Essential membership website features to engage your members

A membership website is a crucial tool for organisations looking to engage and retain their members. A well-designed membership site should provide a seamless experience for members and encourage them to remain active in your community. It should instil pride in anyone within your membership.

With various features available, choosing the right ones to support your organisation’s goals is essential.

But what are the essential features a membership portal needs to engage its members?

In this article, we’ll explore nine key features that will help keep your members engaged and coming back for more. By incorporating these into your membership platform, you can ensure that your members will have a positive experience and continue to support your business.

Here are nine essential membership website features you should consider for your site.

1. Member onboarding – effective ways of improving the onboarding experience
2. Membership renewal – strategies to increase your retention rate
3. Contact management – the importance of a robust CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system
4. Member communications – keeping your members up to date with important content, news and offers
5. Member online training – ensuring your elearning portal provides an engaging learning experience
6. Payment management – create easy, seamless mechanisms for taking regular subscription payments from your members
7. Community engagement – how to build an authentic community and generate engagement among your organisation’s members
8. Event management – build and scale your community through online and in-person events
9. Member analytics – access to clear and accurate data to help improve your member’s experience

Member onboarding – effective ways of improving the onboarding experience

Onboarding new members can be challenging, but there are many ways to ensure the process is effective and a pleasant experience for your new members. A person’s first interaction with your website is critical. A smooth and effective online onboarding process can help set the tone for future engagement with your organisation.

Establishing clear expectations of what it means to be a member early on will help to build a successful and productive relationship. To improve your onboarding experience, consider the following steps:

• Streamline your online registration process by reducing the steps required to sign up.
• Provide clear instructions and support for new members during the onboarding process.
• Offer a personalised welcome message or video to make members feel valued and part of the community.
• Offer an introduction to the features and benefits of the website to help members understand what is available to them.
• Send a series of welcome emails to help new members get the most out of their membership.

These steps will create an onboarding process that efficiently introduces what lies ahead and provides assurance that your new members have found the right community.

Membership renewal – strategies to increase your retention rate

Keeping members engaged and renewing their membership is essential to any organisation’s success and growth. There are a few strategies you can employ to increase the retention rate of your membership subscribers.

Keeping track of previous members’ renewal dates is critical, and renewing their membership should be easy. Just as you work to attract and win new members, you should actively engage and retain your existing members by offering incentives to renew their membership.

To increase your retention rate, you may want to try some of the following tips:

• Offer a range of membership options to suit different needs and budgets.
• Provide regular updates and exclusive content to members to keep them engaged.
• Send periodic reminders about the benefits of membership and the importance of renewing.
• Offer incentives for renewing, such as discounts or exclusive access to events.
• Make the online process to renew simple. Consider implementing automated renewals with detailed supporting information to ensure members feel comfortable and excited about their ongoing membership.

By following these tips, you should improve your retention rates and provide more value for your members, ultimately driving more revenue for your organisation.

Contact management – the importance of a robust CRM system

A powerful customer relationship management (CRM) system is crucial for managing member interactions and ensuring members feel valued. A CRM can help you keep track of multiple member profiles and interactions, increase membership sign-ups, and manage your processes. It can uncover valuable insights that you can use to improve your members’ experience.

A sound CRM system can help to:

• Store member information and contact details securely.
• Automate communication with members, such as renewal reminders and welcome messages.
• Track member interactions and provide insights into their engagement with the organisation, such as membership portal usage, events attendance, elearning content accessed, support queries submitted, etc.
• Help you to comply with data protection regulations, such as GDPR.
• Save time and resources on your internal admin tasks, freeing up your teams to better support your members.

Member communications – keeping your members up to date with important content, news and offers

Effective communication with members is imperative for any association’s success. Interesting and relevant communications keep members in the loop and feeling connected. They can also be an effective way to foster trust, loyalty and growth in your organisation.

Send informative, relevant content and updates tailored to individual preferences, bringing greater value to your members and more meaningful engagement with your organisation.

A well-designed member communications system can help you to:

• Provide regular updates on the latest news and content relevant to the organisation.
• Offer members exclusive content and offers to encourage engagement.
• Provide a platform for members to connect with each other and the organisation.
• Allow members to choose topics they are interested in and to select how often they want to hear from you.

Member online training – ensuring your elearning portal provides an engaging learning experience

An effective elearning portal should provide access to training materials and help your members to deepen their knowledge of your sector and area of expertise. To ensure your elearning portal offers a quality, engaging learning experience, it is important to design relevant content that considers the different learning modes.

