January 18, 2024
Today, I want to talk about our plans for the next 12 months of Client Portal.
It's January, so many of us are thinking ahead, and I've had a lot of questions from those who want to know our next focus after the release of CP 5.0.
2023 was a tough year.
With the cost of living crisis across most of the world, we definitely noticed the effects at Client Portal.
That, and investing a significant amount of time, money, and energy into this new version, felt like being hit from both sides.
But the phrase I kept in my head throughout 2023 was, "Great companies are made in a recession".
When the economy sucks, invest in your product so that when it inevitably stabilises (it always does), you're ready to hit the ground running.
And over the last couple of months, I've noticed things are already improving for Client Portal and the people around me.
So, as we move into 2024, we are starting the year strong with this brand-new version of the product (which we are still on track for release this month).
Afterwards, we will take a couple of months away from building features so we can:
- Be on call for any questions, suggestions, or problems customers have with the new version
- Update all (!) our help documentation
- Have a rest – it's been a busy year already!
When we are confident the new version is as perfect as it can be, we will switch focus to the two things we all feel are the missing pieces of Client Portal.
These are:
1) Making Client Portal work with other software using webhooks
This is the big feature for most people.
If we can create an API, it will allow you to use Client Portal with, theoretically, any other software.
That means you could automatically send an invoice to Client Portal. Or create a new portal when a proposal gets accepted, or a deposit is paid.
The possibilities are endless, and this is a crucial feature missing from Client Portal.
2) Stripe integration
The WooCommerce integration is one of my favorite features of Client Portal. The ability for people to purchase a portal opens so many doors.
Not only can clients purchase access to a portal when they pay a deposit, but you can also use Client Portal to sell mini-courses, downloads, information packs, and more.
Here's an example of some bonuses I gave away as part of our Black Friday deal. It included digital downloads and video workshops.
While this was a free bonus, it's certainly something I could have charged money for and with the Stripe integration, people could buy this portal and all its contents directly from my website.
Other than those big features, there are some minor tweaks that we want to make to the product from a UX standpoint. This includes making portals and content pages easier to organize and expanding some of our existing features (like notifications) to make them more flexible.
I will also continue to create more example portals that you can use as inspiration when creating your own portals. You can see our latest example of a health coach portal here.
So that's our plan for 2024. I'm excited for a great year ahead, and I hope many of you will continue to stick with me on this journey.
Next week, I will discuss WordPress Blocks, the basis for CP 5.0. We'll go through what they are and why we decided to go this route over others we could have taken.