Can S2 do all the marketing I want to do?

Hey there,

I really want to start a membership service on my existing site and am currently comparing membership plugins to see which one best suits my needs.

I’d like to ask a couple questions about S2 to see if you guys are the best fit and hope you won’t mind answering them for me:

– The only thing I want to sell on my site IS the memberships, so will I be needing a separate shopping cart to do that? Or is S2 enough for payment buttons, order forms, thank you pages, etc.

– Can I use the tracking pixels of 3rd parties for affiliate marketing? Example: I start to work with TradeTracker (affiliate network in the EU) and they ask me to place a tracking pixel on the thank you page. Can I do that?

– Can I make one part of the site for members only and another part for everyone? I don’t want to lose the free content I’ve already made.

– Is it possible to use bbPress forums on a part of the site? I don’t want to turn the entire site into a forum and I want the membership to include content AND a forum (so people pay for more than just the forum)

– Can I customize the plugin code myself if need be? I would like to create a membership which stands out and I may need to get some of my IT buddies to add some unique features.

– Can I use WordPress Roles and Capabilities (see http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities) as part of the membership? The result would be that subscribers can create content and let it be reviewed by me before posting, for example.

My apologies for all these questions haha. I just want to make sure I invest my money into the right solutions, so please help me!

I like all of S2’s features and am curious to find out if it’s perfect for me or if I’ll have to do some editing.

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The only thing I want to sell on my site IS the memberships, so will I be needing a separate shopping cart to do that? Or is S2 enough for payment buttons, order forms, thank you pages, etc.

If that’s the case, you shouldn’t need any external shopping cart. s2Member can handle this no problem.

– Can I use the tracking pixels of 3rd parties for affiliate marketing? Example: I start to work with TradeTracker (affiliate network in the EU) and they ask me to place a tracking pixel on the thank you page. Can I do that?

I’m not familiar with TradeTracker, but I know that you can definitely set up Tracking Pixels here:

Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Tracking

– Can I make one part of the site for members only and another part for everyone? I don’t want to lose the free content I’ve already made.

Yes, you can restrict content based on Category, Tag, URI/Slug, or one Post/Page at a time.

– Is it possible to use bbPress forums on a part of the site? I don’t want to turn the entire site into a forum and I want the membership to include content AND a forum (so people pay for more than just the forum)

Yes, s2Member has an integration with bbPress. It’s what we use here at s2Member.com :-)

See: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Other Integrations -› bbPress®

– Can I customize the plugin code myself if need be? I would like to create a membership which stands out and I may need to get some of my IT buddies to add some unique features.

Yes, s2Member is GPL compatible and completely Open Source. You can edit files directly if you’d like, or use Must Use plugins.

See: Knowledge Base » Hacking s2Member® Via Hooks/Filters

– Can I use WordPress Roles and Capabilities (see http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities) as part of the membership? The result would be that subscribers can create content and let it be reviewed by me before posting, for example.

s2Member uses the Roles and Capabilities from WordPress and extends them. When you sell access to part of your site, you’re selling access to one of s2Member’s Membership Levels/WordPress Roles, or a Custom Capability.

Hey Bruce,

Thanks so much for your answers so far! I hope you won’t mind if I ask a couple follow up questions that are pretty straightforward:

1) I know it’s possible to accept credit cards via PayPal, but not everyone has PP. Is it possible to accept cards directly via a payment gateway like WorldPay or any other gateway for that matter?

2) Are there any statistics I can see? You know, stuff like “this month XYZ people signed up, revenue was bla bla, ABC people unsubscribed”, etc. Basically, are there reports that give me a basic idea of the performance?

1) I know it’s possible to accept credit cards via PayPal, but not everyone has PP. Is it possible to accept cards directly via a payment gateway like WorldPay or any other gateway for that matter?

You can accept credit cards through all of s2Member’s Payment Gateways. s2Member supports PayPal, Authorize.Net, ccBill, ClickBank, Google Checkout, and AliPay. s2Member doesn’t support WorldPay. Sorry about that.

2) Are there any statistics I can see? You know, stuff like “this month XYZ people signed up, revenue was bla bla, ABC people unsubscribed”, etc. Basically, are there reports that give me a basic idea of the performance?

Not within s2Member no, but you can hook s2Member up to something like Google Analytics or another program to get these reports. You can do that with API Tracking. See: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Tracking -› Signup Tracking Codes

Ahhh ok that’s good to know. And here’s probably the toughest question I can ask:

Can I do conversion testing with S2? Conversion testing is where you test version A of a page against version B over a period of time to see which version sells more (this type of test is called an A/B split test). Google Analytics allows you to do this (used to be Google Website Optimizer but it’s now integrated into Analytics) and another often used tool is Visual Website Optimizer. Does S2 enable me to work with one or both of these tools so I can test my heart out and (hopefully) boost sales?

I’d love to know.

Can I do conversion testing with S2?

s2Member doesn’t track conversions itself, but you can integrate something like Google Analytics to achieve this with s2Member’s API Tracking or API Notifications.

Does S2 enable me to work with one or both of these tools so I can test my heart out and (hopefully) boost sales?

You could integrate these tools, yes. I’m not 100% sure on the way to integrate them but I know that Users in the past have done so without much issue. We don’t have a direct integration with either of these services.

Well, as long as other users have figured it out already I’m sure I’ll find a way to make it happen. Thanks Bruce.