Association Website

By Lauren Bashaw, Senior Manager of Customer Adoption

One of the best qualities about a full membership management software solution like WebLink is its ability to handle it all – your membership data, your event registrations, your aging reports, your website content – it’s a one-stop shop.  Unfortunately, this can cause some fun features and helpful tools to get overlooked in the day-to-day of managing your database.  As a trainer, I see several of these rise to the top as the most underused...

Managing your website analytics is already difficult, but when you don’t understand the traffic metrics, then it’s just about impossible.  Bounce rate is a commonly misunderstood metric.

What is a Bounce?

A bounce is a visitor who arrives on your site, views one page, and immediately leaves your website. By this definition, the bounce rate is the total number of visits with only one page view divided by the total number of visits to your site.

The key word in the definition is “page”.  Most people...

By Tao Stadler, Senior Membership Management Executive

In a meeting a few months ago, my CEO, Terry Dwyer, made a point about progress that strongly resonated with me and has been in my mind ever since.

In discussing a feature that we all agreed would be a dramatic improvement for our association clients, a litany of reasons why it would be hard or even impossible to accomplish came rushing forward, as though months of research had already been done and the answer was set in stone.

After a few...

By Bryan Long, Relationship Manager

Is your chamber of commerce or business association website doing all it can to promote your members? Could you be improving member retention, generating more leads for members, producing more revenue, or even increasing event attendance with a more powerful website and online membership directory?

The single biggest reason businesses join your organization is to gain more business.  Through networking, professional learning opportunities and the exposure gained...

By Chad Bouslog, Membership Management Specialist

About 45 days ago, I was just like a lot of you reading this blog today. In fact, today, I’m probably similar to a lot of you as well, being human and all. But 45 days ago, I was introduced to WebLink International.  I wasn’t actively seeking new employment opportunities, so I probably wouldn’t have considered myself as a “hot lead” for the sales world.

Just the same, not every association or Chamber of Commerce that comes into contact with WebLink...

By Mike Lobue, Membership Management Executive

If you are involved in technology decisions for your association, more likely than not, you’ve engaged with multiple vendors, each providing a separate technology solution. You’ve probably talked to a company that provides an association management software solution, while engaging with another that will handle your association website needs and another for your mobile app and so on. All the while being promised all the systems will ‘talk to’ and...

By Rory Beall, Membership Management Executive

When is the last time you reflected on your association’s membership management technology? Have you ever? Frequently, associations find themselves too busy preparing for the next big event, looking to add their next member or keeping existing members happy to do a thorough self-assessment of how they maintain their most important asset, their association membership database. Event history, financials and profile information of members,...

By Matthew Bugnacki, Membership Management Specialist

Recently, while I was walking with my ten year old son around our neighborhood, we discovered a tree house that seemed to be falling out of its respective tree. The tree house was not uncared for. In fact, some of the boards seemed new while some seemed a bit worn with age. My son easily identified that there was a substantial problem with the tree house as it looked warped and about ready to collapse. This led to some very...

It's that time again where we all reflect on our successes and failures of the previous year and create a list of things we promise we're going to do differently in the next year.

I'm feeling great about 2013 and excited about what the new year will bring at WebLink. My optimism remains despite the fact that I just Googled 'New Years Resolutions Success Rate' and found that according to a 2007 study by Richard Wisemen from the University of Bristol, 88% of resolutions fail.

On the brighter side,...

By Joseph Loria, Vice President, Advisory Services

In the financial world, investments are expected to return profit and pay dividends. Do you feel the same about your member management software?  Likely not.  More disturbing, research from Forrester Group  shows that only about 33% of customer relationship management (CRM) system implementations are deemed a success. So, why do so many fail? Surprisingly, only a third of the failures are due to the technology itself. The majority is related to...

The user experience of your association website reflects who your organization is, what it has to offer members, and represents your credibility in the industry. If it is hard to navigate, difficult to understand or isn’t engaging, you can count on any traffic you have driven to your association website to go somewhere else. How can you improve the user experience of your website? Here are five proven methods for doing just that.

1. Integrate with your membership database software. Nothing is worse...

Increasing website traffic to your association’s website can mean more member sales, improved member retention, and increased non-dues revenue for your association. With the right visitors to your website, you'll achieve your goals and have happier members. Though there are dozens of methods that promise to help you to increase website traffic, we recently did an analysis of our client websites and found the following 8 best practices.

In fact, we found that on average, our clients experienced a 6...

By Beth Gannett, Membership Management Specialist

At the ASAE Membership Marketing Conference last month, at a session based upon association website design, they took an informal survey.  The question was posed to the room asking when the last time each organization had redesigned their website.  Most of the associations in the room said they hadn’t made a significant design change to their site in five years or more! If it’s time for your association to think about a new website design, here...

If you're like most business associations and chambers of commerce, you're using a Facebook page to broaden your communications and engage your audience where they already are - on social media.

The average user in the U.S. spends about 8 hours/month on Facebook. As Facebook continues to become THE place where people learn about news and find information about companies, it is reasonable to think that your audience may someday visit your Facebook page to learn more about your association - maybe...

Your association database is the single most important asset your organization owns.

Many associations and chambers of commerce don't hold patents, produce products or create proprietary information, such as extensive research projects or detailed industry reports.  However, the collection of data in your membership database IS a propriety asset.

This data is unique and extremely valuable to your organization.

Your membership database software should contain everything you need to manage your...

The old display funnel of advertising.  Isn’t it great? 

It’s simple. It’s effective. 

And yet, still, sometimes members advertising on chamber of commerce and association websites have trouble getting their ad to result in action. Some members continue to advertise the same way, year after year, throwing images on backgrounds and phone numbers over pictures, instead of thinking about how the ad will move prospective customers through the funnel.

Display advertising brings conversions of people who...

It's week 4, discussing Analytics and Goals in the book, Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day.

As a marketer, I know measurement is key and I couldn't even begin to count the number of associations I've talked to about the importance. But, it can be daunting if you don't have much experience. If you're new to analytics, don't worry, this post is perfect for the Google Analytics beginner.

Here are my top tips for getting started:

Step 1: Make sure Google Analytics is set up on your...

Well, it's week 3, discussing Competition in the book, Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day.

There is only one website that can rank #1 for each keyword search, making SEO a constant tug of war. So, what can associations be doing about their competitors?

Find out who is competing with your association website and what you can do to rank higher. As I recently heard in a meeting about SEO - You don't have to be able to run as fast as the bear chasing you, just faster than your friend. Beat out...

I am now on to week 2 of Search Engine Optimization An Hour a Day. During the second week, the book discusses establishing a baseline. As a marketing professional, my favorite part of marketing is measuring the success of a campaign, but of course success can't be established without a baseline. Below are tips I learned in this section of the book, along with some of my own best practices.

Get Started With a Template:

• Take your list of keywords that you established for your association website in...