You’ve been asking for it for a couple of years, and now we can officially answer “Yes!”

Over the past 2 years we’ve received this question literally hundreds of times: “Can I use Clover for my small business?”

Our answer has typically been something like: “Yeah, you can. You’ll just have to be creative with using the tools created for ministries on your business site.” But now, we have opened up cloversites.com to any small business, artist, non-profit, or industry you can think of. The internet-wide problem of not being able to have a decent looking site that you can manage without spending a fortune is now over.

We’ve created an experience at cloversites.com so that a visitor no longer has to do the mental gymnastics to see how Clover will fit for their specific industry. We’ve done the work to allow anyone looking for a website for their organization to have a true Clover experience when visiting our site. Also to help, we’ve just posted a bunch of new Green Thumbs for you to see how businesses have been using Clover. Check them out: Green Thumbs

Here’s what we’ve changed:

1. Cloversites.com Home Page: Before today, when you typed in cloversites.com you got the line “We make websites for growing ministries”, along with a video that was very much ministry-specific. Now when you visit our site, you will receive a generic home page with the tagline of “We make websites for people, not programmers”. If you’ve visited our site in the last 3 months or so, you will still get the “ministry experience”, because we put a cookie on your browser to say that’s what you care about… That will make sense more as you read #2.

2. Demos: With the pressure now of showing people how they can actually use Clover for their business, we went through the (rather tedious) work of making all of our existing demos represent a specific industry. For example, Sunset was turned into an Italian restaurant website, The Stone was turned into a band’s website, and Shadowridge was turned into a civil engineering firm’s website. We felt with a huge span of industry-specific sites (rather than a generic, “small-business” example), we could clearly show people how Clover can be a fit for them.

If you go to the websites page, you’ll notice a new drop-down arrow that allows you to cater your experience to your industry. This will shuffle the more industry-specific site designs to the front of the demos, so you don’t have to search around to find out how you can use Clover for a specific type of business. We’ll also remember what industry you are a part of, so next time you go to cloversites.com, you’ll receive the same industry-specific experience.

Oh yeah, like I said before- If you have entered into cloversites.com before today, you will only have the “ministry” experience. This will mean that you will still get every demo as an example church, and all testimonies will be from ministries using Clover. All future entrants to cloversites.com/church will receive the same, deluxe treatment.

Here’s why you should care:

1. Clover Friends: If you haven’t signed up for Clover Friends, do so now! Clover Friends is our affiliate program that allows you to get $100 every time someone purchases a website because of you. It’s a pretty amazing program that was created to say a great big “Thanks!” to everyone who has been telling other people about Clover.

But here’s why Clover Friends is so huge now… The majority of us probably only know 2-3 churches that we might have influence on when it comes to their web presence. If you’re signed up for Clover Friends you’ve probably already told them, and received your check. But think of how many people you know that need a website for their small business? Off the top of my head, I can name 10-15 people. We’re pretty convinced that you could actually make a living off Clover Friends now…

New Site Designs

Along with this new expansion, we’re launching two new site designs: Rock Point and Harvest. Check them out when you get a chance.

So that’s the exciting news. We’re pretty stoked to be releasing this much-needed tool into the market.

We hope the rest of the world finds Clover to be as great a fit as the church does. We will still be releasing new, free updates to you soon, so stay tuned for that.

Thanks to you all, we cut a check to Gaba yesterday that we believe will have a great impact on their ministry. We feel so grateful to be a small part in what God is doing through them. They have a unique set of programs that is raising up leaders and training pastors to ultimately transform the communities in Uganda.

For the next three months, we’ve chosen a ministry that I personally support and believe in: The Well in Thailand. I’ll quote their website since I probably can’t explain their organization as well as they can.

The Well’s “purpose is to love Thai bar girls and sex workers in the same way that Jesus loved that woman and others like her; to help her see and experience her true value as a creation by God, and to help her, her family and village indeed find their dream of a better life. The Well provides counseling, training, job development and other services to women and their family members.”

The back story here is that The Well was started by a guy I know named Jim (not Clover’s Jim) who gave up his dream of retiring to the comfy hills of Wisconsin and moved his whole family to Thailand. They started this ministry from incredibly humble beginnings simply because they felt God was calling them there. In the five years they’ve been there, they’ve helped hundreds of girls (and their family’s) change their lives and find Christ.

The work they’re doing is simply amazing. If you have time, check out a few quick stories from some of the girls (Mei, Wan, Pontip).

So for this next quarter, the first month’s hosting payment of every new Clover website purchase will be going to our friends at The Well.