6 Ways to Improve Your Membership Website Experience - Membership Marketing 101

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Rob Warburton
March 16, 2023 15 min read
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Hi everyone and welcome to The GRM Membership Marketing series! 

Curious to see what three different departments have to say about all-in-one membership platforms? Watch our video!

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VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION


Tab: Hey folks, welcome to another episode of The Digital Drop. My name is Tab, I'm joined by Rob and Ida. Today, we wanted to discuss something that a lot of our clients and new organisations approach us with around membership and how to improve their site performance. We just thought we'd take this episode to talk a little bit about that and a few key pointers. So, we've come together with around five key aspects that you might want to focus on to help improve your site performance. Rob, do you want to throw us into what you might think are some good ideas around that?

Rob: I'll start with number one and that is first and foremost, just listening to members. I think this is something we've spoken about a lot with our current clients and clients that approach us in terms of getting feedback from members, in terms of what they want to see from the website experience or whatever. That could be simply doing manual, actual reaching out to members and doing a questionnaire, survey or something like that or putting something like a feedback tool in place to allow them to actively give feedback on the website experience.

Tab: How would you- so, say you get that feedback directly from members. What would then be the next steps to incorporate that into what you're thinking or what you're delivering?

Rob: I think, obviously, in the first instance, you need to get a decent amount of data first. You can't just get five responses off a feedback widget and then go and make their changes. You need to just sit down with whoever you're working with, whether that be an agency or your internal team and just review what data's coming in and try and put it into sensible categories of work that can then be done and scheduled.

Tab: Okay, yeah. I think that makes sense. I think as well, from my angle when you're looking at all these things, it's where it ties into the journey of what you're doing. You want to collect this data, in my opinion, as early as possible. But have the thought process of where you're looking to go with that data so you know which questions to ask and what feedback to get.

Ida: What would be an example of the work or maybe the feedback that we've got from some of our members?

Tab: So, I suppose through our design processes, etc., rather than put in feedback forms with clients, we'll have had actual user interviews. We'll interview their members, see what they think of the website, and ask them positioned questions to get the answers that we want to then take to formulate into maybe- its user journey mapping or how the structure of the site goes, etc. That's an example. I think Robert mentioned an example of feedback forms which maybe you'll be able to highlight a little bit more on.

Rob: Yeah, I mean just to go back to your question before, it might be like- if we know a membership organisation wants to make some major changes to their navigation, for example, we could set an open place to ask people like, how they got to this area of the site or what they thought of the experience so far and that would give us an indication on whether that improvement is worth doing or not.

Tab: Yeah, and look. When we talk about asking members and getting feedback, it's not just verbal, or written feedback. We can analyse data so when Rob's talking about- for example, new menus. We'll have already looked or- a membership organisation themselves can look into data and see what that data is telling you because it's not just through words. It's through actions as well that we can interact with our members and understand how they're using the website. So, we might look at analytics and see certain pages have high bounce rates or high drop-off rates along a certain user journey to go, "Okay, this is something that we need to address."

Ida: Yeah, I think in most occasions, what we do is also install heat maps. So, let's say if we roll out a new menu or maybe a new landing page, we'll make sure we add heat maps on pages to track to see how people really navigate. Because maybe something that's logical towards- like a piece of text or something on a banner. Members might think, "Oh, it's a clickable link." So, we see people are clicking on it and that creates a bit of confusion so as you said, maybe non-verbal feedback in tools like heat maps is really useful because you see people doing things like performing tasks and then you can judge your designs and how they are.

Tab: I think that's key as well because when you use the words, what makes sense to us- we're in this world, we're in this industry- the organisations and those key stakeholders in those organisations are in this industry. So, what makes sense to us- we're maybe a little bit more knowledgeable in how a site works or how it should work or what something should look like, whereas the members might not be. They might be but they also might not be. Getting that little bit of analytics, what you're talking about will actually tell us, yeah. This is how they're actually using it because what makes sense to us might not necessarily make sense to them.

