4 Association Website Best Practices for Your 2019 Online Strategy | Updated for 2020

Looking to improve your website and make it a hub of industry knowledge and information for your members? Keeping up with internet trends can be tricky, and your association wants to stay in the know in order to improve website functionality and member satisfaction. Making sure your association’s website is performing at its peak is important if you want to give off a good online impression to members and interested audiences alike. And luckily for you, there are easy ways to practice great website care that can lead to more online success for your organization.

‍Improving your association’s website and keeping up with trends is as simple as following just a few best practices. That’s why here at Web Scribble, we’d like to show you the true potential of what you can do to your association’s website to make sure it stands out above the rest. We’ll talk about overall design, content placement improvements, and general choices you can make to spruce things up for website visitors.

1. Keep it simple

While fun design aspects like adding website sliders and dynamic graphics into your website sounds appealing, it has the ability to turn visitors off. Complex designs, while often aesthetically powerful, can take away from your association’s website and the information you have to offer visitors. If audiences are coming to your website looking for specific terms or data, they may be thrown off if your website design is too complicated.

‍Instead of going for the intense effects, it’s in your association’s best interest to opt for a simple website design that gets your mission and information across effectively. Ditch sliders and complicated graphics that clutter your website feed. They could be slowing down your browser for audiences, in addition to getting in the way of important news. Bringing back more white space to your association’s website can help audiences focus on your content. It’s a way to bring more attention to the actual content on your website- and a way to make the work you put into your content worthwhile. If you can stick to a design that is easy to navigate, but that still matches your association’s branding, you should be in the clear for increasing online audience engagement.

2. Content positioning: Think about it

When setting up your association’s website, paying attention to positioning your valuable offers and value drive call-to-actions is a make or break in terms of content engagement. It’s important to pay attention to how your website audience thinks and performs action on your website.

What are your visitors clicking on? What deals are they paying attention to, and vice versa what deals are getting ignored by watchful eyes? Consider placing your call-to-action material in places you know your visitors will see it. Placing pop up advertisements around content can help your offers come to life and almost jump off of your web page and into the minds of members. You should also consider placing offers where you know visitors will look most often.

Having content in your menu, your website sidebar, on your articles and blog posts, and in other highly trafficked areas can give you a better chance at engaging audiences. Strategically positioning your content is a best practice that also works to build up your content engagement and marketing efforts.

3. Micro-animating website function

As we said before, less can be considered more when it comes to website design. But if you’d still like to add some of that flare to your sit pages, micro-animation might be for you. Micro-animation is exactly how it sounds - small animated graphics that are set off when a specific function or path is set off on your website. Whether that’s subscribing to your association’s newsletter, clicking on a tab at the top of your web page, or whatever you set up to trigger your animations.

‍Micro-animations are great for adding an extra spark to your website without making things over the top. They cause less loading time problems and browser issues than typical, larger animations as well. You can set up micro-animations for any path of functions you choose, which is great for associations that want ultimate customization control over their website design. Consider incorporating micro-animations into your web design if you’re not entirely sold on a minimalistic design look.

4. Dynamic typography as decoration

And finally, we’d like to bring another element of design to the table to offer your association a more refined way to add creativity to your website without cluttering your information with over the top, flashy features. Selectively choosing the font and typeface you use on your website can go a long way in terms of aesthetically pleasing, simple design. Your association can choose fonts that create a statement and make visitors take notice without having to put much effort in at all. In fact, typography is great for associations designing their website on a budget. Pay attention to the fonts that you use and be sure to match them up with your association’s brand for the ultimate site design experience for your members.

‍Using these design and placement best practices, your association can keep its website at peak performance and wow audiences with your innovative and modern design features.