Creating a Dynamic Digital Experience For Members With Drupal 8
The National Guard Association of the United States, Inc. (NGAUS), a 501 (c) 19 nonprofit organization formed in 1878, focuses on influencing the procurement of better equipment, standardized training and a more combat-ready force by petitioning Congress for resources for the Army and Air National Guard.
The association’s vision is to maintain the freedom and security of this nation by guaranteeing a strong national defense through the provision of a vital and dynamic National Guard as part of the Total Force. Therefore, NGAUS strives to educate the public, Congress, the Department of Defense, the departments of the Army and Air Force, the National Guard Bureau, and other agencies.
Our website initiative with NGAUS focused on a redesign of ngaus.org, from the backend to the home page. Unleashed Technologies worked with NGAUS to create a digital experience that better represents the mission of the organization and better supports the strategic membership and communication goals of the organization.
Unleashed Technologies recommended Drupal 8 as the appropriate platform for NGAUS’s web initiative. Unleashed Technologies completed a thorough Discovery process with the NGAUS stakeholders to better understand how to bring success to the initiative. During our Discovery process, our team collaborated with NGAUS to complete a set of five user personas and user journeys to better inform our decisions during the Design phase. Drupal 8 was configured with supportive contributed modules that aided the remaining build process. Data structures like Drupal’s content types, taxonomy vocabularies, and other entities will be created with appropriate fields, as dictated by the information architecture.
Key Highlights
NGAUS unveiled the new Drupal 8 site in September 2018 at the organization’s 140th General Conference & Exhibition in New Orleans and has received tremendous feedback from members. The new NGAUS digital experience provides:
- A Clean, Smart, Responsive, Accessible, and User-Centered site design
- Integration and a seamless user experience with the organization’s back-end membership management software – netFORUM Enterprise.
- The membership-only login area (SSO) fully integrates through netFORUM eWeb, allowing the NGAUS members to join, renew, set up installment payments, update their contact information, register for events, make donations, control subscription preferences and sign up for magazine subscriptions
- The front-end integrates 3rd party systems (CQ, Real Magnet and PayPal) in order to maintain the same look and feel throughout the site.
- Drupal’s Search API is utilized along with Apache Solr to index content not marked as “archived”. Applicable content fields are indexed with each page and given a priority in the search index that matches the helpfulness of a given field to the search results.
Key Performance Indicators
Unleashed Technologies also worked with NGAUS to establish the following Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to ensure the new website would align with the organization’s goals following launch:
- Improve conversion rate for new membership applications
- Improve conversion rate for renewals
- Increase email subscriptions
- Increase pages per session
- Increase all CTA clicks
Their lead designer was fantastic and clearly spelled out best practice. He gave us several resources to show what comparable websites were doing and why. The team understood how much the design could influence the UX. We had a great overall experience.
– Laura Roznovksy, Director of Membership and Marketing
Read the full review at Clutch.co