Ida: No, I agree. In the past, we also had- when we get to a particular milestone within a project, we would show, let's say, new members our website or whatever it is, to a selected number of members like between 50 or 100 of them. In some cases, we would do this in some sort of a user group where you have multiple people but then in some other cases, when something is a bit- we're unsure in which direction to go then we just do individual calls and we show them, let's say, a black version or a white version of something. We try to gain that feedback from them which we really find useful and I think, again, it goes back to understanding them a bit more and understanding their feedback which gives us pretty much a roadmap for the future together with our client.

Rob: Yeah, I think as a team managing a website, you've just got to get into the habit of validating your ideas with data and whether that be like what you can see in analytics or actually speaking to your members to find out whether what you're planning to do is worth doing. We always challenge our clients, you know what I mean? If they come to us and say, like, I want to change this header element or something like that, you've almost got to go back to them and say, why are you doing that? What data have you seen that shows that changing that's going to improve the user experience for members? I think it's quite easy as marketers to just say, "I want to do this." without actually looking into the data so that's important.

Tab: When we look at this as a general- we've got to look at trends, so even when you're potentially having those feedback forms, the user groups, the individual discussions, the analytics, everything- you look at the trends of what people are telling you through their actions or through their words and you don't necessarily cater for the anomalies because they're anomalies for a reason. So, it's about taking that data and digesting it to make it suitable for most because we all know that not everything can work for everybody.

Ida: Yeah. Just to add on that, all people we interact with and ask for feedback and survey then they'll give us their feedback but it doesn't mean necessarily that we should incorporate every part of that feedback because there's got to be a bit of a strategy in terms of what we're trying to achieve and then as you said, filter that feedback and see really what our next steps should be.

Tab: Yeah, for sure. I think- look, in terms of that strategy it probably brings us on to the next thing that a membership organisation can really take on board to help that experience. I think that relates to-

Ida: Content.

Tab: Yeah, value and content.

Ida: Exactly. So, what we find a lot is that membership organisations don't necessarily have crisp-like, very clean messaging on their front page and home page. They don't necessarily shout out about their USPs or the reasons why you should become a member, and I think this in a way limits them for acquisition and acquisition of new members and in a way, creates a bit of confusion. The most usual scenario is when you are referred by someone else to say, "Oh, if you want to do this, you have to join that organisation. You got to be a member." Which is how most of the members actually become organisation members. However, there's always that element where people are researching and they are not 100% sure and this is really down to content that there isn't enough content out there right in front of someone's eyes to say, " This is who we are, this is the value that we give you as an organisation." I think that value really is what people are after and in essence, that goes hand-in-hand with acquisition and prospecting.

Tab: Yeah. I think the key part of what you said was there's not enough content in front of their eyes because what we tend to see is membership organisations have a boatload of content. But how it's structured and where it's brought is not necessarily in the best manner. I also feel that- and this might be more a personal thought, is a lot of membership organisations that we come across, don't shout from the rooftops about their value. It's like they're a little bit shy and maybe a bit of a fear of failure of, "This is what we add." So, it tends to fall a lot into that bit that you said, it's around people will join because they have to and not really shouting from the rooftops around the value they can add, what they're getting from the organisation, the things that the membership organisation is working on because a lot of membership organisations might have direct communication with lawmakers and policy implementers in terms of what they're influencing. But the value of that is not really seen by the members because it's not really put out in front of them. I think this is a little bit around that content. It's there usually but where they find it is the difficult part.

Rob: You could also argue though- we've come across some membership organisations where to be a member of that organisation, it's mandatory based on a certain career avenue that someone goes down. They don't offer enough value anyway, do they? So, maybe that's a reason why there's not that focus on content.

Tab: Yeah, and I suppose that becomes the balance between how we might help- for example, us as an agency. How we might help a membership organisation in terms of their digital strategy but also, the way that we work, we also look to match business goals with digital goals and give a thought process onto other things that organisations may be thinking of. If, for example, you're talking about a career path which means that you have to join a certain type of organisation, well then, that might be limited so it might only be to complete certain exams. It might only be for the first five years of your career you have to- so then, where's the lifetime value of that client or that member? It's really about then going back and figuring out how we add additional value to those members and how we portray that to them.

Rob: I think we're seeing that more, like membership organisations wanting to protect the value a bit more especially in the past couple of years where people have been reassessing their spend and stuff like that with obviously, the cost of living and things. It's good to see membership organisations actually thinking about how they can provide more value whether that be- like you say, additional membership tiers and stuff like that. I think it's going to be something we just see more of in the next couple of years.

