Your association’s team works hard to attract, engage, and retain its members. With a number of other responsibilities, it can be easy to overlook a simple, yet powerful tool for connecting with members: your website.
With social distancing guidelines keeping organizations and members physically apart, a strong web presence is more important than ever. For instance, a modern, well-designed website will help your association:
Remember, your association’s website is typically an individual’s first stop when looking to learn more about your work and get involved. Since it only takes a few seconds to form a first impression, your website should be optimized to attract visitors’ interest and provide a great experience.
To ensure your team is equipped with the necessary knowledge for building a strong member website, let’s cover three key components:
Walking through this checklist will ensure you’re optimizing the member experience on your website. Let’s get started!
Members are the lifeblood of associations, so you’ll want to prioritize their experience by featuring valuable content and tools pertaining to their needs. After all, nonprofit marketing experts claim that effective content is a fundamental part of organizational growth.
While the type of content varies from association to association, there are a few primary components that prospects and members will find particularly useful, including:
In today’s crowded online market, you need to go the extra mile to ensure your association stands out. Overall, attracting and retaining association members should be the primary purpose of your association’s website, so choose your content accordingly. By offering the above helpful features, you can create an immersive and valuable member experience through your website.
To further simplify the process, invest in professional membership website builder tools that are built specifically for associations. Otherwise, you might overlook vital functionality that your members may find useful.
These days, many of your members are likely accessing your association’s website on their smartphones. In fact, mobile devices have consistently accounted for more than half of all web traffic since 2017. In the second quarter of 2020, mobile devices generated 51.53% of global web traffic, according to Statista. In other words, mobile usage is a vital consideration when it comes to association web design.
Whether your members are simply browsing your work or updating personal details on their member profile, they should be able to interact with your content regardless of the device they’re using. By ensuring that your association’s website is built for mobile use, you can easily avoid negative user experiences, such as:
Remember, every page, form, and pop-up on your website should scale for mobile devices. Otherwise, visitors may abandon your website altogether, according to this nonprofit web design guide.
To create a positive mobile experience for members, ensure your CMS offers mobile responsiveness so that your website will automatically restructure itself for mobile screens. Otherwise, your visitors will be greeted with a condensed version of your association website’s desktop view, which will make it difficult to navigate. With automatic responsiveness, your association’s team won’t have to worry about developing multiple versions of your website for mobile devices, tablets, and desktops.
When you develop informative content, it’s important that you present this information in a visually appealing way. Otherwise, your association’s website may turn visitors away and prevent you from reaching your membership goals.
As you organize your content, keep these best practices in mind to make it easy for visitors to interact with your association’s website:
These are just a few primary visual components to keep in mind. There are many other elements to consider, but these will serve as a solid starting point in developing a user-centric design.
With a limited staff juggling many responsibilities, your association may be hesitant to take on a website redesign project. However, learning what goes into a well-designed association website plays a key role in developing an effective member experience. By pairing these best practices with an intuitive website builder, you’ll be well-equipped to create an engaging web experience for your members.
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