How to Run Association Websites: Best Tips and Practices

A membership association website is a community of like minded people having similar visions and goals in place. It’s a place to connect and engage with people with similar interests. If you want to create a membership association website, this is the perfect place to start. From what it means to best practices, this post systematically covers it all. 

You cannot just create a membership website and wait for members to discover you to join. You have to take an active part in the creation of the association, content management, providing exclusive access and resources, setting marketing strategies, and engaging actively. Your association membership will thrive only if you start right from ground zero. This guide will navigate you smoothly towards the essentials and set up of an effective membership association. 

So, let’s get going! 

What is a Membership Association Website: Meaning and Types of Associations

First of all, let us understand what’s an association. In legal terms, it is ‘A group of people that come together for a specific purpose.’ 

You can understand this clearly with some examples. You must have come across professional groups like doctor’s associations, engineer’s clubs, lawyer’s societies, or other similar groups like sororities, alumni associations, hobby clubs, and so on. These examples are typically groups of people who have similar interests, passions, or goals. 

Let us have a brief look at varied types of associations. 

Types of Associations:

1. Professional Associations: Group of people associated with a specific profession like the American Medical Association (AMA) for doctors or the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). 
2. Trade Associations: Trade Unions or Associations are industry specific groups to promote best practices in the field. They also fight for the rights of members of the community. For example American Federation of Labor Congress of Industrial Organizations. 
3. Non Profit and Advocacy Associations: These groups are highly focused on fighting for a cause. Preserving nature, supporting women’s rights, working towards curbing animal cruelty, and so on. Save the Children Action Network and the Obama Foundation are perfect examples of Non-profit membership associations. 
4. Social Clubs and Hobbyist Groups: You must be aware of Golf Clubs, Fitness Clubs, Dance Clubs, and Yoga Clubs around you. Many people around you keep mentioning they have a club event to attend. These are particularly membership associations of people with similar hobbies and interests. 
5. Educational and Alumni Networks: Many Universities have come up with alumni association memberships. They gain varied benefits like access to library resources, sports grounds, hiring news, and exclusive events, even after passing out. This allows students to stay in touch with their alma mater. 

Each type of association has specific needs. However, association website development and payment management are common for all. Let’s dive deeper in this direction now. 

Benefits of Association Website Development

If you want an answer to how to run a successful association, developing an association website is your answer. Here’s the benefits it comes with. 

1. Centralized Communication: From minor to major communications like news posting, updates, announcements, content releases, and upcoming events can be posted and managed from a single place. 
2. Boosted Engagement: With a website, it is easy to implement member engagement strategies. A dedicated space and platform to interact among members helps build deeper connections and thus, higher retention rates. 
3. Automated Management: A website can help you leverage membership software or CRM tools to enable automation. Basic tasks like membership renewals, email notifications, billing and payment, event registration, and content updates can be simplified. 
4. Networking Opportunities: On deploying membership communities and online member directories, your association members can easily communicate with each other. It provides a direct space for collaboration and engagement. 
5. Revenue Generation: Many membership association websites offer paid memberships or have a donation page. With a website, you have multiple monetization options. Apart from that, your payments can be managed automatically without having to deal with cash and physical invoices. 
6. Community Building: A website has the potential to offer a sense of community among your association members. In a community, members have a group to belong to. An engaged community helps in sustaining your membership because of the sense of belonging. 

Key Elements for Building a Membership Association Website

You don’t need a fancy website to build your association membership website. Your website structure should be easy to go through and understand. It should contain all important elements without any distractions. 

1. Intuitive Navigation: Organize your menus well and provide a search feature. This will aid in intuitive navigation where members easily find what they want. 
2. Member-Only Content Areas: Provide special member only content for premium articles and exclusive resources. This would make your members feel more valued and motivate others to join your paid association membership. 
3. Mobile Responsiveness: Major traffic comes from mobile devices and thus, your association website must be well-optimized for mobile traffic. It must look well and work well on all devices without any glitches. 
4. Search Functionality: A search bar is an essential tool to save members time. If they want to look back at a specific page or article or are searching for a specific person, a search functionality smoothens their surfing task. 
5. Interactive Event Calendar: Have a dedicated section or page for upcoming events. Here, allow options to view details, RSVP, and get event reminders. This ensures maximum member participation in your association events. 
6. Content Hub or Blog: Have a dedicated section for content. Provide the latest blogs, news, articles, industry reports, and resources to keep the members informed. You can put them behind a paywall as well and provide some of it for free. 
7. SEO Optimization and Analytics: Understand SEO and enable SEO best practices to boost your association’s visibility. It will help you get discovered on search engines and understand member engagement and analytics. 
8. Smooth Onboarding Process: You must have established a member welcome process for a smooth and welcoming onboarding experience. This ensures a smooth transition for members to join your website. 
9. Feedback and Surveys: Create a feedback form on your website for members to get in touch with you. This would help you capture essential thoughts for the improvement of the association. 
10. Integrated Communication Tools: Enable push notifications, emails, WhatsApp reminders, and text messages to keep your members up-to-date. Make sure you reach them where they’re most active without pestering them or overwhelming them with communications. 
11. Social Media Integrations: Allow social login and social sharing to members. Integrate your social media feed on the website for quick access. People love to share about their community and updates on social media. Thus, take a benefit of that. 