Tab: Yeah, and I think going back to your point at the outset of this, which goes on to point three of how to improve that digital performance is the content which relates to the user experience of a site. So, I know we mentioned when we were talking about that element that a lot of content might be four, five, or six, clicks down through a member journey and that's not how you want to orientate a site. So, really about trying to get the relevant content and the user journeys established to improve that navigation, to improve prove how quickly they get either down a funnel of membership, a funnel of retention, a funnel of knowledge, sharing, whatever that might be.

Ida: I agree with that. One of the things that I would probably suggest for any membership organisation to do is a regular review of their content. Any business changes- one year we might be targeting or we might have a challenge in a particular area and then next year, it may change. Trends change as well and just look at the needs of members before COVID, during COVID and after COVID. So, the content that we used to have back then, surely, can be the right content that we are still positioning let's say, a few years later. I think the exercise of reviewing who you are as an organisation and what you're trying to say to your members should be done every- I would say, once a year so every 12 months. We've helped several clients to reposition themselves. It doesn't necessarily take a lot of work in terms of the- it's not a technical work, it's more content and identifying what type of content you want to promote more. But it's always good for somebody on the side, somebody like an external party to ask you questions to think about. "Oh, we didn't think about this. Oh yeah, that's a really good point." That sort of communication and strategy planning is something that I would definitely advise to be done on regular basis.

Tab: I think on to that as well, that planning. I think yearly might be excessive for what I'm going to mention but understanding your users and the user profiles and what you want to get from your users so that you can understand the journey that they want to take. So, when we talk about this point in terms of navigation, you might have a plethora of different users that the end outcome for them is different. As somebody who might be starting on a career path, the end outcome might be to get them to take exams, understand exams, and what it takes to go on this journey. For someone later on in their career path, it might be how they can help others within that network, within that industry move forward. So, I think that understanding your users and the journeys you want them to take really helps in dictating that journey.

Ida: I agree. I think we just touched upon navigation which is also one of the points we had on the list.

Tab: Yeah. I think that's the kind of point that we've been discussing now in terms of user journeys and the navigation of that, which tied into the previous point of content and how we position that content to them. I suppose the next point from that would really be making your site accessible to users. So, when we've got this navigation and the content in place, now accessibility might own- I think it's one in five people have some kind of disability in the UK. So, if we're looking at the UK specifically, so that's one in five users that are potentially using our site that we need to facilitate our site for. Accessibility is really key because not only does it position your organisation in terms of you keeping up with the standards of society, but it also means that you're facilitating for all members to use your website, you're being inclusive which as a side effect of the inclusion that you're doing, helps promote how your agency's thought process or your organisation's thought processes and how you look to accommodate for different types of members.

Rob: What level would you be looking to go for then?

Tab: I think for us as an agency, we try to have all our websites AA compliant. So, WCAG AA is compliant. Obviously, there's A and there's AAA and I think, with AAA, you lose a little bit of flex in the design capabilities that you're able to have. With AA, there's still some level of restriction but as part of that process to make sure that you're covering everything, what you can do is you can set up a page that actually discusses your compliance and where you might not have complied because to comply to every point can be ineffective in terms of time and cost. So, you can set up a page about your compliance and put down where your exceptions are the reasons for your exceptions, and that does suffice in terms of criteria around AA and the compliance you're achieving. I think it's something that membership organisations are starting to realise more and more but not everybody is there yet and legacy websites that might be more than three or four years old are probably nowhere near there yet. As you're looking to address your next project and platforms or update your existing one, it's definitely something that we need to think about.

Ida: Yeah, definitely there's always a little bit of that clash, as you said, in terms of creativity and accessibility. When we look at gov.uk website, that's a perfect example of what's fully accessible and compliant. But then, you want to be like a membership organisation that has got some great designs and is creative and shows maybe a little bit of your own brand personality and brand colours. That in a way restricts you in terms of what you can and you can't do but there's always a middle ground to it which I find really great. There are those tools out there that you can pay for and they're not usually expensive. You can install them within a few clicks on your website and what they do is there's always a little pop-up on your website. So, anyone with any difficulties would be able to tone down the colours and get a text reader out I don't know. Anything that's flashy or moving or being overly dynamic on the web page will completely disappear. There's that middle ground where you can still retain the creativity whilst also accommodating accessibility in full.

