New website – a new digital home for the British Pest Control Association
Success achieved
Enhancing engagement by developing a new digital home for our members and the sector.- Website
- https://www.bpca.org.uk
- Project dates
- October 2016 – June 2017
Project team
- Ben Massey, Marketing and Communications Manager
Tools & Systems
The new website features a range of methods of membership management all pulled through from the CRM. These include:
- Affiliate registration – for individuals
- Mailing lists and contact preferences (including address/ opt in/outs)
- Find a pest controller (organisational profile) – uses a postcode zone search facility, not just a radius method. This suits the membership requirements more specifically, e.g. some guys do not operate in three of four districts of Derbyshire
- Check a member – a user can type the first 4 letters of a member to check the organisation is a member (backwards referral search)
- Referral totalizer (in development) the number of impressions, hits and enquiries each member has had (per annum) also appears on the record of permission based contacts
- Main contacts can manage their organisational record – what individuals are affiliated to their company and give them a role (e.g. training contact/ sales contact).
- My Bookings (for Events/Training/ Products)
- Automated Job listings (with approval and credits for none members)
- Permission based contacts at membership organisations
- Intranet pages for staff/executive board
- News and Blog (Disqus). Readers are able to comment on all news and blog articles (approval required) through disqus integration
- Enhanced listings - Membership benefits. Increasing the value of perception for each type of membership has been made a lot easier by the benefits pages. The membership area also hosts a duplicate that allows access to each benefit through permissions. History and staff are also examples how we have recoded the listings module for greater personalistion
- Social media integration. Members can comment via disqus, or appear on feeds from their social media accounts (approval required)
- Permission based documents/library
The website also features integration with the following third part websites:
- Business shield (Legal guidance for SKD LTD)
- LMS system Moodle (online training and CPD quizzes)
- Print Cloud (promotional materials design, printed/downloaded)
Introduction
Feedback from members demonstrated that the Association had outgrown its existing website in terms of its design, functionality and user experience. The previous site had been in place since 2011 and had become tired, cluttered and unfit for its main purpose as a membership website.
The existing site had a high level of search traffic with people looking for a local pest professional or pest advice (~750,000 per annum). However, the member engagement through the website was very low so a number of processes were not online due to the lack of confidence in the system.
Functionality added to the site over the years meant navigation had become difficult, access to information was complicated and engagement levels were falling as a result. Even the content that was driving the high organic search results was starting to look tired. Worse still, some of the content in deeper pages was out of date.
The site was mobile ready but not mobile first.
The BPCA website needed to offer an intuitive, user-friendly, easily-accessible information for:
- Members
- Potential members
- Researchers
- Learners
- Member of the public
The current website could not deliver a positive user experience to all those stakeholders.
In the digital first age of membership organisations BPCA had member benefits in development that could not have been delivered with the impact required.
Discovery
Market research
We spoke to our membership base who said they wanted investment in their online presence to ensure adequate representation of their professional reputation.
Staff team roundtable
Team meetings were used to discuss common member problems. These meetings also highlighted area which were not accessible enough on a phone.
Developed stakeholder personas
To identify the requirements of different stakeholders, sixteen different user personas were created by the staff team and selected members of the Executive Board.
Analytics
Problem pages (high bounce, low traffic) were flagged for reworking. Hero content was identified and flagged to be brought to the front of the new development.
Content audit
Every page on the existing site was examined for potential SEO, readability and branding conformity through the use of a compressive Google Sheet cross referenced with analytics data.
Scrapbooking
Websites in and outside the membership sector were discussed with the staff team and members to identify features which could or should be prioritised in a new build.
The member (and non-member) research also revealed that the new website had to be professional, functional, simple, but most importantly, bold.
Objectives
- Maintain high traffic levels into its ‘find a pest controller’ tool
- Develop the integration in the CRM for more automated/self-service processes to enhance data quality
- More “self-service” through a visual design, enhanced UX and mobile first approach
- Increase conversions to non-membership income such as training, publications and advertisements (e.g. jobs)
- Move from quantity (high traffic, high bounce rates) to quality (less traffic, more conversions)
Measuring these objectives:
Improvements in the number of returning visitors, bounce rate, session duration and page views were set out as areas where measurable objectives could be set.
Activities
Design
For any organisation, a website is your twenty-first century equivalent of a shop front. It has to entice people inside so we can engage with them and show them what we have to offer. For a trade association, a website needs to do more. It needs to feel like a home away from home for your members – somewhere they are happy to be and call their own.
This starts with the design. A modernised look and user-friendly style were essentials for the BPCA site. Our previous site was starting to be unwieldy, with corridors and rooms spidering out into the garden. We were losing the test of time. Nothing short of a complete rethink of the design would keep our cyberhome fit-for-purpose for years to come.
