The American Galvanizers Association (AGA) is a non-profit trade association with over 80 years of experience supporting and advancing the safety and innovation of the steel industry.
Case Study
To extend the life of a successful member association website by addressing aging technologies and improving the member experience.
Thoughtful user research to inform a design refresh, a CMS replatform to Craft, and third-party business integrations.
A modern website featuring a new project gallery, search and discovery implementation, CRM and marketing automation integration, and SEO improvements.
The American Galvanizers Association (AGA) is a non-profit trade association with over 80 years of experience supporting and advancing the safety and innovation of the steel industry.
Services
We first started working with AGA in 2011 with ongoing website maintenance and then a complete website redesign. Several years after the redesign, the website needed to be upgraded to a newer version of the CMS they were on, and AGA had some specific marketing initiatives they wanted to tackle. After some conversation, we decided to undergo a design refresh, replatform to Craft CMS, and make some key improvements to help the website function better for AGA administrators, members, and general users.
We were able to modernize the existing design without a major design overhaul, including UI updates that were driven by UX research and user surveys. We had determined the organization didn’t need and wasn’t ready for a complete redesign, so the refresh was a huge success to make the necessary improvements without reinventing the wheel.
A major focus of our efforts went towards redesigning the project gallery. AGA’s project gallery allows users to submit notable projects utilizing galvanized steel. AGA features these projects in their gallery, allows members to vote on their favorites, and awards recognition. We developed a new submission form and voting system to streamline the process. Overall the new gallery helps AGA to better showcase world class galvanized structures.
The new search and discovery experience we designed helps users find content more easily across several sections of the AGA website. Search findings are instantaneous and visually separated by content type, so users can see whether the item comes from the main website, the project gallery, the database, or news.
We helped empower the AGA marketing team by connecting their business and marketing systems, mainly through a Salesforce integration. The integration keeps company and member data flowing bidirectionally from the CMS to Salesforce, which allows for easy updates for AGA and their members and for member profile data to stay synced.
“We’ve worked with Foster Made for nearly 10 years, and continue to be impressed with their professionalism, collaboration, and communication. Regardless of the size or scope of the project, their approach and attention to detail are the same, providing a very consistent experience for the client. Our organizational structure and industry are not easily grasped, but Foster Made has put forth the effort both initially and throughout our partnership to learn our “language” and types of users to really enhance our online presence.”
- Melissa Lindsley, Marketing Director, AGA
We made key improvements that helped advance and sustain AGA’s website. The design refresh and search implementation streamlined and modernized the experience on the site, improving usability, content findability, and member engagement. And replatforming onto Craft CMS helped extend the lifespan of the website while also providing a better content publishing experience for administrators.