Simpler Member Signup

We have just made the signup process for new coworking members simpler. Our support team has been getting a lot of questions from members who had problems signing up. A lot of the problems people had were related to starting to sign up but not completing the process, oftentimes at the last step: selecting a payment method and potentially entering a credit card. The result was that people were unable to join a coworking spaces, ending up confused and having to write to support.

Today we are separating signing up for a coworking space and entering a payment method. Immediately after a new member has selected a plan and entered their billing details the signup process is complete. Only afterwards does Cobot ask them to select a payment method.

If your coworking space is not using any of the automated payment methods (Paypal, credit cards, direct debit etc.) you can actually remove your manual payment methods now and save your new members one step. If you host teams where one member pays for others the people not paying don’t have to enter a payment method anymore.

Additionally this change solves a lot of the issues related to our wifi integration and entering credit cards. For security reasons many of our payment providers require users to enter their card data on an external site — the only problem is that until people are a member the captive portal blocks them from getting to that site. With the process now reversed — new members sign up before entering their card data — this should be a problem of a past.

We are planning a few more iterations of simplifying Cobot — for new members as well as coworking space managers. As usual we’ll announce them here. And please leave your comments below.

P.S. We also have new, beautiful notifications that are a lot better to see.