Tab: Yeah, I think that middle ground is something that I've found through discussions. Membership organisations are a little bit unsure of- do they have all the power within their cells and their agency to make sure that everything is accessible. There's sometimes a little bit of giving that needs to be given when you're using these accessibility tools. But you're right in terms of that creativity, it will enable you to be as creative as possible but then use a third-party tool to kind of tone that down where applicable. I suppose that accessibility kind of brings us on to the final point or point five which is around site performance and core web vitals, which you know a little bit more about, Rob.

Rob: Yeah, site speed and core web vitals have been like a fundamental ranking factor for a few years now so it seems like most organisations are on to the fact that they need to have a website that loads within a couple of seconds and stuff like that. I feel like most organisations are starting to really work to that but it's just one of them things if you haven't got a website that's loading within a couple of seconds now, then you're so far behind. It's getting to the point where it's even affecting organic traffic now, which then it will mean fewer people land on the site. Fewer potential members will come across the organisation, less potential members will sign up. So, I think it's actually having a drastic effect not having a site that loads quickly.

Ida: I think a lot of this can be done in-house. You might not need an agency necessarily for all of these things, there are tools out there that can tell you what your current status is and where you need to improve what I find is that a lot of times it'll be down to content. Images might not be properly reduced or compressed in terms of size so they might be too heavy for the website and that takes- page load time is too long. One of the things that I also appreciate when I'm googling is if it takes more than- I'd say, three and a half seconds, that's it. I've got no patience with it but the same applies to everyone else so it's got to be a fast performance.

Rob: I would say it can't be enough, the site speed. Like accessibility for membership organisations, it has to be at the forefront of any sort of web project that you're currently working on.

Tab: I suppose there are two different elements to this. One is new web projects that you might be working on. For that, I'd say it's very dependent or very important for the agency to start dictating back- and dictating might be the correct word to use in this or definitely highlighting the impact of certain functionality that you might want on a site to the performance. Because pages can be built in a million different ways but if you want to throw every widget for example on a page- well, widgets take time to load. The more you have, the more it's going to impact performance. There's a little bit of expectation setting at the outset of initial projects, what you're starting from scratch. But the other element is for sites that are already built and you're reviewing, so potentially, what it is talking about in terms of using tools to review your site and see where it might not be as performant as it could be. Now, I know you've got some experience in advising around this, but there are elements around- say, for example, lazy loading and implementing getting quick wins through different aspects. What might you think of those?

Rob: Obviously, there are a lot of things you can implement like smaller quick wins the technical guys can implement onto any current website but I'd say the most important thing is just to constantly review it because if you're always adding content to the site, always getting your developers to make minor changes to things, your site speed does gradually start creeping up unless you keep an eye on it. I'd say, every month just do a report on Lighthouse or GTmetrix and just see how things are being affected by what you're doing on a daily basis. They'll just spit out loads of recommendations that you can then pass on to developers and get to improve things.

Tab: When we talk about core web vitals around this- because obviously, that affects your google search rankings. Is speed the only thing that cores web vitals takes on or are there other elements that you really need to look at?

Rob: There is but it's split into a few different areas like how fast the page loads visually but then, how fast it actually becomes interactive. There are a few different things. You might be sitting there watching a site load for like a couple of seconds and yeah, you can see it but you can't start scrolling down and clicking things yet. There are loads of things within core web vitals that you need to look at, it's not just all the websites. I can see it now; it's about making it usable within seconds so it's probably a lot harder than it used to be before the whole core web vitals thing was launched. But it's a good thing, it's making marketers and owners of websites stay on their toes and provide better experiences.

Tab: As you mentioned, there's tools out there that make it very easy for us to be able to review and keep on top of those things and not let them escalate too much where it really impacts the organisation and so we can stay on top of it.

