In this tutorial, we will show you how to create additional landing pages for your volunteers, which can be used to promote specific events or be tailored to specific groups of users. Landing pages can be branded with a different logo and color scheme from the default landing page.
We highly recommend creating a landing page for each of the volunteer groups your organization works with (e.g., local businesses and churches). To create a landing page, follow the steps below.
Step 1.
From the Main Menu, choose the Landing Pages tile and click the 'Create New Landing Page' button to create a landing page (Figure 1).
Figure 1. The Landing Pages page allows for editing the default Landing Page, as well as creating new ones.
Step 2.
This will open a window for creating the new landing page (Figure 2). Enter the name of the landing page in the Name field (for administrative reference only) and a custom web address for the landing page in the Link field. Please note that the Link field cannot contain spaces or special characters, only letters and/or numbers. For this example, we will create a special landing page for volunteers from Wells Fargo.
The Short Link will randomly generate but can be modified and must be something that is unique. Best practice is to put an abbreviation of your organization plus the name of the external group.
The short link provides a more secure URL and is the preferred link to provide to volunteers.
Figure 2. You can create custom landing pages for specific user groups or event groups.
Step 3.
Behavior
Select a behavior for your page. There are generally two types of landing pages you can build: event group pages or user group pages. These two options can be combined when needed, but most pages would typically use the User Group behavior only.
- Display Events in the Following Event Group: If you want the page to show only the events in a particular event group, choose that event group from the Event Group field. (Begin typing the name of the group and matches will appear for you to select.) This functionality may be used occasionally to create a customized page for a specific annual event, but is primarily used when segmenting a VolunteerHub site into multiple regions, such as states or provinces, for which our Implementation Team will provide personalized recommendations to new VolunteerHub clients during your initial site implementation sessions.
- Display Events with Reservations for the Following User Group: If your landing page is being created for a specific user group - and you want to only display events that have been reserved for that group - choose the group from the User Group field. (Begin typing the name of the group and matches will appear for you to select.) In this example (Figure 2), visitors to this landing page would see only those events with slots reserved for the Wells Fargo user group.
Workflow
If the landing page is being used to place users into a User Group, one of these options should be used.
- When Any User Visits this Landing Page, Add Them to the Following User Groups: If you want any user who access the landing page placed into a user group, this setting accomplishes that. The most common example (Figure 2), is to add users to the User Group for an external organization (e.g. a company). This setting should be used for this use case because there may be existing users in the system who work for that company, i.e. they wouldn't be creating new accounts but you would still want them in that User Group.
When using this feature, it is imperative that you give the link to the landing page only to members of that group, such as by emailing the link to your group contact or having them put a link to the landing page on their organization's main website (e.g., on the local Wells Fargo's website or intranet site). - When a New User is Created on this Landing Page, Add Them to the Following User Groups: This option is primarily used for building onboarding workflows where you only want the user placed in that group if they are new (e.g. 'Needs Orientation'). Click here for more information about this process.
For more information about workflows, visit A Quick Guide to Workflows.
Step 4.
By default, the landing page will accept the look and feel of your default page. However, if you check the Override the default look and feel checkbox, you can apply entirely new graphics and a unique color scheme to the landing page (Figure 3). This is great for customizing your landing page to the user group organization's color scheme or co-branding the page with another organization.
Customize the landing page the same way you did when customizing the look and feel of your default landing page. In addition, you are able to choose whether each additional landing page allows volunteers to share events from that page on Facebook and Twitter (we recommend unchecking this for private group landing pages).
Figure 3. Each landing page can override the default page's Look and Feel to include custom branding.
Step 5.
The next step in customizing a new landing page is to choose whether to keep your default in-system messages or override them with customized messages for landing page visitors. Check the Override default messages checkbox to create new messages for landing page visitors (Figure 4).
Figure 4. Set custom messages for each landing page you create.
Step 6.
When you are finished customizing your landing page, click on the Save button at the top. Your landing page will now appear with your Default page in the list of landing pages (Figure 5).
Figure 5. Your landing page is now listed and ready to share with your group contact.
Click on the URL listed to the right of the landing page name (highlighted in Figure 5 above) to view your new landing page (Figure 6). To return to the default site, simply click the Admin link in the upper-right corner of the landing page.
Figure 6. A group landing page can have branding specific to the group you're working with.
Now that you've finished setting up your Hub, let's take a look at the results by viewing the page as a volunteer.
(Continue to Part 7: Viewing Your Site as a Volunteer)
Back(Back to Part 5: Managing Event Participation)