Transforming NAED: The Discovery Process
View Part 2: The UX Strategy >>
+Project & Client Summary
The National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED) is the resource for education, networking, advocacy, and research within the electrical distributor industry. The association managers over 70k users in multiple platforms. Platforms affecting this project overall included the following and also were part of upgrade and migration projects happening simultaneously:
- Association Management System (AMS): iMIS
- Content Management System (CMS): RiSE
- Learning Management System (LMS): Skillsoft
- Community Forum: Higher Logic
- Event Management System: Migration to eTouches / Aventri
- Single Sign-on SSO: Okta
+Role
I consulted with NAED to understand their business goals overall, assess their current online situation. I then created plans for how to apply their goals to their digital marketing, search engine optimization and user experience. This project demonstrates the overall process I used to assess multiple organizational problems, deliver solutions that accomplished shared goals within budget and primarily to deliver a better user experience (UX) to their members.
Additional partners and vendors included:
- Front-end Development Team: ClickRay Agency
- Hubspot API Integration: High Road Solutions Agency
- NAED Marketing Technologist
- NAED IS & Database Manager
+Problem Identification
NAED knew their members were unhappy with their website experience and the search experience but struggled to find a solution or move forward. The entire organization had been handicapped by dated technology and easily fell into a consistent set of band-aid fixes that continually jeopardized their long-term marketing and technology goals. The overall marketing tech stack was a legacy system that had not been upgraded in over 7 years. NAED felt hopeless, defeated and had no idea how to formalize a plan to fix these problems.
+Project Duration
Discovery: 3 – 4 Months
Implementation: 1.5+ years (with ongoing phases of optimization)
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+THE PROCESS
+Discovery
- Led workshops with product managers, member-facing employees and conducted interviews that uncovered a wealth of organizational problems that affected conversions, user experiences (UX) and customer experiences (CX)
- Utilized a deck of previously conducted market research from members and conducted market research with member-facing employees
- Initiated new research and feedback using Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, heatmapping and Hotjar
- Shadowed employees selling products or working with members to understand member consultations on education products and the entire customer experience
- Conducted research on audience intent, purchase intent and product lifecycles
- Led whiteboard workshops with senior leadership and MarTech team to uncover and document the overall strategy for the technology stack, prioritize and set goals
- Uncovered 1-year and 5-year goals on the overall approach and direction of the business and industry
- Utilized existing Google Analytics to understand overall site traffic and most-accessed content and website functions
- Compared sales data with sales process and evaluated how products were typically purchased, identified online cross-selling opportunities and ways to easily track user behavior online
- Conducted a heuristic evaluation on the website and organic search presence
- Conducted a content evaluation, audit and content assessment
WHEW! ; )
+ Goals & KPIs
#1 Goal: Help users find the RIGHT information at the RIGHT time
#2 Goal: Increase online downloads and purchases
I worked with NAED to establish their business goals through 4 months of discovery and then formalized these goals for their online presence. Here’s some other smaller goals that were also tackled:
- Identify where members found value online
- Fix organic search, site search and overall SEO enabling the members to find the right information as the right time
- Create content and reporting that gave insights/data into KNOWN user behaviors
- Utilize marketing automation and content strategy for email campaigns and reduce incessant, unplanned, generalized email blasts that frustrated the membership
- Apply a UX and content strategy that made users want to engage, purchase and find value in their membership so more digital products based on behaviors and data could be built and offered in the future
- Create a custom engagement funnel rather than a lead generation funnel
- Convert all forms to real-time data collection, conversions and trigger CRM and sales activity
+Assessment
NAED’s problems were not specific to UX and SEO but that was what they thought they needed to solve immediately. Solving for the content and search with Hubspot platform implementation actually involved all touchpoints and departments within the organization. Since the website, UX and search were my focus I created assessments to identify and improve these areas. I worked closely with the Marketing Technologist to weave these plans into his overall decoupled infrastructure plans.
+SEO and Content Strategy: An initial SEO inventory was conducted using Google Analytics, Moz and Screaming Frog along with a content strategy that involved repurposing existing content, identifying content gaps, creating new, targeted SEO copy that increased organic search for member engagement online, simplified user journeys for purchase paths/resource downloads and made significant improvements on content-driven search words within the industry. NAED.org previously had over 6,000 pages indexed by Google from as early as 2014 with a bounce rate of 88% and a membership exceedingly frustrated by the online presence.
NAED’s blog and newsletter had a very low readership and subscription (less than 40 members) and the content did not reflect what members needed. I created a custom editorial content calendar for the in-house marketing team to schedule communications with consistent messaging and themes throughout the content so a cadence of new content could be established with members. Much of the existing content was still relevant to members so I conducted a content audit and helped revamp existing materials. Videos were repurposed in new website galleries relevant to subject matter and placed near products that involved more research before purchase leading to a direct increase in YouTube views from direct traffic from the website.