Rob: As a number one, anyone listening to this should have a google search console set up. So, within there, you can just see what pages are failing and you'll get notifications every month that say you've got 30 pages that are failing your core web vitals. Then you can just go in there, you can check the errors and then you can validate them in there once you've put a fix in place or whatever. So, as we mentioned before, it's just having that data accessible to you and keeping on top of it. But there are other things that can be done as well- we've implemented CDNs in the past for organisations and that's something you always mention to your clients. Just being able to actually save a version of a website and then deliver it at speed from a local service, it's amazing especially if you've got an international membership base.

Tab: Yeah, I think that it's very key. I think there are other elements around site speed and core web vitals or google search or any search console really, in terms of security as well, which you know you've got to make sure that you stay on top of all those like keeping the site secure, the pages being https so you've got those relevant certificates on the site so that you're enabling as much as possible for people to come to your site without any issues and any problems. Google's really looking at your site and giving it as high rank as possible. It's hard enough to rank high, you don't want to create scenarios where Google's giving you little black markers as well.

Rob: It's easy stuff, it's just like maintaining a car, isn't it? At the end of the day? Get the car serviced, you need to-

Tab: I've seen a couple of your cars. Not sure about that.

Rob: Yeah, I'm not great at that. But websites though. No, that's what it's like, isn't it? You've got to keep on top of it, you can't just build a site and it's going to be high performing for like five, six years. You've got to keep on top of it, really and keep it maintained.

Tab: Yeah, I think that whole saying of, "If you're standing still, you're going backwards" is very much relevant here. I suppose that kind of summarizes the five points we spoke about. But there's one additional one to really help drive down the value that you add as a membership organisation, which is around creating networking opportunities. I know you wanted to talk a little bit about that, Ida.

Ida: Well, with COVID, I think a lot of membership organisations came to realisation of the importance of this online touch. When you can't go on a networking event, we had some webinars where people would be able to listen and tune in, maybe participate but what came to light is that there's something called digital communities where it's sort of a socialising area of your website or your portal where all members have got access to pretty much- well, you as an organisation can restrict or allow this, but to all members- they can interact between themselves but also, they can interact with your organisation which gives them that full freedom of any sort of communication to be more like instant messaging as you go on LinkedIn, Facebook and all of that. You can see people's profiles; you can create maybe some research groups if you've got a particular interest where you want to discuss certain things or work on a particular thing together. I think this is a great opportunity for any membership organisation that is looking to find a way to engage more with their members and to create an environment where members can easily interact with each other because I think that's all it is nowadays.

Tab: Yeah, and I think that creating network opportunities is really- a lot of members of the membership organisations want to feel part of a community. So, when we talk about what you mentioned earlier about people joining a membership organisation because they have to mentioned career paths or whatever it may be. But a lot of value-adds that they see is being able to interact with people with the same career or interest as they have. Creating those networking opportunities both online, but linking that with potential offline networking opportunities is one of those value-adds that maybe a lot of membership, organisations miss out on and it really is a good opportunity to help your members feel more as if they're part of something- which they are- and transfer that knowledge and that value that they might have to others.

Ida: Yeah, I fully agree. I think it's a great thing to have out there, I think it's no longer nice to have. It's more of a must-have for the near future, really.

Tab: Yeah. Now, I'm just going to say, I think in summary, we've got five or six points that we think will really help add value to a membership organisation's digital platform and digital experience for their members, which are listened to your members, use analytics and user feedback-

Ida: Then it's content about making sure you show the value of your organisation to all your members, shout out about your USP, and show your personality. We've got the navigation.

Tab: Make sure that's done in a structured way that you're getting users to the end of whatever journey you want them to take and they're going to want to take.

Ida: Yeah, we've got accessibility. Make sure it covers all sorts of scenarios and make sure that your site is as compliant as possible. We know there are restrictions and some reasons as to why it could not be doing all things in accessibility but there are ways around it.

Rob: Then we've got site speed and constantly reviewing that alongside core web vitals to make sure your experience is good in the eyes of your users and Google.

Tab: Yeah, and then obviously try to create networking opportunities to help people really feel the true value of them as members and contributors to your community and your organisation.

Ida: Great.

Tab: So, I think we've got that cracked. If there's any more, let us know what you think and we'll see if we can take them on board and maybe bring them into a new podcast that we might do further down

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Written by Rob Warburton

Digital Marketing Consultant