Release 27 - Fewer Clicks, Better Email

Release 27

Release 27 makes joining a club quicker, provides more user focused details in email communications, and gives new members a clearer path from sign-up to their first event.

Joining a club, in two clicks instead of four

Joining a club used to be a four-step back-and-forth. You clicked Interested, the club manager confirmed your interest, you answered a notification, and then the manager added you as a member. It was easy to get stuck halfway.

Now it works like you'd expect. When you click Interested, you're saying you're ready to join. When a club manager clicks Add to Club, or invites you, the club is saying it's ready to have you. Once both sides have said yes, you're a member. Nobody has to take another step.

Club managers will see one Add to Club button on the Prospects tab, replacing Confirm Interest and Add as Member. Their notification now reads "User is ready to join the Club". If someone was stuck partway through the old process and both sides had already agreed, we finished the join for them.

A weekly email focused on you

The weekly update email used to be the same for everyone: news from lookingforgroup.social and site announcements. Now it's written for you:

• New clubs near you. For each of your accounts, you'll see up to three of the newest clubs in your area created in the past week, plus the total number of clubs nearby and a link to the Explore map. "Nearby" means the same area the Explore map shows from your location.
• A summary of your notifications and what's waiting on each of your accounts, so you can keep up without logging in.

If there's a new club near you or a new notification, you'll get the email even when we have no news of our own.

A daily summary that tells you what happened

The daily notifications email used to say only that "an account you manage has new activity". Now it lists each of your accounts with a line for each kind of notification showing how many are new and how many you haven't read yet.

Unread notification usually mean that someone is trying to be social!

Email settings that say what you'll get

lookingforgroup.social is built for meeting in person, so email is how we keep you in the loop. The email preferences now say plainly what each one sends:

• Daily notifications summary: at most one email a day.
• Weekly update email: your week at a glance.
• Weekly sponsors email: local discounts, promotions, and events.

New accounts now get the daily notifications summary turned on by default. If you already have an account, your settings haven't changed.

A clearer path for new members

A new user's dashboard now opens with a "New here? Welcome!" roadmap: set your preferences, build your profile, join or start a club, then host or RSVP to events. Hopefully, this signpost will provide enough guidance for people to go through and create their profile and get connected with a club.

Theme and email settings are now steps in that setup, so a person don't need to go looking for them. Visitors who open a shared club or event link also see a similar roadmap, so they know what getting started involves before they sign up.

Better Map behavior

• Scrolling down the page no longer zooms a map when your cursor passes over it.
• The Explore map now zooms to fit the clubs and people it found.
• Grand Rapids is no longer the center of the universe! (I know, right?) Instead of a default, a user is presented with a map of the world to select their location or they can still use the 'Jump to my neighborhood' button.

Smaller refinements

• The Meet Times and Availability picker is now a grid, with the days across the top and the times of day down the side. Hopefully, this one will stick as the last two iterations came with significant feedback!
• Account verification now accepts image/webp photos, sniff checks that each upload really is an image, and tells you what went wrong when an upload fails.
• The compliance page uses more of the screen on wide displays.

What next?

lookingforgroup.social was created to get people connected in the real world. We need community leaders (a.k.a. club managers) to form clubs and we need users to enable that 'Searchable' toggle. Let everyone know you're ready to be social!

Head over to lookingforgroup.social and check it out.