In the same way that many people who are house-hunting have a Pinterest board of ‘beautiful homes’, we had an enormous folder of screenshots from other sites we liked. When you start talking about a site’s ‘impressive use of line spacing’ then you know your geeky scrapbook of ideas is ready and your new website is going to take over your life.
Our chosen developers lead the way in membership creative design, so after we’d spent some time talking through what BPCA and its members needed, they came back to us with a look and feel that we thought represented all of us.
Design is not just about looking pretty – a good design helps you navigate to the pages you want quickly, encourages people to read more information and stick with a site for longer.
For about a month, we went back and forward, making sure that we’d got the look and usability right. We showed them our favourite pages of PPC magazine for inspiration. We pushed for more colours, more images, a bolder expression of what BPCA is. After all, it’s not every day you get to design the home of a seventy-five-year-old association.
While design is subjective, there are some universal rules of design that (almost) everyone will like. That’s where working with professionals helps. They know what works intuitively and through experience. Fashions change on the web faster than the housing market – however, we think we’ve found something that will look and feel contemporary and usable for years to come.
Choosing the appliances
Now that we knew what our site would look like, it was time to look at the appliances (or, in website terms – modules).
The modules we chose would allow us to do important things that go beyond showing text and images on a page. They’d allow us to have bookable events and training, they’d be how we integrated our A-Z of pests, staff profiles and show our history and achievements, as well as dictating how members would engage with us.
Some of our bigger appliances
News and blog
One of our favourite new appliances is the news module. It allows us to quickly post beautiful news and blog updates so the site always feels alive with content. We wanted BPCA to be your number one place for industry, sector and business articles, as well as give members a platform to tell the world what you’ve been doing. We’ve added a comments section, so users can now interact with the news we publish.
A-Z of pests
This module allows us to have a searchable database of pests, where the general public can find independent pest advice. All the advice gently recommends appointing a professional pest controller and allows you to jump straight into the find a pest controller tool. Now the
A-Z has more pictures, is fully searchable and works well on a mobile phone or tablet.
Member area
The improved members’ area provides an ‘at a glance’ view of all the information you need to know, as well as present links to information and tools for your business. You can manage your communication preferences and listing on ‘Find a Pest Controller’ here too.
Training and events
These modules let us have searchable training and events hubs so people can see what’s coming up in their area and get involved more easily than ever before. Our training is broken down in tabs, so you can find the information about a programme quicker.
Jobs
BPCA has always been the place to go for pest control jobs. Now with our new jobs module, it’s easier than ever to find a job or post a free job advert. It is free for members who also benefit from additional personalisation. Non-members incur a charge.
Getting ready to move
The problem with any house move is you realise how much stuff you’ve managed to accumulate over the years.
You could just throw all your stuff in boxes and put it back up roughly where it was in the old home – but what you’ll find is that your belongings don’t quite look right in the new space. More than this, lots of different people have added to the stuff in the house over the years, so nothing necessarily harmonises like it should. And obviously, just because you liked something back when you got it, it doesn’t mean it’s right for your home.
Over 600 pages of copy were rewritten, condensed and moved
There’s no point in having a good design if your content is not up to scratch. We challenged every sentence on the old site, discarding what was no longer relevant and upcycled anything that needed a new lease of life.
Spring cleaning in cyberspace is tricky. Change too much, too quickly and you risk being punished by search engines and users struggling to find the information they used to have to hand. For us, that meant revisiting a lot of legacy content.
2,000+ redirects put in place
The problem with moving an organisation is that people might struggle to find you. We literally looked back across two years worth of website visits and made sure that anywhere anyone had found us would still link to an equivalent page on the new site.
Again, search engines are the enemy here. Without doing this (very dull) work, there was a chance that BPCA could have disappeared from the internet completely when we moved. With huge websites like nhs.uk, gov.uk, bbc.co.uk and council authorities linking to us, plus hundreds of thousands of organic Google referrals at stake, it was worth getting it right first time.
Hundreds of new stock images selected and edited
Just because it looked good in your Victorian cottage, doesn’t mean it’ll look right in your new modern townhouse. We secured stock, created new callouts, and furnished the site with all the shiny new things you’d expect from a professional trade association’s digital home. After all, the better we look, the better our members look.
Imagery is an incredibly important part of website work. Good stock images instantly reassures people that they’re in the right place, enhances an organisation message and, if done right, tells a story itself.
Proof, test, repeat
Moving home is a collaborative job. Staff colleagues, professional contacts and members of the Board were all given a metaphorical paint brush and feather duster. Before hitting the go button, we put time and effort into making sure everything worked as intended and that the new content was properly checked over. With over 100,000 words of copy this was no small task.
