How to Encourage Members to Use Your Association Website

October 29, 2024

In today’s digital age, your association’s website isn’t just a platform among your various communication channels. It’s a critical tool for engaging members and building a community, creating a central hub for knowledge-sharing and collaboration. 

As such, it’s not enough to simply design a website and leave it alone. Your association must encourage members to make the most of the resources it offers and continually make improvements to present an enticing website to visitors.

There are numerous avenues your association can take to engage members on your website, from prioritizing the user experience to incorporating data-driven insights from your association management software (AMS). However, when it comes to getting them on your site in the first place, it takes a strategic approach to enhance the member experience. 

Let’s unpack a few strategies you can use to start encouraging members to make the most of your website. 

Consider a refresh or redesign.

Imagine this: You adopt a dog during the hottest month of the year. You know your new pet needs to drink plenty of water to stay hydrated, but your pup doesn’t seem to follow your cues. So, you get creative and serve frozen treats to make hydration more enticing.

Now, apply this logic to your association’s website. The first step to encouraging members to visit and use the site is to make it appealing to them. Uncover the path to a website your members will want to use by assessing the website and identifying areas for improvement with existing members in mind. 

There are four areas you can evaluate to determine what changes should be made:

• Visual elements: This includes the website’s overall style and design, branding, color schemes, and layout.
• Coding: This refers to the technical aspects of your website, or the code language used to organize and display your website.
• Individual pages: Each individual page has its own elements, tools, and features that should be optimized with your members’ needs and preferences in mind.
• Functionality: This broadly refers to how the website can be used and the value it offers members.

When observing these components, keep your website builder in mind and be familiar with its capabilities. For example, does your platform track user engagement metrics such as page views and conversions? 

Website analytics like these help you learn how members currently interact with your content. This might involve tracking the average time spent on a page to determine how many visitors actually stay on a page after initially landing on it. Or, measure page views to identify your website’s most and least visited pages. 

With a comprehensive review of your website’s strengths and weaknesses, you can decide whether you need to simply refresh your website or completely redesign it.

Spread awareness of your website.

Once you’ve optimized your association’s website, it’s time to show it off. Spreading awareness of your website is key to attracting visitors and encouraging them to explore your resources. 

There are several ways to market your association’s website:

Search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO refers to the process of optimizing your website to encourage its pages to rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs). In other words, SEO could make your association’s website appear at the top of the search results after someone searches for a keyword relevant to your organization.

To get started, implement the following SEO best practices:

• Create valuable content: Blog posts, articles, and other resources that provide valuable, expert-level information and unique perspectives will likely rank higher on search engines.
• Incorporate relevant keywords: Identify the terms your target audience searches for and incorporate them into your website’s content to signal that your website addresses your target audience’s needs. 
• Optimize technical elements: Elements on the backend of your website, such as meta tags and alt text, can influence your website’s ability to rank since they directly impact the user experience. 

Another way to boost your website’s ranking is through Google Ads, which allow you to create targeted advertisements that appear at the top of the SERP for certain keywords. Fonteva recommends checking your association’s eligibility for Google’s Ad Grant program—you may be able to leverage this paid advertising channel for free.

Link to your website

To solidify your website as an authoritative, single source of truth, every channel your association uses should point back to your website, including:

• Emails
• Newsletters
• Social media posts
• And other promotional materials

Share the link to relevant landing pages on your website through these channels. Consider including prominent buttons or compelling calls to action that urge audience members to explore your website. For example, summarize a few quotes from a recent article in your weekly newsletter, then encourage readers to “Finish the story” by visiting the full blog post on your website.

Offer website demonstrations

To showcase the features and benefits of your association’s website, conduct demonstrations through webinars or virtual tutorials. In these demos, walk members through the website’s top features, such as the member dashboard or resource library. Make sure these demos are included in new member onboarding materials and offer refresher sessions periodically.

Conduct these demos live to allow members to ask any questions they may have, but record the walkthrough and post it on your website so that it’s available to anyone who couldn’t attend the live session. This way, all members have access to the information and can explore your resources at their own pace.

Offer exclusive resources.

Think back to our example of making frozen dog treats to prevent dehydration. Your friends and family members might be eager to get their hands on your healthy, delicious recipe if you keep it under wraps—the same can be said for your association’s resources.

Exclusivity enhances the perception of something’s value. By providing valuable content and limiting accessibility to just your association’s members, you can incentivize website engagement. Members will be excited to receive special benefits, and prospective members may be motivated to get involved when they realize the unique advantages included in a membership.

To provide this sense of exclusivity, highlight resources such as your:

• Member portal: Create a dedicated area of your website where members can access exclusive content, resources, and tools. 
• Directory: Consider implementing membership directories where members can connect with each other. You can even display badges on their profiles to highlight members’ achievements and credentials.
• Online learning courses: Provide ongoing education and professional development opportunities to members through courses that cover a wide range of topics relevant to your association’s field. 

Aside from the tangible benefits that exclusive resources offer members, they can also strengthen the overall relationship between your organization and its members. As a result, members will be more loyal to your association over the long term. 

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When you prioritize your members, your website won’t just be a tool at their disposal—it’ll be a symbol of your appreciation for them. 

As eCardWidget explains, this can drive higher member retention rates, increased engagement levels, and recruitment success. Above all, encouraging members to use your website is about meeting their needs by providing the resources, user experiences, and value that they’re looking for.