How to Name Membership Levels: 4 Strategies You Should Know

Have you thought about how to name your membership levels? It should be simple, and it can be. But if you want your site to stand out from the competition then you may want to invest some time and creativity into your level names.

You want to be unique and you want your level names to describe your services while holding you up above the crowd.

But you also don’t want to drive people away with names that don’t properly reflect your brand and what each of your membership levels offer.

Within this guide, you’ll learn some specific insights regarding naming membership levels that drive your users to slam that “Register Now” button faster than ever before.

Let’s take a look.

How Do You Come Up With Creative Names For Membership Tiers?

We’ve all seen the countless cliche names that are applied to membership levels. The last thing you want is to become another one of these unfortunate statistics.

Instead, it’s important that your site users are able to take one glance at your membership-promoting sales page and think to themselves, “That’s the exact right membership for me.”

What you’ll find out as a membership site owner is that the typical names like Gold, Silver, and Bronze don’t do anything to turn site users into paying members.

So what do you do?

To start out in your membership level name brainstorming session, think about different ways you can tie the names you use into the topic or niche that your membership site covers.

As an example, if you’re membership site is about teaching users how to improve their basketball skills, your membership tier names could be something like:

• Amateur
• Professional
• All-Star

Take some time right now to note some different membership tier names that fit your specific niche. Once you start doing some serious brainstorming, you’ll find out the membership level names with a lot of creativity are there to be had.

It’s important that new members are able to quickly identify the level that’s best for them based upon the name. But remember, you’ll also be able to explain more about each level in the pricing boxes.

What’s the Magic Number of Levels You Should Offer?

Of course, the specific membership names you choose for your levels will depend directly on the number of tiers you’re going to offer.

A strong rule of thumb is that you don’t offer any more than four different membership levels. In reality, the best number is three.

The reason it’s more effective to offer only a few levels is that too many level options will drive users away. They’ll likely become overwhelmed with too many options and leave your site completely, finding another solution.

Five or more membership levels is simply too many for most users to study and make a decision on.

Keep in mind that there are many highly successful membership sites that only use two membership tiers. But it’s rarely recommended to offer five or more.

Also, remember that what you choose to offer in each level needs to be accurately reflected in its title and the price of the level as well.

Your Site Name Should Direct Membership Tier Names

Long before a user will ever land on your membership page, they’re going to take in (and quickly evaluate) your membership site name to see if there will be any value to them behind the URL.

As with most things in life, first impressions here are extremely important. After all, studies have shown that it only takes about 0.05 seconds for site users to form an impression about your site and decide if they’re going to dive further into it.

This makes your membership site name your headline, and your membership level names more like the names of the chapters within the headline.

Your site name, or headline, is also one of the very few pieces of content most of your site visitors will ever read. This makes it mission-critical to get it right, or your membership level names will rarely be seen.

Knowing that, how exactly can you conceive a membership site name that immediately grabs people’s attention, while simultaneously capturing the entire spirit of your website and membership program?

To start off, it’s important to understand what the unique value proposition, or UVP, is for your membership site. Your UVP is one of the important pieces of your site’s branding. It needs to:

• Clearly define the benefits of your offer
• Show how you’re able to solve your user’s problem
• Separate you from your competition in some unique way

To help define your UVP, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Who is the target audience that will be interested in your product or service?
2. What specific problem does your product of service solve for your members?
3. What things immediately make your membership stand head and shoulders above your competition?
4. What specific benefits does your membership offer that users can’t find with your competition?
5. In what ways can these benefits be employed directly into your brand name and communication?

If you’re launching a membership site in competitive niches such as cooking, marketing, or news, finding your UVP is incredibly important. If you can’t define your UVP in these types of niches, it will be difficult to compete against the already established membership brands.

After you’ve nailed down your UVP, there are four steps you should take before you make a final decision on your membership site name and branding:

• Do your own market research. Study the way your competition has branded themselves based upon what they offer
• Do a lot of brainstorming and create a list of names that might work. In this phase, it’s important to focus on quantity, not necessarily quantity. You’ll be able to narrow your list down later in the process
• Prioritize and categorize all of your name ideas into your top selections. Do this a day or two after you created the initial list. Then narrow down the list into a top five
• Run some tests on your potential names and get as much feedback as possible from your target audience. Social media is a great way to do this. This will help you land squarely on the perfect membership site name for your brand

This process should help you name your membership site in a way that will pique more interest in the niche you’re trying to reach.

Now we can dive further into how to effectively name your membership levels to build your membership site business.

4 Powerful Strategies For Naming Membership Levels

As you learned earlier in this guide, boring membership level names don’t create a lot of excitement in users. And they definitely don’t inspire users to sign up for your membership offer.

It’s also important to not overthink yourself with membership-level names. When membership sites try to get too cute or creative with tier names, it often has the opposite effect than what they had intended.

And this leads us to our first strategy for naming your membership levels:

1. Balance Creativity With Simplicity

The two most important components of naming your membership tiers are actually quite simple:

• The names match your membership site’s branding
• They clearly illustrate where each tier lands in the hierarchy of your membership options

If you’re able to come up with unique, fun name ideas that clearly fit each one of these two criteria, don’t shy away from using creative membership-level names. Just take special care that the names don’t cause confusion when new potential members look at them.

Let’s take a look at an example.

