OR Society had a website that was slow, hard to navigate and very difficult to edit. All of that was about to change. Using Umbraco CMS, Crumpled Dog completely transformed OR Society’s website presence. The new solution is fresh, modern and easy to update. Crumpled Dog will share with you the full story of how they did it:
Skills used
- CRM
- Digital Strategy
- Integrations
- Architecture
- Communication
Sector
- Public sector & charity
Partner doing the case
- Company:Crumpled Dog
- Website: https://www.crumpled-dog.com/
- Type: Gold Partner
A solution with brilliant results ✨
What is OR Society?
Our client is a charity set up to advance knowledge, interest and education in Operational Research. OR Society’s strategic goal is to see operational research used and acknowledged widely in all areas of industry, business, government, the community and the third sector.
We created their new website to provide information and functionality for multiple audiences, including: OR professionals, Schools and Student interested in careers in OR, Individual Members, Corporate Partners, OR accreditation panellists and OR Administrators.
How we transformed the website
The new website required comprehensive information and tiered access to content based on user status, including a large number of publications, events and conferences, training courses, pro-bono OR, OR in schools and research.
We designed it to make joining the OR Society as simple as possible, with the user having the ability to select their membership category, payment method, special interest groups and regional societies.
The new website allows the public to access a wide variety of content, including the ability to sign-up for Special Interest and Regional Society groups and certain free publications. The site also includes business case studies and filtered news.
All users have access to publications, journals and documents, with access to extended content restricted to members. All membership categories have full access to restricted content. Additionally:
- student members can join for free, as long as they can validate their status;
- special interest group pages have filtered content based on the section and the user’s preferences;
- members are shown events listing based on these preferences;
- certain members have the ability to apply for accreditation.
How it works
There is a full end-to-end application process, with workflows including referees, application panel assessments and voting, final decision and notifications. All this is automated within the member area for designated accreditation panellists and administrators.
Members have the ability to manage their subscription renewals online, select additional packages, and switch from annual card payments to direct debit if they prefer.
For OR Administrators, the site was designed to be fully flexible, using an extended grid. Content editors can create sections, set filters, add various taxonomy filterable widgets.
The website is fully integrated with OR’s CRM. All membership options, prices and member data is stored in the CRM and feeds directly into the website. Events are managed within EventsForce and integrated into the website. Email marketing is managed within the website, which interacts directly with the CRM, which in turn is integrated with MailChimp.
“Our website now is very clean and fresh, easy to keep up to date, and we have had many compliments from our members about how much easier it is for them to navigate compared to our old website. The accreditation application process, which was the most difficult part of the project, is successfully running and we’ve had several applications within weeks of launching. We set out to create a website with many external integrations that need to relay up to date information to our members, and this is what we have.”
After-launch joys
The previous OR Society's website was slow, hard to navigate, linked to multiple other micro-sites with fragmented information and was very difficult to edit. The new solution is a completely different story. It is much easier to edit and much friendlier for visitors.
Visits to join the OR Society page up by 78% over typical 6 month comparison. Overall site visits are up by 18% and the number of page views is up by 10%. Additionally, the number of members paying by direct debit is up from 48% in January 2019 to 58% in October 2019. Last, but not least, staff time spent dealing with phone and email queries is down to near zero, as the new site is much more user-friendly and visitors can easily find all the answers independently.