Enhancing the Member Experience Through the Member Portal

by Towsif Nasor

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, the role of an association’s member portal seems more essential than ever. Association professionals have experienced firsthand how these portals can serve as the primary medium for member engagement. If implemented correctly, these tools can not only facilitate communication, but also help provide resources and provide a starting point of engagement. Unfortunately, most member portals are not implemented in a way that supports membership engagement. This article explores the member portal, how they are used today, and some ideas for how we can improve their use moving forward.

​User Experience and Design
“It’s all about the member experience.” How many times do we hear this phrase from many different association professionals? One of the most noticeable strengths of the modern member portal is their focus on helping create the ideal member experience. Many associations have adopted interfaces and systems that are easy to use. During configurations, association staff work to set up these member portals in a manner that makes it straightforward for members to find the resources they may need. These resources tend to be event details, research libraries, products, and network opportunities. There is still a consistent gap between responsiveness across different devices, and bridging that gap, takes work and troubleshooting. With the popularity of cellular devices, member portals claim to be mobile friendly and these can often lack in certain areas. Whether it is text size, the way a column on a specific page displays, or the default visual representation of an accordion text box, members run into issues causing their experience to falter. Improving these designs to ensure a member experience that is seamless should become more of a priority.

Personalization and Engagement
Associations are increasingly trying to leverage data analytics to offer personalized experiences to their members, and align the needs of their members with their strategic initiatives. To do this, they ask members to keep their account information up to date. Many platforms tend to take the user directly to their account information when they log in. Instead of logging in, and being taken to an area of the platform where members are prompted to engage with other members, they are redirected to a page that highlights their name, address, organization and other information. It is understandable the importance to keep relevant data up to date, however, it is important to note that when members log in to other engagement platforms, they are shown content that is relevant and customized to them. If they need to update their personal information, they can do so in the account settings. It is okay to prompt the user to update their information once in a while, but, members find less value when they fail to see content that aligns with their interest and professional needs. In an ideal world, all member portals would improve in personalization capabilities and help predict member needs more accurately. With more advanced AI and machine learning algorithms, we could see significant improvement on how members are able to interact with the member portal.

Integration and Accessibility
Another challenge associations face are ensuring that all areas of websites are easily accessible and user friendly. Associations today utilize multiple separate systems to help support their processes in different areas. Because of this, it is important to ensure that the member portal is configured in such a way that it offers value in helping enhance the user experience. This can be a simple matter of implementing a single sign on and attempting to improve interoperability between the platforms utilized. The utility of multiple systems that are not integrated with one other can bring negative impact to the user experience, and also cause the overall view of the member profile, where so much useful data resides, to become unreliable.
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Conclusion
The member portal plays a crucial part in helping define the member experience. While there are a lot of notable strengths in designs and functionalities available today, there is room for enhancements in how these portals are implemented. As the association space continues to evolve, focusing on these areas will not only improve overall member experience, but also help boost engagement, which will be helpful in fostering an interactive community that is vibrant, and hopefully also help member retention long term. Association professionals should continue to contribute to this evolution, and help ensure that these portals continue to meet and hopefully exceed member expectations.