RAD’s Members’ Area
Success achieved
Increasing the rate of online payments, member monthly logins and unique page views by creating a personalised, user-friendly Members’ Area on our site.- Website
- https://members.royalacademyofdance.org
- Project dates
- January 2018 to present
Project team
- Nyisha Bill-Eteson, Lead Membership Development Officer
- Penny Cotton, Head of Global Membership Services
- Ashlie Groves, Global Membership Services Manager
Tools & Systems
We’re using DNN to host the Members’ Area which integrates with our Dynamics 365 database to give members a personalised experience when they login as well as allowing them to self-serve in a number of ways.
Introduction
We wanted to create a Members’ Area that was valuable to members, user-friendly, and above all personlised. We needed not just a refreshed design on a cosmetic level but more intuitive functionality that would give members a reason to engage with the Members’ Area more regularly.
We found that our old Members’ Area was outdated, simplistic, tricky to navigate and not delivering the level of value that our members expected. Most members were only using it to pay for their membership at the start of the year, and even then it was a complicated process. We did not have the functionality for members to create their own unique login details so we frequently dealt with large volumes of e-mails from members requesting these.
Following the launch of our new database with Dynamics 365 we saw the potential to create a more personalised experience for members, one that would integrate with our database so they could self-serve for actions like updating their contact details.
Discovery
We benchmarked against a range of other organisations’ offerings to get an idea of what functionality members expected to have access to. This included non- professional member clubs such as clothing stores, independent cinemas and football clubs as well as a range of professional membership schemes.
Our satisfaction survey, which was conducted prior to building the new Members’ Area, included questions about the value of membership. We asked for members’ opinions on price points, their most valued benefits, and where members thought we could improve. The highest ranking answer for where we could improve was cost, which told us we needed to improve the perceived value of our membership scheme. Tangible print benefits were rated higher than everything but our monthly e-newsletter which confirmed members weren’t being proactive about checking the Members’ Area, perhaps because they didn’t feel it was worth visiting.
We had also conducted a communications survey with our members in 2018 asking them to identify what kind of content they would like and expect us to provide them with. This informed the development of our content after the new Members’ Area was launched.
The developers of our new database recommended using DNN as this was a system that would integrate with Dynamics, allowing members to update their details and helping to keep our data clean as well as allowing us to offer them a personalised experience.
Objectives
The main objective for us was to create a personalised experience for members as well as refresh the overall design making the Members’ Area more user-friendly including offering a variety of self-serve functions that would write back to CRM.
The expected outcome was that the new functionality allowing members to self-serve would significantly decrease the number of communications that the team dealt with. We also anticipated it would reduce a number of manual processes that the team were conducting previously because the new Members’ Area would be integrated with our database. We expected to see an increase in engagement especially with online payments as this process would be simpler. We also anticipated high engagement levels from members in countries who previously didn’t have access to a Members’ Area.
Timeline
- January 2018 – Statement of work
- February – Developers begin to build the new site with wireframe provided by RAD
- March – April – RAD team begin adding content and testing
- May – July – Gradual batch launch to members managed by the UK office
- August – Members register and renew using the new Members’ Area for the first time
- September – Ongoing content and functionality development
- April 2019 – Testing functionality for members globally
- June – Launch to worldwide membership
- Present – Ongoing development
Activities
Research and scoping
- Decision to enhance this benefit as current Members' Area not delivering value
- Research what other organisations offer & expectations of members
- Statement of work and scoping with developers
- Map member journey and decide on layout and content of new site
Building and development
- Design skin to match public website and deliver seamless transition between domains
- Build wireframe
- Transfer content across and develop new content for launch
- Testing of permissions, display, personalisation, content layout, integration with CRM
Go-live
- Launch to known members for feedback e.g. Trustees & staff
- Launch in batches to wider membership
- Monitor initial feedback and make changes accordingly
- Creation of content schedule
- Continue to gather feedback on member expectations
- On-going development and testing for new functionality
Initial Wireframe
Testing
Testing was be the most important step in the whole process and the most time consuming so we spread this task across team members to get different perspectives and make sure nothing was missed. We checked that:
- Changes made in the Members’ Area were writing back to CRM correctly and immediately,
- Permissions set in the Members’ Area worked how we expected,
- Content layout was consistent across desktop, mobile and tablet,
- Fetchxml was displaying personalised content correctly for members such as name, ID, etc
- Navigation functioned as expected
We also tested a number of user errors to see the error messages that displayed as well as forgotten password functionality.
