title a name (You can name it “History”).
  4. Click OK.
  5. Click + Add Box.
  6. In the “Box title” field enter “Membership”.
  7. In the “Box type” drop down menu select “Payment/Invoice History”.
  8. Next to “History” check the box next to “Display membership payments” and other items you want displayed.
  9. Click OK.
  10. Repeat steps 5 through 9 to create a box for Events, Donations, Cart, and other payments if needed.
  11. Click Save Template on the left.
You can learn more about how to improve your membership application form here.

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