The Benefits of a Website’s Robust Back-Office

When designing a website, a lot of time and energy goes into how the website will look to the public. Often times, the website team will focus on questions like:

• Will it match the Business and Trade Associations’ brand
• Should it incorporate a news feed
• How about top and side navigation
• What shade of color should be used and is that font really what we want

Don’t get me wrong, it’s very important to spend time thinking strategically when designing the public side of your website, after all this is what the ‘world’ will see. But what about the back-end and/or back-office? Some questions to consider when you’re building and/or selecting an administrative solution for your Association website:

• Would you like to change content and update graphics on-the-fly?
• Do you need to process online applications?
• If you are currently processing online applications, is the process secure?
• Do you want to have an online member profile?
• What data is important for the member profile?
• Would you like to offer your members secure dues payment processing online?
• Would you like to post events and take online registrations?
• At these events, would you like to promote daily activities that will be take place such as golf, wine tasting, courses, etc.?
• Would you like to have a gallery that showcases images from past events?
• Are you interested in keeping all of your member data in a database that you can easily sort and manage?
• Are you missing key reporting functionality that you end up doing manually, taking up most of your day?

If you answered “yes” to any of these, then take control of your website back-office! A well designed back-office or administrative system functions seamlessly, processing online applications, creating unique member IDs and usernames, and integrating secure and convenient payment processing options with vendors.

By creating a back-office that streamlines the administrative functions of the Association, you free up your staff’s time, allowing them to focus on the Association mission and recruit new members. Once you have the back-office functionality in place, then you can think of how you want the website to look. It is much like building the foundation of a house – the stronger the foundation the longer it will last.