In case you missed it, we posted up a blog earlier this week to recap the changes we’ve made and the impact they’re having for creators and some of what we’ll be focusing on in the rest of 2020.
The last 6 months we’ve been hard at work testing, exploring, and releasing changes to Patreon with the goal of helping creators get more patrons and keep them around for longer. We zoomed the fan → patron journey and focused on the helping fans understand the value of membership and new patrons find that value immediately. While rapid testing and changes are cooling down we’ll always be on the lookout for ways to help you get more patrons that are backed up by our previous research, such as standardized benefit icons.
For the rest of 2020, we are going to zoom out from our hyper-focus on the creator page and post pledge experience, to focus on areas that many creators have brought up here in the forums could help them create deeper and unique relationships with their patrons for years to come.
With that in mind, we’ll turn our attention to making sure that patrons and creators are delighted with their experience using the messaging feature with unified message threads, search, and bulk messaging. We’ll give you more data on patrons in one simple to use interface to cut down on time-consuming workarounds that make your membership management feel like a chore.
Lots of good stuff has come of the past 6 months! I am curious about where the patron browsing experience now lies in terms of refining that aspect of being a patron. I know that a worldwide pandemic can throw a wrench in plans, and no doubt Patreon has had to adjust on the fly and shift focus on certain things, but I figured I’d poke around and see what turns up.
As I understood it, pre-Corona the vibe was that once the non-Patron and conversion side of things was fine tuned and complete, the Patron experience would be focused on. Things like Featured Tags and other functions of sorting/presenting unlocked content. Would it be safe to assume that tackling any mass scale re-imagining like what took place with the landing page is simply too big of a project to try and tackle with the current state of things?
Not to poo poo things like improved messaging, that’s a sorely needed improvement. With the implementation of content search (thank you, truly, my patrons are so happy) it feels to me like the browsability stuff could safely take a backseat for now while something like messaging gets priority. I suppose I’m just trying to see if we can expect changes and updates to the patron browsing experience down the road, or if that’s not a thing for the foreseeable future.
This is important to me because I’ve held off on things like pinning “Content Guide” post on my page to help people understand and navigate through my content, which would be a lot of hyperlinks and explanations that ultimately a small percentage of people are going to use, but I feel like I need to make an attempt because once you have 100+ posts on your Patreon, it’s just so hard to help people find what they’re looking for.
My big concern was that I’d wind up tackling a big housekeeping chore like that, then wake up to find a bunch of changes to the system and infrastructure, making my hours of effort pointless.
Now I feel like I’m whining when I should be really stoked about those conversion numbers, I’ve certainly seen a big difference and have been steadily growing. I am a fan of the straight to the point approach, people who click the link to my Patreon have already made a decision and don’t need any more visual hoops to jump through to make it to the transaction. I hope creators who didn’t want to go that route have adapted and started reaping the benefits of these changes as well.
Hey @YuuriVoice – thanks for the response! Doesn’t feel like whining. You are correct in assuming that taking the landing page and new patrons experience another step is now a lower priority, given the wins in conversion and retention we’ve seen across the board with the new changes (even pre COVID-19).
Part of the reason I wanted to make sure I posted this in the forum was to help give clarity to creators like you who may be holding off on updating things because of the more frequent testing and changes. I will paraphrase a line from the blog, which is: while the rapid changes will cool down on the landing page and content organization fronts, we will continue to look for ways to make the experience for fans and new patrons better. We will surely communicate that out before making any changes.
