A year in review

From implementing over 600 of your suggestions so that you can continue to thrive to getting the chance to meet you at one of the many events we attended this year, 2016 was a great year.

As the year comes to an end, we want to take this opportunity to thank you for your support and encouragement. From the ClubRunner family to yours, we wish you a happy and joyful holiday season.

Happy Holidays!

Click on the play button to watch our year in review video

Our holiday hours

Friday, December 23: 9:00am - 12:00pm

Monday, December 26: Closed

Tuesday, December 27: Closed

Friday, December 30: 9:00am - 12:30pm

Monday, January 2: Closed

Brighten up your website with this new color

Our focus has always been to help you with your public brand. What you portray as your image is exactly how people perceive your club to be, and it plays a huge role in your PR efforts. It starts with your website, a place to showcase your own uniqueness and clubs identity.

Color has a significant impact on your branding. It has to resonate with your audience. Introducing our all-new Cranberry color variation for the Next-Generation Millennium theme. The bright hues are bound to brighten up your homepage resulting in a vibrant yet professional website. 

The Cranberry theme can be found in the website theme library, as an option under the Millennium theme. To switch to it: 

1) Go the Website Designer and then click on Themes

2) From the library, locate the Next Gen theme titled Millennium

3) Select this new color variation and click on publish

Best of all, this new color palette is in line with the Visual Identity guidelines for Rotaract clubs. You'll soon see the release of many new and modern themes to help get where you want your visual identity to be. Stay tuned!

Buttons on the menu

You asked us for a way to showcase a call to action from the navigation menu itself. A way to
make your menu item stand out from the rest, and that's exactly what we've done.

You can now add buttons directly onto your menu to easily draw attention to a link or secondary page.

To add a button on the menu:

1) Click on the Website Designer 3.0 link on the
Admin page
2) Click on Edit Menu
3) Either edit or add a menu item
4) Fill in the fields as required, and select your link type
5) Select either the Primary Button or Secondary Button option from the Link Style section
6) Save and publish the menu

There are two styles that you can add. The primary button style will apply your theme's primary color onto the button, whereas the secondary style option will apply the theme's secondary color. Please note that buttons only appear on the main level of the menu for Next-Gen themes only.

There are a lot of improvements coming soon to help you elevate the look of your website, stay tuned. In the mean time, please continue to share your feedback and suggestions with us and add your feature requests to our wishlist.

Top Search Terms in ClubRunner

As you may recall, we recently added a search function to all ClubRunner websites to give visitors the ability to search for what they were looking for. So we took a look across the board to see what the top search terms were, and found that irrespective of where your club is located in the world, people were looking for the same things. Here are the top 10 most popular keywords (from highest to lowest):

1) Scholarships

2) Speakers

3) Contact

4) Youth Exchange

5) Grants

6) RYLA

7) Interact

8) Meeting Address

9) Membership

10) Club Executives

What does this mean?

We've always said that your website is the hub where visitors come to learn more and gather information. If they have to search for topics of interest, that could indicate that these items are difficult to find. So, what actions can you take?

Learn what's popular


First, begin by analyzing your website traffic reports. If you have not yet linked your Google Analytics account to your ClubRunner site, you can learn how by clicking here. These reports will tell you exactly where your visitors are going and how long they're staying on a page. It will also give you a good sense of whether the information you want found on your site is actually being accessed.


Making use of the navigation menu

Content is king, so it's important that it's accessible. If we look at the most popular search terms, we can immediately group many of them into one category - 'Programs'. Consider adding this as a menu item on your navigation bar. Under it, you can link to custom or site pages and even documents about your scholarship programs and Grants, and more. If your club has one main flagship program, consider just making that its own menu item.


How easy is it to get in touch with your club? Is there a Contact Us link prevalent on the home page? Did you know that you can easily link to the built-in Contact Us page or create your own custom page, complete with the club's mailing address, meeting address, venue map and more?


The wonderful world of widgets

There are so many things you can accomplish with both the built-in and custom widgets. From displaying upcoming events to showcasing your club sponsors; from displaying upcoming speakers to displaying a list of all your club executives and directors, widgets let you share important information throughout your website. For a brief overview of all the built-in widgets available, click here.

For important public documents such as those related to scholarship programs, did you know you can showcase them on the Download Files widget?

Next, make these widgets stand out by customizing their properties. Color plays a huge role in how people react to a call to action. We are naturally attracted to design aesthetics that stand out from the page. Add some flavor to any widgets that you believe should stand out. Learn how. 

Everything related to membership

One of the most important things to share with your website visitors is how to get in touch with your club, where you meet, who your executives are and how they can join.

We took a look at a handful of websites and found that this type of information was actually quite difficult to find. Does your club have a page on exactly what it takes to join your club? What it means to be a member? How to join? The costs associated with membership?

Create a custom page to share all of this information. Then, showcase it front and center through the Club Information widget on your home page. Did you know that you can add custom links to this widget? That means you can direct visitors to any internal or even external page easily.

There are many ways to share information with your visitors without cluttering your homepage which in turn becomes overwhelming for the reader. With a little bit of creativity and analysis, it's easy to design the optimal structure to make your website a great source of information for both members and non-members alike.

Club Information Widget - Tip of the Week!

Did you know you can customize the Club Information Widget with custom links?

Not many people are aware that you have the ability to add custom links within the Club Information widget to either link to any external website or your own site/custom pages.

Navigate to the Website Designer and then to the Club Info widget's property page. Towards the bottom of the page, under the Content Properties section, you will see two fields called "Custom link URL" and "Custom link Text". Simply add the link you want to direct visitors to and add the text you want displayed as the link within the widget.

This option is great for clubs to share to a site or custom page with directions to the club meeting location, instructions on how to join the club or even the club's Facebook or Twitter page, etc.

How do you manage your volunteers?

Imagine this scenario:

You have a large event coming up and need to co-ordinate a group of people to help make it a success. From setting up the venue to ensuring you have greeters and ushers at every corner; from making sure the catering is taken care of to looking after the decorations, you have to be certain that everyone that agreed to help knows exactly what their responsibility entails, where they need to be and for how long. How do you avoid the inevitable confusion?

Did you know about ClubRunner's Volunteers Module?

Available in two versions, Basic and Enhanced, your club account already has the basic version installed. With this feature, your club can build your own signup lists for virtually any scenario where you need to coordinate people in commitments organized by time, day, task or group.

Whether you need to create standalone signup lists or multiple signup lists per event; customize your email templates or schedule follow ups, the Enhanced Volunteers module lets you do it all. That means that you can forget about the tedious paper lists and manual follow ups because ClubRunner will handle that for you.

Click here to learn more about the Volunteers module. Better yet, take the Enhanced Version for a test drive.

ClubRunner's Help Center

Did you know that you have access to a wealth of online resources to refer to for times when you need help with ClubRunner features?


From on-demand tutorials to recorded webinars; from download guides to short how-to articles, we have something for everyone!

Videos

While we host webinars every month, if for any reason you are unable to make it, you can watch its recorded version by clicking here. Need to watch a quick video on one specific feature? Check out our on-demand tutorials that cover everything from how to log in to how to create a bill.

Help Resources

If you would rather refer to instructions, everything from FAQ's to help articles covering all the features, the answers to all of your questions can be found on our knowledgebase. Visit www.ClubRunnerSupport.com to see more.

Service Updates

Did you know that we have service updates on a bi-weekly basis (every Thursday) through which we add product updates and enhancements to the ClubRunner system. You can read details on our knowledgebase by clicking here.

You can also submit questions and share feedback with our support team directly. Don't see a video or help article on a specific topic? Let us know!