1. Professional on-boarding experience for potential members
It’s important that your membership organisation gives a great first impression. The first direct interaction members may have with you will be your on-boarding process. So, it’s vitally important that it sets the tone for the rest of their membership journey with you.
If your process is clunky and difficult to understand then this could put people off joining. In the digital world we now live in, great online experiences are invaluable to an organisation’s success. It’s important that you offer a seamless sign up to come across as a professional organisation right from the off.
This should then be continued through to their other digital experiences with you; whether it be an online Portal or connecting over social media for updates.
2. Making sign up quick, easy and accessible
Signing up to a membership organisation should be quick and easy to reduce barriers to potential members signing up. Having your form online means it can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection.
The process can also become simpler and richer by offering things such as pre-defined dropdown lists which make answering the questions much easier.
For example, you could have a dropdown list for all the different Interests a Member may have which you could then use to tailor communications and offer personalised online experiences for your Members. This forms the basis of offering a richer, more beneficial service to your Members to increase engagement and retention.
Online forms also allow the use for screen readers and can be designed to meet certain accessibility standards for people with disabilities.
3. Form field validations
It’s easy to make mistakes and submit faulty information when filling out a form. However, on an online form, you can put certain criteria on each field which validates the information to make sure the information is in the correct format before it’s sent.
For example, you can make sure addresses are correct by using a post code look up which pre-fills the address fields.
Or you could choose which fields are mandatory based on someone’s answers. For example, only if they have selected to receive a printed brochure would it then ask for a Delivery Address. These all aid the user in making decisions and simplifies the form based on their details.
4. Take payments online
Members being able to pay online via the sign up form straight away is a convenience for not only Members, but for you too. You get access to the money much faster than you would having to call people or watch out for cheques and bank transfers coming through.
They are instantaneous and require little to no involvement from your team. Offline payment options (via Cheque or bank transfer) can still be made available to those that prefer but the majority of people prefer to pay online.
Renewals then become far easier too. If a Direct Debit has been set up, then there is no need to renew their membership each year/month as it just rolls over. For those who paid by card, they can receive automatic reminders when their membership term is coming to an end and they can easily enter their card details again to reactivate their subscription.
5. It can feed directly into your Member Database
We all know how easy it is to make a typo when re-entering information; if your sign up form links directly with your Member Database then all the data entry happens automatically. Not only does it massively reduce admin time, it also reduces the inevitable errors from manually inputting data from spreadsheets or other documents.
Get in touch for more information on how we can make your sign up process simpler and easier.