It is helpful to use various multimedia elements as part of your courses, such as images, videos, audio files etc. Organise your elearning portal so that information can be easily found and absorbed. Also, ensure that these work well on mobile devices too.

Ensure your elearning platform contains interactive components for members to communicate with specialists and each other or create user groups for collaboration. With these in place, you’ll build an engaging online training program for your members that will benefit them in their organisational roles/daily lives.

In summary, to ensure an engaging learning experience, consider the following:

• Offer a range of interactive and multimedia content to engage learners.
• Provide a simple and clear workflow and user experience.
• Provide clear and concise instructions for accessing and completing the training.
• Offer regular assessments and quizzes to help learners retain information.
• Provide a platform for learners to connect with each other and the organisation.

Payment management – create easy, seamless mechanisms for taking regular subscription payments from your members

A seamless payment management system ensures members can quickly pay for and renew their membership. With reliable payment solutions such as Stripe and Square, organisations of any size can take advantage of secure payments with real-time transaction processing.

Not only does this simplify your payment management, but it’s also less stressful for you and your members. They no longer need to worry about manual billing statements or tracking outstanding payments.

To implement a solid payment management process:

• Use a trusted payment solution to automate the process of taking regular payments.
• Offer a range of payment options to suit the different preferences and needs of your membership.
• Provide clear instructions and support for making payments.
• Automate renewal reminders and payment processes to make the process easy for members.

Community engagement – how to build an authentic community and generate engagement among your organisation’s members

Building an authentic community among your organisation’s members is crucial for generating positive connections and effective collaboration and keeping them engaged with your organisation.

Focus on creating the right environment where everyone feels respected and proud of being part of your organisation. Ensure their voice is heard by creating open communication channels, such as forums or discussion groups. Encourage participation in activities between members to foster a sense of belonging and provide opportunities for learning and growth.

It’s important to be transparent with your organisation’s plans and goals so everyone is informed and can work together towards common objectives. Also, recognise individual achievements and celebrate successes as a community to maintain a sense of unity and cohesion.

With the right tools to help nurture connections within your organisation, you can create an inspiring community grounded in mutual respect and support.

Here are a few tips for building an authentic membership community:

• Provide a platform for members to connect with each other, such as a discussion forum or chat room.
• Encourage members to participate in activities and events to foster a sense of community.
• Allow members to share their thoughts and experiences through blog posts, videos, or other forms of content.
• Provide opportunities for members to give feedback and have their voices heard by the organisation.
• Allocate resources to proactivity monitor and engage with your community.

Event management – build and scale your community through online and in-person events

Events are a great way to unite members, create a sense of belonging, and build and scale your community.

Whether physical or virtual/online, events are a great way to unite people with shared values and interests. Online events are convenient for busy schedules and offer a level of personalisation that traditional events can’t always provide.

In-person activities are a fantastic way to generate more energy and allow meaningful conversations that last long after the event. By carefully combining both, membership organisations can foster strong community engagement regardless of location!

To effectively manage events, it’s important to:

• Offer both online and in-person events to reach a wider audience.
• Use event management software to streamline the planning and execution of events.
• Provide clear information about the events, including the topics covered, time, and location.
• Encourage members to participate in events and provide opportunities to share their experiences.

Member analytics – access to clear and accurate data to help improve your member’s experience

Having reliable analytics to track your members’ data and activity is one of the best ways to ensure you can continually deliver a great experience. With clear and accurate analytics, you can better understand what approach works for your members and community. This helps you to tailor content, offers, materials and services that fit their unique and evolving needs and preferences.

Not only does this improve their enjoyment of being members of your organisation, but it also supports better planning and decision-making. Access to robust analytics ensures everyone gets the most out of their membership, resulting in stronger retention, more sign-ups, and increased sales and revenue for your organisation.

Here are a few ways to effectively track member analytics:

• Use analytics software to track key metrics, such as website traffic, engagement, and retention.
• Analyse data regularly to identify trends and patterns in member behaviour.
• Use data to inform decisions and make improvements to the member experience.

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve shared nine practical tips for improving your member experience.

A well-designed membership website is essential for engaging and retaining members. By providing opportunities for community engagement, effective event management, and utilising data and analytics, organisations can create a dynamic and supportive environment for their members.

Keep these nine features in mind while considering ways to improve your membership website. Doing so will create an experience that will engage and retain your members.

We hope these tips have inspired you to make changes in your organisation. If you need help putting any of these tips into practice, or if you want to discuss a membership website, we’d love to hear from you.

You can email us directly, call us on 01273 830331 or fill in the form on our contact us page, and we’ll get back to you soon.

Thanks for reading!