12 min read
Higher Logic Thrive Community Lookbook
Tags: Community Strategy
Having a user-friendly online community is a huge part of member engagement.
Your online community provides a place for your members to interact with your association and each other year-round. Making sure your community is modern and intuitive is a must for enhancing member experience. That said, we know association professionals have a lot of competing demands on their time. You may not have the bandwidth or on-staff expertise to build a community from scratch, or you might be struggling to conceptualize a compelling user experience and design.
This lookbook provides examples of communities built with Higher Logic Thrive, including:
- Communities created using out-of-the-box design and functionality.
- Communities where associations chose to customize, either on their own or with the help of Higher Logic Thrive Design Services.
Use Built-In Features to Provide an Exceptional Member Experience
In Higher Logic Thrive Community, the new, logged-out homepage offers a space to drive interest from nonmembers and promote your organization and member benefits.
The modern, logged-in homepage features an activity feed that’s designed to feel familiar and easy to navigate. Use built-in widgets to easily create the member experience that works best for your association, including:
- Customizable Quicklinks
- Job Opportunities
- Upcoming Events
- Engagement Leaderboards
- Blog and Content Highlights
Let’s see some examples of how associations have used those widgets to create best-in-class online community designs.
National Recreation and Parks Association
The National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to building vibrant and resilient communities through the power of parks and recreation. Their network includes more than 60,000 park and recreation professionals and advocates. NRPA supports the field through professional development, advocacy, grants and programs, research, publications, and more. Their online community, NRPA Connect, leverages their rich green brand palette, plus community-focused photos to create a warm and inviting space.
NRPA is a perfect example of using their logged-out homepage to call out the value of membership (Headings: Get Your Questions Answered, Build Your Network, Access Shared Resources, Connect Around Shared Interests). They also feature job postings, resources and reports, and point visitors directly to where they can learn more about membership.
NRPA’s logged-in homepage helps members connect by pointing out people each user may know. Member engagement is encouraged and celebrated with an engagement leaderboard. They also feature job opportunities and upcoming events.
ASIS International
ASIS International is a global community of security practitioners. They have 34,000 members (in more than 150 countries) from virtually every industry in the public and private sectors, and organizations of all sizes. They offer a range of educational programs, publications, resources, and tools as well as events, developed in consultation with leading industry experts. Security professionals worldwide can collaborate, share insights and lessons learned, best practices, network, and ultimately strengthen global ties within the security profession (something that benefits citizenry around the world).
Take an example from ASIS International: they use a modern, professional design on their ASIS Connects community to underscore the seriousness of the work they do. They clearly highlight the value added by member benefits and their Online community at the top of their logged-out homepage. They continue to evangelize the benefits of membership on the rest of the page by highlighting specific benefits of their community, featuring videos of current members sharing their enthusiasm, and calling out professional development opportunities.
Once members log in, ASIS International uses a rotating banner at the top of the page to draw attention to their top resources. They’ve set up a dynamic graphic on their right sidebar to welcome new members, remind existing members of their membership renewal, or thank them for recently renewing. They also make great use of the sidebars to highlight job opportunities, outline upcoming events, and provide members with quicklinks, making it easy for them to navigate to their favorite content.
Association Analytics
Association Analytics is dedicated to helping associations discover insights and take action on their data. They offer Acumen, a data analytics platform built exclusively for associations, as well as support for data strategy, data governance, data cleansing, or building a culture of data. The Acumen Community incorporates clean design and pops of color to align with the Association Analytics brand and create a look and feel that’s friendly and organized. They’ve used the logged-out homepage on their online community to highlight their mission and major offerings, as well as resources and publications that demonstrate their thought leadership.
The Acumen logged-in homepage is sleek and streamlined. It puts the member profile and feed front-and-center, reminding users to fill out their information and engage with the latest discussion posts. Members can choose personal quicklinks at the top right, making it easy for them to navigate to their most-used content. Association Analytics also uses the logged-in homepage to prominently feature their resources, blog posts, events, and engagement leaderboard.
Creating an Intuitive, Brand-Aligned Site Doesn't Have to Be a Heavy Lift
Need something more customized? You can adjust your community design to your specific needs or leverage the association expertise of the Higher Logic Thrive Design Services team to build the perfect community or community and website using Higher Logic Thrive. Designing and implementing your perfect online community has never been so easy!
Check out these examples from associations who pursued a configurable design solution that compliments their website branding.
The Aesthetic Society
The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery is recognized as the world’s leading organization devoted entirely to aesthetic plastic surgery and cosmetic medicine of the face and body. The Aesthetic Society works to advance the science, art, and safe practice of aesthetic plastic surgery and cosmetic medicine through education, research, and innovation while maintaining the highest standards of ethical conduct. They are comprised of over 3,000 Plastic Surgeons.
Given their members’ line of work, the Aesthetic Society knew that the look of the community would significantly contribute to engagement. They enlisted the expertise of the Higher Logic Thrive Design Services team to achieve a clean, attractive, and easy-to-navigate community – AestheticConnect – that compliments their main website. Their primary goal was to motivate members to join by making the community feel active and welcoming.
The design services team used a 2-column layout to offer more white space. They created a personalized user dashboard to feature important and relevant information in an organized section at the top of the homepage. They also added a “Suggested Contacts” section to the community homepage to encourage members to connect with each other and utilized the search bar and quick links to feature important resources.
The American Society for Quality
The American Society for Quality (ASQ) is committed to providing enhanced expertise, professional networks, tools, and solutions to help their members advance their products, services, and industries. They provide professional training, certifications, and knowledge to members from more than 130 countries globally. Their society consists of member-led communities that help members connect with other quality professionals and practitioners, advance their knowledge and careers, and grow as thought leaders.
ASQ wanted their community, myASQ, to clearly demonstrate all they offer while remaining simple and easy to navigate for their members. Higher Logic Thrive Design Services put together a design that incorporated attractive, interactive elements and created space for strong, informational messaging above the fold. They implemented a ‘one-stop-shop’ user dashboard to feature important and frequently-accessed links for members.
ASQ also created a customized experience for member leaders to help them get the resources and information they need by using two different user groups with settings around those groups so they each see a unique set of links upon login.
SHAPE America
The Society of Health and Physical Educators (SHAPE) America serves as the voice for 200,000+ health and physical education professionals across the United States, as well as advocates, supporters, and 50+ state affiliate organizations. SHAPE America’s National Standards for K-12 Physical Education serve as the foundation for well-designed physical education programs across the country.
When SHAPE America relaunched their member community using Higher Logic Thrive, they internally undertook a few easy design changes to align with their website and branding.
Out of the box, Higher Logic Thrive is easy to make your own. By applying some additional coding skills like SHAPE America did, you can make small changes that go a long way in enhancing the member experience.
SHAPE America input their brand colors and adjusted some of the page layouts as well as the logged-in and logged-out page experience to match their website. They also hid references to “blog” and changed them to “member voices” to align with how they use the community’s blog functionality. For some subcommunities, they opted to hide the number of members in the communities.
Learn how SHAPE America uses their community to keep up with member needs.
Use Higher Logic Thrive to Design and Implement Your Community
Higher Logic is the leading online community and marketing software solutions provider for associations. Meeting the unique needs of association professionals for nearly two decades, Higher Logic is a trusted partner serving more than 3,000 customers, representing over 350,000 online communities – we know community and we can help you implement or improve yours.