Leadership within an organization usually comes from all walks of life. More often than not, web technology is foreign to many clubs and organizations. Building a feature rich online experience these days is omni-important and towards the top of the list of building an effective organization. Marketing Sherpa data shows major shifts in the tactics used to attract and maintain effective organizations and communication with most focusing on website and online activities. The typical leadership is in place for 1 year leaving very little time to implement and produce an effective website. Turnkey solutions are a must and provide a group an easy path for quick effective implementation of key web initiatives.
In most cases, a group’s membership is always changing and dynamic with new members, boards of directors and leadership changes on a year-by-year basis. It is important to be dynamic and provide fresh ideas and momentum to the group. Building and maintaining a consistent online presence with new people with little web skills is extremely challenging if not impossible. Web technology has evolved to be able to build a content managed system (CMS) that enables a layman user to build, view, navigate, change, administer, provide security, and grow with a group. A computer user with typical Microsoft Word skills can now administer a CMS website effectively.
Groups with a website want it to have functionality that make the job of running the club or organization more effective. Features a group looks for include helping them to improve the group’s image, developing recruitment and retention, Communicate, share calendar and activities, manage administration, provide data security and availability, have ecommerce capabilities, as well as help manage events, volunteers, and promotions.
A club or organization being very dynamic can change over relatively short periods of time based on changing direction. This requires any system to provide flexibility and change with the group. The ability to change, grow, and evolve with the organization is an important need to be met. Websites can be very scalable to design/branding, functionality and features.