Everyone knows that half the point of a housewarming party is for your nearest and dearest to cast an appraising eye on your new space – and when you’re expected a good 70,000 visitors in your first month, you’ve really got to pull out all the stops. Nothing draws traffic to a site more than a new launch, so we needed to be sure we were putting our best foot forward for the big day.
Moving day and getting settled
No matter how well you prepare, something is bound to go wrong when you’re in. Something that was working perfectly on your last visit, has mysteriously stopped working now you have picked up the keys. The smoke alarm beeps in the night and nobody knows why. No matter how hard you try, you can’t change the time on the cooker. The family dog just will not get on with the neighbour’s cat.
A website is no different. Error messages that you have never seen before pop-up. Things that used to work with the old site won’t play nicely with the new one. You find a mistake that you (and everyone else on your team) has managed to miss during the last three months of testing.
You prioritise the bugs list, call up everyone involved and tick them off one at a time. Oh, and you’ll always need your credit card to hand for something in that first month.
Further developments
It is a couple of weeks after the moving vans have left. You’re sitting on your sofa and finally relaxing a little. Then, all of a sudden, a little voice in your head says “what about granite worktops in the kitchen?” or “maybe I should paint the bathroom?”. Now you’ve moved in, the real work begins.
We’ve already got plans (big and small) for improving the website and giving members even more value from the site. Here’s just a little sneak peek…
Profile pages
With the new referral tool will come organisational profile pages. We’ll start by rolling them out for all Servicing Members, and then if there’s interest, pages for M&D and Consultant Members too.
PPC Online
We love the paper copy of the magazine arriving on our desks, and we won’t be changing that anytime soon. What we will be doing is giving it a digital home on our website so we can reach even more people in the sector, and track it.
Find a pest controller
It’s one of our biggest membership benefits for Servicing Members, having dished out the equivalent of £16m worth of referrals last year alone. We’re going to make it even better. Senior has been developing a new application that we think will literally ‘put our members on the map’ – watch this space.
Innovation
The website was produced through a persona approach where we worked with our CMS supplier to identify all the types of users that would use the website, and adjust our design/sitemap accordingly.
It important to note that we were not prepared to move forward with a basic design, and we pushed our design agency to give us a bold design (we think this is rather innovative) with quality features which resulted in a product, which we feel is great value compared to what is out there.
The website already features a wealth of innovative and creative content which is previously noted, all aimed at specific personas. However, personas have been reactivated to introduce even more features.
Over the next two months’ new features being added include:
- Print cloud for members which uses templates BPCA has built and offers a download only or print and post option from a tendered supplier
- An enhanced ‘find a pest controller’ tool which enables a full profile of the member company, and also shows on their members’ area how many impressions they have had
Within the next 6 months, SSO integration with Moodle for CPD activities to automate directly into the CRM are also being included.
Refreshingly, the project was ‘sponsored’ by a nominated executive board member so in between board meetings, the team did have a real person to raise issues/challenges with.
Challenges
Designing something for multiple stakeholders (professional pest control and end-users)
- Using persona based research and highly targeted pages that focus on a specific website user. We never complicate a page by going too broad with the information on our pages
- Consult often with the key stakeholders. Work out what they use and how. Provide that in the clearest possible format.
Working with multiple supplier that work in different (and sometime contradictory) ways
- Clearly set the expectations to each supplier (in writing and in person)
- Bring everyone together for project meetings so everyone appropriate is in the loop
- Have one central project coordinator from BPCA overseeing work on all sides of the table.
Achievements
The website to date has met all of its objectives. And further developments are currently being finalised to complete the project before the end of the year.
We are aware that our key objective for the immediate future is search. BPCA did expect to see search go down given the amount of rewriting and cutting of pages in the sitemap, which has happened – however, within an ultra-competitive referral marketplace (including trusted trader for example, big companies and other trade associations) BPCA has to think innovatively to return to circa 600,000 UK sessions per year.
Our new marketing and communications strategy and associated content and communications plan will drive search and referral statistics for our members.
The membership experience was a critical element of the new website.
Our objective was for all the content in the member area to be about ‘them’ i.e. relevant to the user. An example might be regional communications/news, level of development in the learning pathway and/or the type of ‘role’ the user has for their organisation (e.g. sales and marketing contact, recruitment contact). News feeds are based on permission levels for deep personalisation, and noticeboards also have relevant personalised information for each type of member.
CRM integration is all personal and managed by the user for efficient ‘membership management’.
Some of the new/revived CMS features for members’ presence on the website include:
- The ‘Find a Pest Controller’ tool – an important and highly popular facility that enables consumers to find a BPCA member in their area – has been upgraded and expanded.
- A newly extended A-Z pest directory is another major attraction for consumers – delivering valuable, trusted advice on every pest, the signs of an infestation and what to do about it.