Effort
- Pre go-live - This was a full-time task for 2 members of staff for about 3 months to transfer content, build the site and draft comms as well as test functionality which was done with assistance from other team members.
- Post go-live - The maintenance of content, fixing issues, raising support tickets, etc. takes roughly 2 days a week.
Launch
Schedule of alerts
We launched to small batches of members to begin with so we could assess issues and fix them before launching to all of our members. This began with a small group of just 10 members who were known to us as Trustees or staff. First, we gave them access to the UAT version before launching the live version.
We monitored a feedback survey on the process of registration twice a day to keep on top of any issues. Following this we staggered the launch to 100 members letting them know they were among the first to use the new Members’ Area and asking them to provide feedback on the registration process.
The aim was to have contacted all members prior to our renewals period in August. This year when we launched to all members globally, we didn’t need to do batched comms as the Members’ Area had been functioning for a year, but we did segment comms according to country of residence.
The original batched comms schedule includes an alert to let members know about the new benefit, followed by a link to register and 2 reminders.
Registration comm example
Following the launch to members managed by HQ we began work to develop the members’ area for a global rollout, this included development of pages to host local content for some countries. Development of new functionality is continuous and we budget for new features every year.
Innovation
As we can set complex permission levels for members to view the content in the Members’ Area, we were able to give access to lapsed members so that they could still make payment online.
We have now changed the way we process new member applications so all new applicants are sent a link to register for the Members’ Area meaning they can make payment quickly and easily online, this was not a function we were able to offer previously.
When designing the new skin, we asked for a variety of layouts to display the content in a more user-friendly way, this has meant the Members’ Area is much more image heavy and visual now than it ever was previously.
Marketing
We undertook a direct e-mail campaign to get members registered in the new Members’ Area as they were required to create a username and password to get access to this benefit. We also made sure to mention this in monthly member e-newsletters, on the public website and in our renewal comms that year so that members were given every opportunity to set up their account.
Challenges
We received a lot of e-mails (and still do) from members who have forgotten their password, even though there’s a link to self-serve this on the login page.
We also have had a fair number of members who forget they have already registered and try to access their registration link again. This serves up an invalid error message and this is when they contact us to say there’s a problem. If you can pre-set a member’s username to their e-mail address I would recommend doing so, as giving members the freedom to set their own username often causes a spike in member queries around important dates in the year for us.
We have a small number of members for whom we hold no e-mail address, and some of those who are not tech savvy have refused to register or require assistance from someone over the phone to set up their account. We have accepted that there will always be a small number of members who never register. However, as we now require an e-mail address from new members this will, in time, be less of an issue.
Achievements
Our main objective was to create a more attractive and personalised experience for members whilst delivering multiple self-serve functions. This was successfully delivered and has been received very positively. To date we have successfully registered 7,100 members for the new Members’ Area (66% of our membership).
Dashboard, members' area
Since launching, online payments have increased by 37% from 3,830 in the 2017/18 year to 5,270 in the 2018/19 year when we launched to some of our membership. We then launched to our full membership in June this year and already we’ve had 4,700 online payments for the 2019/20 year which began in September. Communications to the team about change of details and payments have decreased significantly as there is now a self-serve function available for these.
Our strategic aims are to be the leading international authority on dance teacher education and professional development and to be the preferred membership organisation for professional dance teachers, students and all others who wish to support and engage with dance.
With the new Members’ Area, we can attract more members for recruitment and retain our current members by offering an online hub of benefits that is of real value. The ways in which the Members’ Area simplifies processes such as updating contact details and making payments means that it is a much more valuable resource to our members now.
In addition to this we’re able to utilise new functionality to publish more content that is easily accessible and will aid in the development of both our professional and non- professional members’ careers. We’ve also made it easier for members to declare their CPD and access free webinars which aids us as an organisation to continue to be pioneers of dance teacher education.
