What should your new member see when they first access your portal?
So, your new member has made it through your (slightly over complicated) registration process, had some on-boarding and is now logging in to your new member portal, ready to start to realise the benefits you have to offer.
But then they see your portal dashboard and that sense of ‘buyers regret’ starts to creep in: they see a wealth of things to click, resources to access, courses to take, news to consume, whitepapers to read and everything else that makes your portal useful, but terrifying.
OK, so maybe it is not that terrifying but it is likely to be overwhelming!
So how can we ease that sense of anxiety and create some instant delight to turn that nervous new member into an engaged user?
Let’s take a look at some options:
1. Give them a quick win
Something sparked each member’s interest in your organisation, a situation happened, a need arose or a want was identified and hopefully you caught this earlier during the signup or on-boarding process. Whatever that is, you want to make sure they receive that benefit as soon as possible.
Make that reason of ‘why’, the forefront of their first interaction, show how easily they can access that benefit and it will re-enforce their excitement to join for a long time.
To do this you need to have a way of easily personalising each member’s dashboard, whether this is automated from data you enter into your AMS/CRM or whether this is manually set by your team, it does not matter- just remind them why they joined.
2. The Dashboard Tour
Just because you have seen the dashboard a thousand times and know where all the best places to click are, does not mean it is intuitive for new members.
Let your members go through the on-boarding process multiple times at their leisure, people are time poor and have short attention spans, assuming they will understand the whole dashboard and remember it the first time is a little hopeful.
It is common to have a ‘tour’ option, but you would be surprised how many people skip that only to want to see it again at a later date. Having a video walk through can be useful too, but don’t let it go out of date. I really don’t think you can offer too many training tools, just don’t force them to engage with it until they are ready.
Yes I am all behind the idea that your design should be so intuitive, that everything just flows and can be understood in the first 2 seconds. However, if you are offering the large amount of value that you say you do, it means there are many different paths which a member might take. While you should always strive for simplicity, it’s not always possible to design your way out of that complexity.
3. Consider the member’s physical environment
This one should be considered for the whole lifecycle of your portal, but it is especially important in those first few days for your member.
In an ideal world, your member would be sitting at their desk, coffee in hand, free from distractions, and ready to focus for at least 30 minutes. But reality isn’t always that perfect!
The reality is possibly far from that, they will be sat at their kitchen table with kids just getting back from school, on their phone while commuting to work on the train, ‘jumping on’ for 10 minutes just before their 1-2-1 with their boss, eating their lunch between client meetings…you must accept that they will have distractions and whilst their membership is important to them, it might not always be their top priority.
So speak to your UX Designer and Tech Lead on how best to deliver this first interaction in multiple different formats. You can make it mobile optimised so you can pause halfway through and pick it back up later or so it continues across multiple device’s (i.e. start on the desktop but complete on the mobile).
4. Bring your support to the front
In those first few times they access the portal, your members are likely to have the most questions. Consider where they can go to get the answer? I am a firm believer that people learn more when they help themselves, but every now and then they need that helping hand and support from one of your experts.
Put in an easy to use FAQ’s for that initial help, but then make it easy to reach out and ask quick questions. A simple “can I help” support chat is a quick solution to this, and extra points for using an AI chatbot that can pull from and direct to your resources, before needing to reach out to a human.
5. Keep them engaged with reactive communications
After a little while you will have some data to start a two way conversation with your member. What I mean by this is, you will know (if you have good quality data) how often they login, what resources that have started to access, how far they have progressed on their initial journey and ultimately what type of member they are going to be.
You can use this data to personalise communications based on their actions, if they are not logging in enough then remind them on what they are missing out on and offer extra support. When they have completed a module in their training, congratulate them on the result and recommend what they can do next. Posting their first message in your community, you should thank them for taking part and inform them of other networking opportunities.
Creating that initial set of contacts will re-enforce your commitment to the member and open up dialogue where the member sees your organisation as one that cares and wants to reward engagement.
MemberMetrics can help you access that data if you are missing it!
Bonus: Create a progression path
Consider everything we have talked about so far in the context of interesting the member in their first interactions with your portal. Next we need to consider how we move them to a consistently engaged user.
Whether you use something such as gamification that sees the ‘level up’ or a progress bar that shows how many steps left to unlock access to the ‘full’ portal experience. Creating a clear progression path between where they start and where they can get to, will help encourage those initial engagements that should turn them into a strong member for a long time to come.
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The report will focus on practical changes that will improve the member experience.
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If you want to build a marketing strategy that has these fundamentals right, why not speak to us? We’ll help you take the first step on the Member Growth Framework to help build your strategy.
