While associations share many concerns and pursuits as for-profits, their member-oriented mission requires them to approach their Web strategies differently. Associations are often expected to act as repositories for industry-wide knowledge and content, not simply their own products and services. Many associations must also facilitate interactions directly between members, providing a forum for sharing and discourse without being directly involved in the dialogue. An association’s reputation and brand value depends simultaneously on its objectivity and member advocacy across a wide array of constituencies. Designing an effective Web site, therefore, must focus on understanding and delineating the needs and behaviors of a wide variety of users, and implementing design that provides an optimum user experience.

Here are three simple Web design principles that should be applied to any site development project:

User Experience Study
Conduct a User Experience Study. This will divide your user base into each type of key constituent according to the types and priorities of the things they want to accomplish on your site. For members, prospective members, and other associated networks and groups it lists the information they seek and the elements of the brand value they want to experience at each stage. For instance, if they are looking for external resources on a topic, do they perceive fairness in the selection of links or pointers? Do they find the opinions of their peers present when evaluating your services or products? During interaction with your brand, did the environment you provided help them feel at ease? Did the navigation guide them quickly and directly to their destination? Were they provided alternatives? Is follow-up personalized to their interests? Lastly, how are they passing along their experiences and opinions?

Putting these into action will take the form a Persona creation, the site Persona’s will articulate the site stakeholders, desired actions, reasons for being on the site and give your team clear direction of the entry points on the sitemap for unique site visitors.

Information Architecture & Wireframing
Only after a proper user experience study can the layout and navigation structure of the site begin. This should start not with colors, logos, and pictures, but with the layout of most basic divisions of visual real-estate in grayscale. This helps design stakeholders focus first on functionality – making sure that the customer is served – and aesthetics second.  The importance of this should not be underestimated. Everyone has their own sensibilities when it comes to style, but there should be greater unanimity when satisfying navigational logic and message placement. Can each type of visitor quickly identify where to go? Can they move around the navigation intuitively? Is what they see consistent with their profile?

Skipping this step is one of the most oft-cited reasons for organizational disagreement and discontent during Web site design.

Technology Roadmap
Coming up with Web site design ideas is one thing, mapping it to a technology roadmap and functional requirements will really help determine the level of effort and scope associated with an enterprise level Web site re-design. Gaining a full understanding of the connection points, usage of content management tools, connections to your association management system and related connective tissue of your Web site up front will give you the plan you need to get the site designed, built, and deployed. This phase will help you determine “build vs. buy” for many of your desired features and determine what items can be phased in and what are mission critical for the launch.  For every hour of design allocate one day of development effort. This  simple gauge will help you determine how involved each feature and request will be on the final build schedule and budget.

Summary
The 3 steps listed above will help set up your association for success in its Internet strategy. The more front end work done will ensure a successful and future-proof project.