Comments on: Are your self-service web pages working?

By: David Schreiber

David Schreiber — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 02:53:15 +0000

Was doing some research and ran across this post — crucial topic when we’re all becoming increasingly reliant on the Web. Simply having the back-end technology — the AMS — can be a tease for association executives who often spend very large sums on the database and related applications, and then skimp on the information architecture and interactive design of their websites. Then there’s the flip side, whereby an association and their Web design team is hamstrung the limited functionality of the AMS vendor’s API… Bottom line, association executives don’t skimp on the Web strategy — know thy site visitor and business!

By: Wes Trochlil

Wes Trochlil — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:01:13 +0000

Josh, thanks for the comment.

By: Joshua Paul

Joshua Paul — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 15:04:04 +0000

Insightful question, Wes! In the association market, I’m seeing more and more organizations recognize the member experience limitations of the AMS. I met with an organization earlier this week and the Director of Member Services said, “A membership database will always be a membership database. Our members are ready for more.” Associations are turning to member-engagement platforms (or customer solutions built by web design agencies) that sit on top of their AMS and utilize their member data to provide a more rich, interactive and social member experience. Associations recognize the benefits of bringing together their self-service functions with online community software, blogs, forums, listservs, event management, wikis, file libraries, and other collaboration tools. They are able to both raise the level of member engagement and bring down costs by driving members to serve themselves online.