Overview:

I led the strategy and planning used to design publicly viewable versions of my client’s membership-based “digital campus”—a website—to improve the quality and quantity of traffic for future members as well as search engines. This website is a free resource that offers networking opportunities, educational courses, and certifications led by industry experts and instructors from well-respected educational institutions for the benefit of manufacturers, merchandisers, students, and educators in the fiber/cotton industry.

Still, the vast majority of its content was available only to members who are logged in. This greatly diminished my client’s ability to promote new content across other web and social channels, and it often delayed users from accessing new updates and opportunities.

Challenge:

We understood the key to this challenge would be leveraging existing content without overburdening the existing web architecture or making too much content open to non-members. At the same time, we didn’t want to penalize new and existing users for not being registered or logged in.

Strategy:

Eventually, we identified two types of content pages that could be structurally adjusted in the backend so that those new to the site or not logged in see high-level views of each page, and are able to view the entirety of that same page after logging in or registering for an account. This way, the public pages offer non-members and members who are not logged in a “sneak peek” to entice new user registrations and more engagement with the content. They also provide the semantics required for SEO. Finally, we wanted to preserve the integrity of users’ viewing experience. Login walls can be frustrating, especially when they ignore users’ existing interactions. To avoid disrupting any user’s attempts to engage with content any more than necessary, we only require authentication after specific calls-to-action have been engaged. We also built a script to redirect the user back to the page they were viewing before they logged in or registered.