For some of our international members this is the first time they’ve had access to a Members’ Area, so it’s a vast improvement that they can now access the same content and benefits as all other members irrespective of location.
The Member experience - members can now:
- View information about themselves on the home page such as name, ID number , region and membership category
- Pay online easily
- Declare their CPD online easily
- Create their own unique username and password
- Update their contact details, address and communication preferences which will automatically write back to our CRM
- Create their own online listing on our Find a Teacher map and see it live on the website within 12 hours without any manual intervention from the team
- See content specific to their membership category with our ability to change permissions for specific content, this function has also allowed us to open up restricted access to the Members’ Area for non- member categories that the team looks after such as Licensees and magazine subscribers so these customers can view information relevant to them
- Navigate the Members’ Area much more easily
- Enter candidates for examinations via an online portal rather than using paper forms
Targets & Statistics
Over the period of August to October 2019 we’ve seen on average 6,500 users (of our 7,100 registered members) access the Members’ Area per month with an average session duration of 4 minutes and 4 pages per session. We’ve also had 124,657 unique page views during this time.
We’ve also seen good engagement internationally, with our members in USA, Australia, China and Brazil, ranking in the top 5 along with UK members. This includes members in countries that previously didn’t have access to our old Members’ Area so giving them access to the same level of benefits as their UK counterparts was a big step in the development of our scheme.
Unfortunately, we were unable to track activity in our previous Members’ Area for comparison.
What would we do differently?
- Think bigger in terms of layout possibilities and visual identity - Whilst we modernised what we had already we could have done more with the design and this is something we’re working to develop and make more dynamic now.
- Create child pages for euro members rather than duplicating the whole site - This was an initiative led by the developers because we had to use a different payment gateway for members paying in euros. We were advised to duplicate the whole website in order to achieve this, however now we have launched to other global areas we have realised it’s possible to create child pages within the existing Members’ Area instead of duplicating the whole site.
- Build a more defined journey with stickier content - We did this with the registration process leading members to update their personal details and address once they registered but we’re now working to develop member journeys even more. For example, we will be adding hooks at the bottom of our articles to lead members onto a new piece of content and keep them engaged for longer.
Advice
- Try to think about what you want from it rather than making it fit to your current processes
- Create user personas to understand who your members are and what they want to get out of it
- Carry out extensive testing: make sure you test with multiple records in every category of membership you offer and with different address locations or ages, e.g. you may find that accents in names don’t appear correctly, or that it’s not possible to select a date of birth earlier than 1950. Make sure you work with real records in UAT and don’t only set up new test records for testing. We often found that there were no issues with new test records but complications arose for existing records – all your members will be existing so this is really important.
- Put together FAQ s for using the new website and provide these to your members to minimize queries.
- Password reset should be simple and obvious, we believe ours is but it hasn’t stopped us being inundated with member queries.
Feedback & Testimonials
“The new Members’ Area is fantastic”
“I think this is intuitive and amazing”
“Everything is very clear”
“Thank you for giving us the chance to use our choice of login ID and password”
“Easy to use and find relevant information” “It’s great! Very user-friendly!”
“I like being able to set my own username/password as it will make it much easier to remember!”
“The new Members’ Area looks fresh and up to date” “Nice easy layout”
“After checking out the new Members’ Area, I am very pleased! It is much easier to access and a lot more user- friendly. Looking forward to using it properly in the near future”
Wider impact
Since launching the new Members’ Area the team have worked hard to ensure the momentum of the launch continues and that this becomes a valuable asset for members. One of the key parts of the ongoing development has been the frequency that new content is published. Previously we published exclusive articles in our Special Features page on an ad-hoc basis which generally was no more than once every two months. We’re now working to a strict content plan and publishing new articles on a weekly basis.
We’re also really pleased to be able to display members’ ID numbers in the Members’ Area as this was previously only printed on their membership card so many members wouldn’t know their number if we asked for it when communicating with them; now it’s easily accessible wherever they are.
Future development plans include the launch of an online forum, introducing the ability to comment on articles, a search function, and more visual content (videos and images).