+Brand: NAED’s brand had not been updated in years leaving the website looking very dated in the early 2000s. The brand’s red accent color overpowered the visual hierarchy and became overutilized leaving the user confused and overwhelmed with too many competing visuals and screaming buttons. NAED could not complete a rebrand prior to the website migration so I worked with a front-end development company ClickRay to customize templates with a transitional brand design. This design was created to work alongside the existing offline brand. The NAED red was downgraded to an accent color online and used primarily for the top-level navigation so users had a consistent guide for the most-used sections. This red bar was a cost-effective transitional solution that tied all the different online platforms and out-of-the-box styles to look like one unified online presence as much as possible for the end user.
A dark grey became the primary color to add more weight to the brand presence so it still felt grounded to its roots in the manufacturing industry. The homepage aimed to be inclusive, highlight relationship and networking opportunities and remind members their industry had global impact touching many industries.
+UX: NAED had multiple disconnected platforms and lacked a cohesive UX strategy between all platforms. User frustrations and lack of search ability led to increased phone assistance and chat to meet online needs. Additionally, the user journeys to purchase or download popular reports online were incredibly chaotic and relied on manual email blasts to members. Conversions from organic search began steadily increasing proving that members were finding the right content on their own time.
+Marketing Automation and Behavior Programming: Some business processes were slowly transitioning to automation in Hubspot between the CRM and user behaviors for residual downloads, survey participation management and annual participation in campaigns or awards.
+CRM and Engagement Funnel: NAED knew their members and industry and did not need to generate new leads with a sales funnel. The association needed to know what their most valuable leads were doing on the website so they could provide more value and engagement with their membership. I developed a custom Engagement Funnel that considered all product offerings in research, education and events. I modified Hubspot’s lead lifecycle reporting and created this custom engagement funnel strategy offline then programmed it in Hubspot to measure the behaviors and conversions of known lead activity based on NAED’s existing, offline scorecard criteria. Now Hubspot was working for NAED’s needs too!
+Budget & Proposals
After the assessment phase, I presented NAED with 2 options to solve their UX and SEO problems. Below are the assessment and rational documents to explain WHY, HOW and WHAT the recommended deliverables were along with costs associated with each approach. I like to give clients 1-3 options that usually include ways to solve their problems in existing platforms, adding on priority products that will give them the most immediate impact for their budget and a best-case scenario if budget allotment is unknown but a client is willing to invest in whatever it takes to modernize their presence for their users and sales.
- Option 1: Utilize Existing Platforms Approach
- Overhaul and redesign the existing website to achieve a better user experience within iMIS RiSE CMS/AMS and do an SEO clean-up manually with free tools and Google Analytics:
- Option 2: Website Migration and New Software
- Migrate the website into a new CMS and implement Hubspot for better SEO, content strategy and marketing automation.
- Hubspot Dashboard and Analytics Rationale
- NAED SEO Project Solution 1 & Rationale
- Visual Roadmaps: I also developed a visual roadmap of the MarTech infrastructure / decoupled technology stack that was in transition so all teams understood the year-long plans before beginning any work. Additionally I created a user experience overview of all the platform touchpoints and and logins for access within the decoupled system. This plan was designed in preparation for Okta single-sign-on to replace the iMIS login pages and functionality then eventually upgrade the AMS system to a new system.
>>View Part 2: The UX Strategy
+THE RESULTS
The biggest smile for me personally was when internal employees at NAED voiced their happiness with the refreshed, modern design aesthetic applied to their association and brand. The association website had a new suit and an online swagger! External members immediately started finding and utilizing new valuable resources that were included in their membership they could not previously locate on the website.
92
———-
SCORE ON WEBSITE.GRADER.COM
120%
———-
BLOG SUBSCRIPTION INCREASE
within 3 months
33%
———-
REDUCED SITE BOUNCE RATE
16%
———-
MONTHLY LOYALTY RATE INCREASE
50%
———-
INCREASED TIME ON SITE
from 2 minutes to 5 minutes
Upon launch in August 2018, the website delivered new and unknown leads through organic search that led to more online purchases; new referral partners discovered online through Hubspot; organic search became the leading source of sessions, engagement and conversion metrics over email, social, or traditional marketing efforts.
Post-launch, multiple sales and website analytics dashboards were created providing senior leadership easily viewable marketing and content efforts, predict incoming sales, discover new opportunities online for events and product sales, and track revenue for marketing budgets that led to purchases, engagement or downloads. An API integration with Hubspot allowed website analytics to show the behaviors of known members which increased content knowledge and actionable insights on every marketing campaign.
NAED is continuing to build upon this project and work towards an increasingly desirable online presence within their membership. The teams are now empowered with Hubspot’s free training and more seamless operations with customer-facing roles.
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Visit www.naed.org
The Curiosity Lab 