- Member profile pages provide information on each company, its services and specialisms along with direct contact details. In dev – due Autumn 2017.
- Companies can customise and update their own pages remotely and, because the website is so busy, the facility is expected to become an important sales tool.
- The news and blog section delivers richer, more useful content that will help raise the profile of members in a new format designed to drive more customers their way.
- The members’ area has been improved in a bid to ensure every company allied to the BPCA is getting the most out of their membership.
- The website is now packed full of useful links, documents to download, CPD quizzes and technical support. Members can also check the number of referrals and profile views they’ve received and keep track of training activities and forthcoming events.
- The availability of forthcoming training and education programmes has been made clearer and the jobs board – listing vacancies throughout the sector – has been improved.
Since the website has launched (in July 2017), it has seen:
- Double the number of returning visitors from 16.2% to 30.4%
- Witnessed a drop-in bounce rate from 81% to 55%
- Average session duration increased by 121% from 58 seconds to over 2 minutes
- Readers are looking at over 1 page more on average, an increase of 69% (1.56 previously up to 2.65 since launch)
However, it is important to note that this is a very short window to reflect in, and going forward we will evaluate performance against these objectives to measure ongoing success of the site.
The website is handling significantly less traffic than previous with a drop off of over 40% in terms of users, however the pages in which traffic was recruited from have been redeveloped with the technical team to ensure the search rankings will return/improve over a longer period of time.
Financials
Our budget for the whole project was £35,000 and with the recent addition of the print cloud, we are set to end up with a total spend of £36,500.
What would we do differently?
Understand the development cycles of all suppliers early on in the process so that we could predict how best to direct resources.
We should have split our project into distinct phases from the beginning. Instead we tried to do too much too quickly, dividing our focus. Now we’re adding features to the site as smaller future developments rather than trying to deliver massive overhauls.
Feedback & Testimonials
“I’ve just checked the website out on my phone and also my laptop. It’s great to see it works seamlessly across both units. I actually won’t need to use my laptop for it now which is ideal. Straight away the new site gives us as an Association a much better profile for new and existing members and end users. Well done to the team in delivering this!”
Chris Corbett, Aderyn (member company)
“I am very happy to inform you I have a Pest Control Officer starting Monday 11 September. This has only been possible through your good efforts and the BPCA Jobs Board. One CV I received was from a Pilipino man working in Saudi Arabia. Just shows you the BPCA is on the world stage.”
Iain Urquhart, Advanced Pest Management (member company)
“My favourite bit on the new website is how easy it is for a customer to find a pest controller near to them. I love how much information is accessible to us and allows us to connect with BPCA very easily (if we have concerns or queries). We benefit from new business, and ensuring we remain compliant, especially with forever changing laws and regulations - BPCA is very good at informing us of important changes.
The new website is a much better window for pest control, it looks professional and almost makes pest control seem very normal as to not scare people, it is a very genuine representation of our industry.”
Laura Nangreave, Bristol Pest Controller (member company)
“Congratulations to all at BPCA on the new website. I really like the clean and clear graphics, simple navigation, easy to read and well organised information. I do remember having to spend so much time on the existing site trying to find snippets of information which now take no time at all.
I was also impressed by how you now present your magazine online by article. Finally, I cannot comment without saying how I especially enjoyed the section on CEPA and the CEPA surgeries which I’m sure will lead to a lot less confusion! Well done … and stay on that track!”
Roland Higgins, Director of the Confederation of European Pest Management Association
“BPCA's new website not only demonstrates solid design discipline, it also places functionality front and centre. A lot of thought has gone into presenting content in a fluid and legible way, and in a way that parallels the mode of BPCA's print offering. The website exemplifies page layout as a vehicle for content, not just as a showcase of superficial style.”
Ken Davidson, IGD Design
Wider impact
The new site is designed to establish a professional reputation for the UK professional pest control sector. The new design delivers simpler navigation and enhanced response through mobile devices – now the most popular method of visiting the site.
bpca.org.uk has been developed to fit into the new marketing strategy of ensuring seamless integration between all online and offline material, but most importantly gives greater opportunity for the organisation (and members) to demonstrate professionalism, enhance profile and ultimately increase profits.
Moving around the site now feels more intuitive, the branding – while still reflecting BPCA material – has been made more vibrant and the pages are less cluttered.
Training and education remains a vital part of the overall strategy and the site contains a vast resource of information and advice for public reference.
An important objective of the re-design was to drive home the message that membership of the organisation delivers assurance of professionalism – which is where BPCA believe this site really succeeds.
Within the membership, the office has been inundated with compliments for the new website, as well as more ideas to develop the space further. The website has also been a key catalyst in recruiting new members who want to be part of the community in which the web space represents.