A membership site that focuses on teaching kayaking enthusiasts how to become more adept in enjoying the water in more challenging locations might consider naming their membership levels:

• Lake Paddler
• River Warrier
• White-Water Ready

In all likelihood, these names will appeal to the target audience of this membership site – kayakers who love being on the water. They’ll definitely know what each of these titles means as it relates to required kayaking knowledge.

You also should use your product descriptions for each level to more fully explain what each level will provide the member. This way, there will be no confusion about what they receive after they’ve completed the signup process.

You can see how creative names that reflect the niche they’re in can indicate “powering-up” a member’s skills or knowledge. This is a highly effective technique for naming membership levels, as it appeals to a person’s desire to improve themselves or become an expert in what they’re passionate about.

2. Highlight Access To Content

As you’ve perused the web and looked at what your competition is doing on their sites, no doubt you’ve noticed a specific trend: Most of the top membership models employ the idea that the more a member pays, the more they get out of the membership.

This is an incredibly popular structure on sites like Patreon, where a subscriber is given the option to choose the sponsorship level that gives them a different set of rewards. And the higher cost of a subscription price, the more content the member will receive.

For pricing, this approach is often referred to as good, better, best.

In other words, the lowest tier price you set would be your “good” price. A member can come in at a base cost, which makes it more accessible to people with lower budgets.

Then you’d have your packages for “better” and “best.” They’ll cost more for the user which means they’re not necessarily as accessible to as many people. But they’ll offer a wider array of membership features as a result of the higher price point.

When it comes to naming membership levels in a good, better, best pricing structure, using power words such as “all-access” or “endless” will often drive members to upgrade beyond the good option.

If you’re using your “good” membership level as a sort of loss-leader, don’t be afraid to use words such as “The Original” or “Bare Bones.” These words lead users to believe that they’re much more to be had in the higher membership levels… which there certainly will be.

This brings up to membership level pricing tip number three: structuring your tiers and names based upon the frequency of payment.

3. Naming Membership Levels Based On Payment Frequency

Many membership sites base their pricing models on monthly or annual pricing. And you should certainly take those into consideration when naming your membership levels.

This is a popular membership site pricing model because it’s straightforward, simple, and can offer an affordable option for any potential member that’s interested in paying for your content.

It’s always a good idea to offer your customers the option for either a monthly or yearly subscription. The reason is that a monthly pricing option lowers the barrier for entry by offering a price point that is easily accessible.

It’s also the perfect choice for membership sites that have large existing libraries of content because they’ll immediately prove their value to new members.

A yearly pricing option raises the barrier of entry because it’s more costly. But it’s often preferred by content creators and membership site owners because it’s quick revenue that is earned immediately, rather than over the course of a year.

When naming membership levels based on payment frequency, try to think beyond the standard names of “Monthly” or “Yearly.” We’ve all seen these a thousand times, and they don’t trigger any kind of emotion that will drive a user to take action.

Instead, use words like “Dip Your Toe In” for monthly subscriptions (of course, indicate in the description that it’s a monthly membership), or “In It To Win It” for a yearly subscription.

Remember that no matter what frequency you choose to charge your site members, they’re joining your community because you’ve convinced them that you can help them attain their goals.

Make sure the names of your tiers accurately reflect that.

4. Show Members That You Understand Their Goals

In pretty much every situation imaginable, a person is going to join a membership site because they’ve become convinced that joining it will somehow help them achieve specific goals they have in their lives.

And those goals can range from things like learning yoga, becoming an expert gardener, building a more successful business, or staying ahead of the daily news cycle.

This makes it incredibly important to choose membership level names that reaffirm that, when a user joins, they’ll move a step closer to reaching their specific goals.

You saw how that was illustrated in our example of a kayaking membership site. 

Lake Paddler, River Warrier, and White-Water Ready is a perfect way of illustrating how someone who has never even touched a kayak before can use your membership to get in the water for the first time. Then, through your expertise, they can eventually have the skills to take on the choppiest rivers.

Brainstorm ways within your niche and brand that you can name your tiers based upon the goals your members have. It’s a powerful way to evoke emotion in your users and drive them toward becoming a paying member of your site.

What’s In a Name?

What exactly is in a name? Well, a lot.

But when it comes to the names of membership tiers, it’s the opportunity to bring in new members by clearly illustrating for your target audience which plan best suits their needs.

Of course, don’t be afraid to do a lot of A/B testing with the names of your membership levels. What sounds like gold to you might not be appealing to others.

And again, avoid getting too “cutesy” with the names you use, unless your membership site and brand warrants it. For example, if you’re running a membership site for cat lovers or doll collectors, you can probably get a lot more creative with the names you use.

Getting Started With a Membership Site

If you’ve yet to launch your membership site and are doing research for your future endeavor, you’ve landed in the right place. WordPress membership site owners absolutely sing the praises of the Restrict Content Pro plugin for membership sites.

Restrict Content Pro is a lightweight, easy-to-use plugin that will instantly transform your WordPress site into a fully functioning membership site. In fact, the plugin is so powerful that it will help you get in the ring with the big competitors in your chosen niche.

Take a look at Restrict Content Pro right now and you’ll see what we mean.

And remember, every single membership site is unique. Find the names that resonate best with your crowd, and you’ll be bringing in a lot more members and building a healthy community before you know it.