Your website is one of your most important assets as it’s the primary way many of your members interact with your organization.
Serving up the right content in the right way and staying in the loop with association website design trends in 2023 should be a top priority in order to maximize your online presence and continue connecting with your membership base.
This round-up article details the must-know web design trends this year based on an analysis of the top-performing membership websites and site design trends over the past few years.
Let’s jump right in.
Web content used to be all about good storytelling. But today, associations are designing their website to drive the story of their organizations and motivate their audience to share that story as well.
Gone are the days of putting stale carousels in prime real estate space on your website. Today, your website should be big and bold with visual explanations that render quickly across devices. It should inspire your web visitors to share the story, value, and mission of your organization.
Here are some ways you can get other people to tell your story for you:
Here is an example from one of our clients. Notice how they use a strong background visual to highlight one of their members, tell a story, and share the impact they have on their community?
Visual explanations and story driving also keep users on your website longer, which boosts your SEO performance and helps to convert web visitors into members or constituents.
One of the most vital association website design trends this year is the increased focus on accessibility in terms of user experience and removing usability barriers.
Accessibility is particularly important when you consider what the next generation of members expects from your website.
Younger users and your future membership base, constituents, and volunteers expect:
Website accessibility is also about removing barriers for individuals with disabilities by making adjustments like:
Read More: The Ultimate Guide to Websites for Associations
Events are a cornerstone for many associations and nonprofits.
Here are ways organizations have been highlighting events and inspiring new attendees this year:
Award-winning association websites bridge technology seamlessly.
As you know, associations today rely on a number of systems to run operations. But your members expect one, unified experience.
This is especially true for younger members and for the next generation of young professionals.
Here is how to create an integrated and fluid online user experience:
It’s human nature to follow the crowd. We may peer into an empty restaurant and conclude the food must not be good. Or we may choose to buy a more popular item on a site over one that’s less reviewed or only has a few purchases.
Marketers, psychologists, and sociologists call this magnetic force “social proof.”
In 2021, one of the most impactful association website design trends we saw was the relentless use of social proofs. The social proofing “tools of the trade” are known to boost conversions and help organizations achieve their goals.
Effective social proof strategies include:
No longer can you simply publish a whitepaper, blog post, or news article on your website and expect your content to be received by many. Associations and nonprofits are no exception.
To get your audience to visit your website and read your content over your competitors, you must create and consistently use a solid Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy.
This means producing the right content and then optimizing your delivery and information sharing.
Long-form, information-packed content and high-value resources that are easily browsable content drive the best engagement – and better SEO today.
Then you should be promoting content across social media platforms, through email, video, podcasts, and other marketing channels to drive website traffic and get your web pages indexed and ranked in search engines.
Good SEO requires some basic structural elements that can’t be skipped, such as filling in the right metadata on all of your web pages with good primary and/or secondary keywords. A page’s metadata includes the SEO title, description tag, H1 and H2 headers, header hierarchy, image alt text, and more.
You also need to link to other relevant pages on your site as well as external web pages when appropriate. Internal links help bots and users more easily find and understand other pages on your site. These are all considered “on-page SEO” strategies.
“Off-page SEO” is also super important. In particular, you need to get links from authoritative domains/sites in your industry to your website. These are called backlinks.
If you’re producing solid content, backlinks happen naturally over time. But you can speed up the process of obtaining strong backlinking to boost your SEO through strategic outreach campaigns.
Impressions are up but click-through rates are down for association websites.
This means that associations are producing more and better content that’s being seen on Google and other search engines. But users are not clicking on this content as much as they are engaging with other relevant content.
To increase click-through rates, associations and nonprofit organizations are increasingly prioritizing their on-page SEO by giving Google targeted and engaging metadata about the content on their website.
Optimizing your metadata to increase click-through rates requires you to dig into your Google Search Console insights each month to find pages on your site that have high impressions but low CTR. Then, check your competition and update your metadata based on what’s working and what’s not.
It’s not often that Google announces an update to its SEO algorithm in advance. In fact, it’s never happened until now.
In June, Google finished rolling out the Page Experience Update. Associations that understand the value of ranking organically on Google and providing a good user experience are updating and/or completely redesigning their website accordingly to pass Google’s latest update.
The algorithm determines rankings by evaluating whether or not your web pages deliver an enjoyable experience to searchers based on several page experience metrics including:
The algorithm also introduces three new metrics called the Core Web Vitals that look at the loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability of a web page.
You can measure your Core Web Vitals here. You can also connect your Google PageSpeed Insights API key to Screaming Frog website crawler to get real details and recommendations on a page-by-page basis to tackle Core Web Vitals issues.
Whether you just redesigned your website or have an older site with limited capabilities, it’s more important than ever to keep tabs on the latest design trends for your association or nonprofit website.
Not only are people spending more time online, but the competition is fierce as purpose-driven organizations strive to find better ways to engage with current and potential members online.
So what makes a great website in 2023?
Great nonprofit and professional association websites inspire people to tell your story for you. They’re simple and intuitive, accessible and usable, and SEO-friendly. The best association website designs also highlight events and social proofs like testimonials.
In the future, we’ll likely see SEO become even more of a focus for associations and nonprofits as well as the increased adoption of simple, “modern minimalist” website designs.
Check out our Ultimate Guide to Websites for Associations to explore the twelve web elements you need to engage and convert users to members.