An innovative and fully integrated website & online community
Success achieved
Providing a top notch online user experience to members and stakeholders via an innovative website and online community, fully integrated with membership and events database.
- Website
- https://www.aija.org/en
- Project dates
May 2016 – January 2017
Project team
- Giuseppe Marletta, General Manager
- Roberto Raneri, Events Registration Administrator
- Anne Degimbe, Office Manager
- Christine Masure, Events Manager
- Sophie Miller, Events Administrator
Introduction
The International Association of Young Lawyers (AIJA), is offering outstanding international opportunities for young lawyers under 45 to network, learn and develop. There are several international associations of lawyers, but AIJA is unique because of the age limit and because it represents the interest of a specific segment of the legal market.
Because of the young age of our members, our Board decided last year to focus on ‘innovation’ on all fronts: we want to be THE innovative association for lawyers. This is reflected by the content of our events (just think that the AIJA 55th International Young Lawyers’ Congress of 2017 taking place in Tokyo will focus on Artificial Intelligence and projects); and by the tools we have put in place (or are still on the way) to make our members’ experience as valuable and effective as possible.
Discovery
In 2014 we started to work on a tailor-made CMS which incorporates our membership and events database. We launched the idea of building on our CMS a new website last spring, when we started to discuss with our members what they wanted and what our website was lacking at that time. Our previous website was built on Wordpress and had the following issues:
- It was impossible to customize the user experience
- There were very limited possibilities of connection with our membership and events’ registration database
- The member area was very limited and featured only some pdf documents accessible only to members and an online directory of our members
It was very hard to fit inside the previous Wordpress model our complex structure of
- one organization (AIJA) that
- organises more than 20 events every year in several parts of the world
- through the work of 20 working groups/commissions (and to make things more complicated one event is usually organised by more than one AIJA commission) and
- implemented through a cooperation between AIJA staff and a local organising committee
Also a lack of coordination between the website and all the administration processes resulted in a repetition of tasks where a change of law firm of one member for example had to be corrected in three different places.
The research phase was done on two parallel sides:
Members:
Staff:
Activities
The whole process took place from May 2016 until the end of January 2017. While members gave an initial input advising on their priorities, AIJA staff was the main player in the game.
Timeline of activities
Challenges
The process of the creation of this website was quite smooth and stress-free.
The planning phase was rather accurate: all players involved knew which were their responsibilities since the very beginning and timeframe was clear to all.
Key to this success was a great teamwork: AIJA staff, AIJA members and Tostaky staff worked together efficiently with clear objectives always in mind.
Achievements
Member experience
The experience on this new website is certainly overall more pleasant and customized.
The front-end website is mobile responsive and reads perfectly on any mobile devices. This is paramount for us as over 40% of our traffic today is coming from tablets and smartphones. A nice layout, a reduced number of pages and content and a simplified structure make the overall experience more enjoyable and direct to the point.
Once members log in, the system recognizes and displays their ‘AIJA history’ providing documents they might need and informing them about the upcoming events to which they are registered (including a countdown) or they could potentially be interested in.
Several members commented on the chat box “You no longer need your emails!”, as the interaction is immediate with other fellow AIJA members making networking, exchange of views and business just easier!
The business referral dashboard is the “cherry on the cake” and, as someone commented, is a solid gold idea. We just bring people who are in constant need to have partners for their cross-national transactions together. A simple tool which represents a true added value to AIJA membership benefits.
Achievement of objectives
The different parts of the new website (front-end plus extranet) are delivering good value to members.
The perfect integration with our CMS, the development of which we started in 2014, allows AIJA staff to target people, identify weaknesses and strengths, revenue resources and simplify all the on and offline work, is just a great advantage for members, events attendees, volunteers and permanent staff.
Having an AIJA-related one stop shop for our members:
This is how it all started. “Let’s provide our members with an online tool where they can access all their AIJA history”. And from this starting point we have developed the entire concept of MyAIJA and the online community. Members have access to everything they need for planning their upcoming AIJA events and networking every day from their desk.