Tools to Set Up and Automate Membership Associations

To gain maximum benefits from membership associations, you need to utilize some tools. These would help you integrate all the Key Elements easily into your website without the need for technical expertise. 

1. Association Management Software (AMS)

Association management software helps organizations with services like member management, event setup, internal communication, managing finances, content, and a lot more. In short, it provides all the features that you need to manage your trade unions or associations. Let us look at some of the AMS platforms. 

• GrowthZone

This software is technically designed for association membership management. Manage your member database, event, marketing automation, member directories, and payments. You can create web content, an online store, leverage forms, use the mobile app, and so much more. The only drawback of this tool is its price, which starts at $3900/year. 

• WildApricot 

WildApricot is perfect for associations, charities, clubs, non-profits, and chambers. It provides features like a website builder, member database, payment processing, event management, contact database, online store, and many other integrations. Its pricing is based on the number of your contacts. Thus, the price scales up with your association. For 100 contacts, it starts at $60/month. You can opt for a free trial as well before committing full-time. 

2. WordPress + Membership Plugins

The second option for you is to use WordPress along with a dedicated membership Plugin. WordPress powers up almost half the websites today and is a well-known CMS platform. It helps you enable multiple tools and plugins to scale up your website as per your requirements. Let us look at the top features of ARMember, an all-rounder membership plugin. 

ARMember: Membership & Association Management Tool

Use four different types of plans to define your association memberships. Create multiple membership tiers to provide level-wise benefits. It also integrates with 19+ payment gateways to manage online payments smoothly. Its other notable features that would power up your association are as follows. 

• Content Restriction to keep your content safe from non-members. 
• In-built spam protection and brute force login security for member safety. 
• Pay-per-post feature to sell individual industry insights and resources to non-members. 
• Social Community add-on to create a dedicated social media site for your members. 
• 54+ In-built add-ons to support various tasks. From payments to gamification to online stores, everything can be done with just one plugin.
• Create membership cards and member directory in-built with ARMember. 
• A lifetime license is available at $69 with access to multiple add-ons and payment gateways. Thus, an affordable solution in the long term. 

ARMember is a perfect solution to host your association membership website. Its robust features would aid you at every step of scaling your association. 

These association management tools ease your task and help you build an intuitive platform that your members will love coming back to. 

Best Practices to Ensure Member Privacy, Safety, Engagement, and Conversion

It is important to keep your members satisfied. This would ensure higher engagement, retention, and conversion rates. Ensure the privacy and data safety of members by following these best practices. 

1. Member Privacy and Data Security: Use secure login portals, SSL certificates, and encrypted databases to maintain member privacy and data security. 
2. Compliance with Regulations: If you are dealing with international members or have an open-for-all association, comply with regulations like GDPR and CCPA. These ensure data security and build trust among members.
3. Personalized Content: Create a relevant and personalized experience for your members with tailored content recommendations. Personalize member communications to make them feel more involved. 
4. Fresh and Consistent Content: Keep providing consistent value to your members with regular article updates, news, valuable resources, and meet-and-greet events. 
5. Automated Renewal Reminders: Reduce churn rate by sending automated reminders when their association membership is about to expire. If an autopay is set, remind them that their membership will be automatically renewed soon and money deducted. 
6. Gather Feedback: Collect feedback regularly. This will help you understand member’s needs and tweak your association offerings. 

Ready to Run a Membership Association Website with Top Tips? 

With association management tools, you can craft a powerful association membership. If you implement it well, you can grow your association to new heights. Go through the key elements, essential features, and best practices to keep attracting more members. There are multiple inspiring memberships and associations examples that would give you a boost. 

Are you ready to transform your association membership experience?

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