Wild Apricot Launches Version 3.0: Crowdsourcing Drives Success for Association and Nonprofit Membership Management Software
TORONTO, May 20, 2009 — Wild Apricot today launched Version 3.0, a major upgrade to its website and membership management software designed for associations and non-profits. The majority of Version 3.0's features were "crowdsourced": driven by feedback from customers. Wild Apricot, which has more than 15,000 registered users and continues to experience growth of 10% per month, attributes its success to its "obsession" with listening to customer feedback and actually using it.
"Non-profits and small associations always struggle to balance their desire to use modern web technologies with their constrained budgets," says Dmitry Buterin, Wild Apricot's Chief Apricot who personally reviews every customer support email. "Our mission is to make it easy and affordable to build an interactive website -- with built-in automated administration tools, such as membership management. Our customers -- association professionals, non-profit board members and dedicated volunteers -- want to focus on their cause and not on computers or coding."
Wisdom of Crowds
Launched in 2006, Wild Apricot is built around the philosophy of listening to customers and evolving the product based on their needs and feedback. Regular customer satisfaction surveys rate the company exceptionally high in multiple areas, including technical support -- a trait that's often lacking, particularly when it comes to less expensive "software-as-a-service." The company actively seeks input and collaborates with customers in the development process, with customers voting and commenting on others' suggestions. Customer feedback guides the product development roadmap and new updates are released about every two months.
Version 3.0 includes two significant changes engineered to improve the customer experience. The first is a complete overhaul of the website design options -- including a wizard which guides new users in creating and customizing a professionally-looking website. "Our new design options reflect feedback from users asking for more options and desire to create great looking websites even if they have no budget to hire professional web designers," says Buterin.