Members' portal on the AIJA website
Creating an online community:
AIJA is an association which works thanks to the sense of belonging and the community which allows people to make friends, even before starting to do business. Can we replace face to face contacts and friends by an online community? The clear answer is NO! But technology offers us the opportunity to bring people together when they are physically distant, to let them see what AIJA is up to and follow (and join) new initiatives. Through integration of social media, instant messaging, birthdays of the day, the business related forum, the online community is now a reality. Of course this aspect of our new website will have to be adapted and remain flexible as to allow new technologies and social media to jump in and new members’ wishes to be satisfied.
Better mobile responsiveness:
Our previous website was simply not responsive at all, while it is very easy today to browse our website from mobile devices.
Targets & Statistics
Statistics show that our new website is attracting more users with an overall excellent performance.
As you can see on a comparison between 2016 and 2017
Audience Overview 2016 / 2017:
- Sessions have increased by 38%
- Users have increased by 29%
- Page views have increased by 46%
- Percentage of new sessions have increased by 26%
- While the average duration per session has remained stable.
Comparative data 2016 / 2017
Financials
The overall cost of the new AIJA website in 2016/2017, including the extranet ‘MyAIJA’, is €35,000.
Considering the nature of our objectives we do not expect any revenues coming directly from the website and the investment made. It is here about improving the members’ experience and potentially contributing to attract new members and events’ attendees. Of course a good digital presence, including a website, is key to attract new members and show credibility to stakeholders.
What would we do differently?
The only element which we would do differently is having a longer time for debugging and testing. We went live when a few bugs where still there. This didn’t have an impact on the overall project and users probably have not noticed anything but an extra week of testing and preparation would have made the whole project even better.
Feedback & Testimonials
“I believe AIJA’s website deserves the Best Association Website award because it is driven, poignant, fresh, useful and colorful. Not only it enlightens the spirit of AIJA (which is quite unique) but benefits its members to get much more involved, connected and follow up the latest trends of the association. The website is a true bridge to advance cross-cultural understanding between members and other participants in the legal profession and a mirror of the dynamism, exchange and core of the values that AIJA seeks.”
Pablo Vinageras Cobielles, Counsel at Garrigues, Barcelona
“The MyAIJA part especially is useful and fun. Easy to use also on my mobile and therefore always with me since the new website has been launched. Nice feature to see how many days to go until my next event and like to see the updates so I know AIJA is always on the move. The chat options with other members makes for many opportunities to connect.”
Martine Hoogendoorn, Partner at Doorn en Keizer B.V. Amsterdam
“Great new website, self-explanatory and definitively user-friendly. MyAIJA feature is awesome – and the business referral dashboard is a solid gold idea”
François Barre, Partner at AzamDarley Associés, Paris
“I love the new website: fonts and colours are all very appealing. I love to see who will join the upcoming events on MyAIJA and the chat notifying you about new messages even if you are offline”.
Chiara Caliandro, Associate at De Berti Jacchia, Milan
“AIJA’s website is neat, easy to navigate and informative. Moreover its “member section” is very practical, allowing for smooth cross-referrals, contacts look-up and exchange of views among members. Thumbs up”.
Xavier Costa, Associate at Roca Junyent, Barcelona
“I like the fresh and modern look of the site. And since association membership is about continued interaction and friendship between members, the new MyAIJA section very well reflects this – with the various communication platforms, interactive map with members’ location, indication of who is logged in, easy directory searching. The opportunity to see a member’s personal history of attendance in AIJA events is a nice bonus.”
Tomas Rybar, Partner at Cechova & Partners, Bratislava
Wider impact
The main activity of AIJA has always been organising events and conferences for legal professionals. This means that for several years the only benefit that AIJA was offering to members paying their dues was a reduction on registration rates to access events (beyond the access to a networking platform of course).
Without changing the nature of the association, we have been trying for the last three years to expand the range of benefits offered to members. Many of these relate to online opportunities: free webinars on hot legal topics, the above-mentioned business referral dashboard, possibility to network online.
In this respect the new website, and in particular MyAIJA, represents for AIJA members a significant increase of value of their membership. This is we believe an excellent opportunity which makes AIJA special and adds effectiveness and value to the already prestigious membership offered.
