Cooperative Communicators Association

Cooperative Communicators Association

BACKGROUND

The Coop­er­a­tive Com­mu­ni­ca­tors Asso­ci­a­tion is a non-prof­it trade orga­ni­za­tion rep­re­sent­ing over 350 pro­fes­sion­als who com­mu­ni­cate for coop­er­a­tives. CCA helps mem­bers excel by pro­mot­ing per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al growth, pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion and infor­ma­tion to improve skills in all aspects of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and offer­ing net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties with fel­low com­mu­ni­ca­tors who share com­mon needs and inter­ests.

THE CHALLENGE

After CCA sur­veyed its mem­bers exten­sive­ly and formed a web­site steer­ing com­mit­tee, the group com­piled an impres­sive list of needs and require­ments for the new site:

  • A pol­ished new look and respon­sive design
  • Mem­bers-only area with exclu­sive fea­tures
  • Enhanced mem­ber pro­files
  • Resource libraries, both for pub­lic and mem­bers-only con­sump­tion
  • Web con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem (CMS) that would allow for con­tin­ued growth and adapt to the orga­ni­za­tion’s chang­ing needs

OUR APPROACH/SOLUTION

We began by choos­ing Word­Press as the plat­form on which to devel­op the CCA site. Besides being one of the most rec­og­nized and relied-upon resources avail­able, Word­Press offers a bevy of plug-ins for func­tion­al­i­ty, easy-to-use tools, and clean, fresh designs that are friend­ly to near­ly all devices, includ­ing tablets and phones. It was also key that the new design more close­ly aligns with CCA’s brand­ing and oth­er exist­ing mate­ri­als.

The orga­ni­za­tion of CCA’s vast library of con­tent was key to the site’s suc­cess. We metic­u­lous­ly cre­at­ed sec­tions and sub­sec­tions, com­pressed down­loads, and chrono­log­i­cal archives that, despite the under­ly­ing com­plex­i­ty involved in plan­ning and exe­cu­tion, ulti­mate­ly appear sim­ple and seam­less to the end-user.

A top CCA pri­or­i­ty was to allow mem­bers to cus­tomize their own pro­files, user­names and pass­words, and the per­son­al data avail­able to oth­er mem­bers, a fea­ture not offered in the orga­ni­za­tion’s pre­vi­ous web incar­na­tion. Achiev­ing this goal now allows mem­bers to use the site for one of its most valu­able fea­tures: net­work­ing.

Final­ly, we were able to cre­ate an elab­o­rate show­case in which to fea­ture cur­rent and pre­vi­ous win­ners of CCA’s annu­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Con­test. This graph­ics-inten­sive mem­bers’ area now con­tains archival mate­ri­als as well as recent win­ners and pro­vides a plat­form upon which the group can build as future con­tests occur.

RESULTS

In addi­tion to the core foun­da­tions list­ed above, oth­er com­po­nents that were added or improved upon include:

  • Events cal­en­dar
  • Job list­ings
  • Search­able mem­ber direc­to­ry
  • Pay­ment gate­way & sup­port
  • Online forms

The new site is also extend­able with future add-ons as per the clien­t’s wish­es, such as:

  • Pri­vate mes­sag­ing
  • Social login
  • Mem­ber file shar­ing
  • And many more as Word­Press con­tin­ues to inno­vate

The new CCA web­site is leaps and bounds bet­ter than its pre­de­ces­sor. You did a fan­tas­tic job bring­ing it for­ward.”

– Mar­i­an McLemore, APR, CCC
VP, Coop­er­a­tive Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Flint Ener­gies

Launch Web­site