Usability testing raised a question of how well our proposed design would meet the needs of both the general public and those unfamiliar with Rotary, and members of Rotary, those who know us well.
The world of Rotary can seem very big and complex to new Rotary.org visitors, and we want them to quickly and clearly grasp what is great about Rotary and how it’s relevant to them. That’s part of telling the Rotary story to the world and helping strengthen clubs and districts and raise public awareness.
At the same time, we want members visiting our site to quickly connect to information and resources, easily carry out their tasks, and get the depth they expect.
Usability testing showed that the proposed plan didn’t fully meet the needs of the general public, who found the site somewhat overwhelming and didn’t immediately perceive the value of Rotary and relevance to them.
Sitemap for the public site
With these two important objectives in mind, we revised our approach to the redesigned site by splitting it into two distinct sites, a public site and a members site, each with its own focus and experience.
The public site will focus on telling the Rotary story to the new and uninitiated, clearly expressing the value of Rotary at a personal level and sharing the good Rotary does in the world. It will introduce and capture the best of Rotary at a high level, in a way that will resonate with those who don’t know us yet.
The members site will speak directly to a more experienced audience seeking depth and detail. It will help members connect to the world of Rotary and their particular interests, as well as to the information and resources they need. It will also provide a customized view for logged-in users that allows them to easily access the most relevant information.
Sitemap for the members site
It’s important to state that when we speak of “members” in this context, we are describing Rotarians, as well as Rotaractors and Interactors and those who have relationships with Rotary, such as alumni, donors, scholars and other interested volunteers and supporters.
Each site will have its own navigation and level of information appropriate for that particular audience. The two experiences will of course be linked, so visitors can pass from one to the other based on their need. We haven’t yet figured out details of the experience, such as web address and other specifics.
We understand this is a bit of departure from today’s site. But in learning from the experience of our current website and in listening to our users, we believe this more defined approach will provide a better solution, one that more fully meets the needs of all our visitors.
On this subject especially, we are really looking forward to hearing what you think. Love it or hate it? Want to hear or see more? We will of course share details about how we’ll carry out this plan, but we’d love to hear your thoughts on the idea itself and the new sitemaps.
This public/private approach is exactly what we decided to do in District 1120 when we launched our new Drupal based site last year and it has been a very successful approach. The private pages, which require members in our District to log in, see a different menu and data set. This has allowed us to privately publish a detailed Directory of all Club and District Officers in the District which will become the basis for a soon to be launched District Directory mobile app.
Splitting the site between public and private has also given us the freedom to publish content of specific interest to Rotarians that would not necessarily be of interest to the public, such as a speaker register, District Committee minutes, on-line event booking, etc..
One of the challenges we had was controlling access to the private pages. Our District did not have a register of all members of our 86 clubs in our District, so how do we validate user accounts? The solution was to allow new account requests on the public pages which sent an automated email to the club secretary asking for confirmation that the request had come from a genuine member. We have had an astonishing take-up rate of over 70% in 10 months (70% of the 2,500 Rotarians in our District have user accounts). The side effect is that we can now contact these members directly using subject specific newsletters that they subscribe to.
http://www.rotary1120.org
Nancy, It makes lot of sense in segregating public and members content for the reasons already covered by you. It can remain one single site with only members having access to the relevant pages. David has more or less covered how it can be done from a system point of view. Drupal would be a good choice because it helps manage dynamic data effectively plus it scales up well. Access control can be managed by making registration an admin activity.
If you need any help with the way ahead, do reach out to me.
I think we have to be careful of segregating things too much. Drupal has the potential to share a navigation system but allow more information for logged-on users. We also have to be careful that many Rotarians will never find the items for them if the segregation is too severe.
I second Dave Roberts view – by separating things some news will not reach the intended audience – or will have to be duplicated to reach “everyone”. As a Rotary member, should I visit the public site or the member site – or both?
Also, logged in members could be allowed to comment on news articles and other interactive features, not just being “passive information consumers”.
Drupal, Joomla and other modern CMS systems allow different access levels for content, menu items and components (public, registered, super user). They also allow modifying the page template for logged in users to clearly indicate the “logged in state”. This allows a mix of public news (like “New Rotary President”) with member news and more internal stuff. Keeping it together in one site also provide higher visitor statistics for “marketing purposes” and such.
Also like Davids approach in District 1120 with a high rate of members actually logging in, but this can be accomplished in one site too.
Please keep it as ONE WEBSITE – we need to communicate the broader picture to Rotarians as well.
But if you have a “Member LogIn” on that one site, you go into another area of the site anyway.
QUESTION: What would the practical consequences of a separation be for -
- casual browsers from the public
- web visitor who is interacting intensively with Rotary, e.g. as a volunteer on a project
- average Rotarian who wants to know if something interesting for her is going on
- engaged intensive volunteer, likely an officer, who want to get done with her Rotary tasks as efficiently as possible?
Peter, it will feel like two websites but users will be able to go between them somewhat easily. There is no good way to address the different needs of the audiences without splitting the focus. While this seems like a big decision, and it is, I think once we start showing visuals of this, people will feel much more comfortable about it. So don’t worry, the things you bring up have been thought through. We’ll show you how in the coming months.
Hi, we followed a similar approach when redesigning our Rotary Club of Denver website this past year. (www.denverrotary.org). For this, we used WordPress. We have our main site, which is geared for the general public and prospective members, and a members site, where the content is more focused on what is of interest to our members. (We actually have a third site too, which is for information on our Foundation). However, we kept these sites public since we recognize that some of our member content would also be of interest to the public. There are also links between the sites so anyone can go take a look at the others if they are interested. To make it easy to use, I created a subdomain off the main site so our members can bypass the current site and go directly to “their” site (members.denverrotary.org). We do have a portion of the members site which is private and is accessed through Dacdb.