Case study: NAFSA: Association of International Educators

No Longer Frustrating and Out-of-Date, the New NAFSA.org Becomes a Top-Ranked Member Benefit

The Challenge:

For more than five decades, NAFSA: Association of International Educators has promoted international education and provided professional development opportunities to the field. With its core mission of providing networking, career advancement, professional development and advocacy for almost 10,000 international members in 3,500 countries, the association recognized that its website could provide a powerful and efficient platform to serve member needs. In 2004, having completed multiple redesign efforts with consistently low member satisfaction ratings and internal complaints about the inflexible, counter-intuitive design of its site, NAFSA turned to Siteworx. "We were looking for a company that understood the user experience and had a strong design background, but we wanted the development side to be strong too," states Alex Traugott, then Web Manager at NAFSA.

The Siteworx Approach:

Working closely with the NAFSA team, Siteworx applied its six-step methodology of collaborative site creation: discovery, design, development, quality assurance, deployment and review. Key to the process is that technical managers, user experience practitioners and designers are involved from beginning to end. This significantly mitigates the risk of designing a site that is visually appealing but does not work for the user. What's more, because technical managers are involved from the outset, clients receive total disclosure of the complete cost and time implications of their design choices.

The Result:

The new nafsa.org utilizes the Axiom? content management system to allow for easy storage, search, retrieval, and modification of content and integration with NAFSA's association management system, iMIS. A warm, but professional design encourages members to feel connected to an international network of educators with common interests and goals. The new user interface provides an intuitive platform from which NAFSA's diverse members can quickly and easily find what they need. Since its launch in 2006, the new site has experienced a 257% increase in unique visitors. The number of page views more than quadrupled during the same time period. According to Alex Traugott, the new nafsa.org now ranks among the top five most valuable benefits as determined by its members. "That's a sign that the site has truly changed. It's become something useful and valuable, rather than something frustrating and out-of-date," says Traugott.

• Increased traffic by 257%
• Increased page views from 1.5 million in 2005 to 5 million in 2006
• Six industry-associated awards
• Increased membership subscriptions and reduced member attrition rates
• Reduced administrative costs




Solutions:

• 46% Web Strategy Consulting
• User Experience
• Information Architecture
• Visual Design
• AMS Integration
• Axiom CMS Development and Integration




Reference: "A Case of Global Understanding," by Marla Misek, eContent Magazine, October 2007 .