A digital transformation: Enhancing the member experience

The early days of website development saw largely text-based content, limited technology and very little page structure with little to no connection to customer/member information. Nevertheless, they were exciting times for member associations, including the ADA, because they could offer members services and information in a way that simply hadn’t been possible before.

Time passes, however, and the new quickly becomes the old. So it is with website evolution, where much more is needed now to make a website shine, and to ensure its capabilities and value to users both meet demand.

The all-new and very much improved ADA website has been specially redesigned to meet the current expectations of all members and to improve their experience of the ADA’s products and services overall. Key to enhancing their experience was finding out what it is they valued most, need to use most frequently, and how they wanted to access that information.

The brief to site developers, including ADA staff and outside vendors, was simple but important: make it ‘intuitive and easy to use … and easy to navigate’.

Getting to that point involved two key things: surveying a lot of members through a series of workshops, where they were asked what they accessed the most and how they’d prefer to access if the choice was up to them, and crucially, overhauling and integrating the database that powers how members experience the ADA.

Known in the trade as a “customer relationship management” (CRM) software, the current configuration didn’t allow members to personalise their experience and update their data themselves efficiently. The reality is that everyone looks and sees the world differently and this had never been fully accommodated for in the current one-size-fits-all system so the aim was to give members the ability to tailor how they interacted with the ADA.

To that end, everything was geared to hand the power back to members so you can update key details, enact membership changes and, with enhanced capability at your fingertips, make your profile very much your own.

The upsides to this overhaul are considerable, allowing one of the key features of the new website – favouriting items used often, making them easy to find and access. Best of all, the change to this system means the ADA can see what matters and what doesn’t to each member, to serve up more of the former and less of the latter.
 

How did we get here?

So how did all this member experience-enhancing transformation happen? Two key leaders of the project team who have worked so hard in bringing this vision to life talk about how the new site came to be and how this marks what is just the beginning of a bright digital journey ahead for the ADA and its members.

Top of mind for ADA Deputy CEO and website project lead, Eithne Irving, was the essential ability to deliver exactly what the members wanted.

“While we’ve worked hard to give members what they need to date, we’ve always been hampered to some extent by systems that simply didn’t deliver the member experience we wanted to deliver, either in scope or speed of responsiveness,” she says.

“So, the decision to overhaul the website, and indeed, much of our digital infrastructure, which was the brainchild of ADA CEO, Damian Mitsch was, in the end, an easy one. As the general manager ultimately tasked with delivering a great member experience, I knew we needed a new system and it had to be an improvement on what was in place before.”

“I think we’re well on the road to delivering on this with the help of our outside partners, and I’m excited for what this means for members now and well into the future, when we have more exciting things planned,” she says.

The key driver was always about adding value to being an ADA member, and helping the staff at the Association to make that happen.

“The upside of redeveloping the website, was the chance to empower and enable ADA staff to deliver fully and quickly on all the initiatives we have underway, and to also hand power back to our members so they can access the information they need in a way that suits them,” Eithne says “But also, so they can make changes to their profiles and play a direct role in how fulfilling their member experience could be, and to do so when it suits them without being limited by business hours or ADA staff availability.

“My hope is that all this flexibility and accessibility is really going to make things easier for our members. We want them to always feel like we are working to make their professional and, to an extent, their personal lives better – and I think the website is an exciting and major step towards that.”

Adding to the conversation, Dennis Singh, Director of Bayesian Strategy & Consulting, who spearheaded member consultation and website design, explains the philosophy behind the new design and how this is expressed in terms of usability and user experience.

“The new design is based on five fundamental, yet strikingly important concepts, known as the 5Cs of our design principles,” Dennis explains.

CONTENT
Ensuring that the new website treats content as king and that what is provided to members is of high quality, accuracy and from a single source of truth.

CONTEXT 
Ensuring we provide the right information, at the right time for members within their life cycle to make informed decisions.

CLARITY
Ensuring we remove complexity and noise from our designs and make it simple, clear and concise.

CHOICE
Ensuring we provide multiple ways for members to navigate and access information – knowing that members have multiple pathways to find information.

CHANNEL
Ensuring that members experience a cohesive customer experience, irrespective of the channel of choice.

“This has been articulated throughout the design, through the use of the design system, its components, functionality expressed through the creation of member-facing self-service information, and finally the value-add of a user-centred design process that has allowed us the ability to develop solutions oriented to member needs.”

This is just the start of the digital journey, not the end, and members can look forward to a lot of additional enhancements in the future.
 

This article was first published in the ADA's News Bulletin, August 2023