Problem
Nicola Williams, the Publications Officer of Usdaw, describes their old website as an "administrative monster. We couldn't manage our content in-house but had to email our content to the site administrator, several days later it would go up on our site, I would then proof the content and send back to the site administrator. The old site was often down or relevant information was not available. Content was often log-jammed somewhere."
The biggest problem with this slow process was that Usdaw could not keep their members up-to-date with urgent issues effectively.
Other problems:
- Their current website was not a source of recruitment for Usdaw and did not allow them to campaign effectively online.
- The site search engine was ineffective.
- Very little traffic to their site.
- Low ranking on search engine keywords critical to their members.
- Union publications, Arena and Network, were not available for online readers.
- Site was inflexible and not metadata-driven, restricting future growth.
Solution
Usdaw and Social Change Online worked closely together to develop an online strategy to ensure that Usdaw's new website was central to implementing its national priorities of recruitment, campaigning, resourcing reps and communicating with members. Usdaw spent a few weeks planning and developing an understanding of how best to implement its priorities on the web under the guidance of Social Change Online before implementing a full scale site redevelopment. This planning allowed swift development of the new site.
The site is powered by the AIMS Content Management System which allows multiple staff members (with differing access rights) to easily add content to the site. No technical knowledge and little training is required.
The site was built to be easily upgradable in the future. Proposed site areas and content were broken down into classifications (through the use of metadata). This enables members to easily search for particular areas of content. This also allows Usdaw, in the future, to create mini-sites for the different industries members work in: for example if they wanted to find all content relating to retail for those members who work in supermarkets, all content is already classified accordingly and could easily be searched and grouped.
Members can subscribe to an emailing service and also receive press releases and regular news bulletins directly from the website.
Usdaw's magazines, Arena and Network, are available online.
Outcome
In 2004 the Usdaw site won the Trades Union Congress (TUC) Award for Best Trade Union Website.
Nicola Williams says that the union has been amazed by the number of members who have contacted them to say how good their site is.
Traffic to the site has increased dramatically: previously they had a couple of thousand pages viewed each month, now the numbers are close to 200,000 pages per month.
The site has become an additional source of membership. Last year Usdaw received 2086 online membership applications - of which 1479 were processed, representing a return rate of 70.6%. 1355 online membership applications have already been received this year. Previously the union only had a couple of requests to join online.
The site ranks highly on search engines when phrases critical to their membership are entered, for example "retail violence".
Usdaw have gained a greater understanding of issues that are important to their members through questions submitted to their "Ask Jan" section, and contributions to forums and polls.
Features
- Lifelong learning section with online course finder - provides hundreds of courses to which members can register online.
- Organising Academy - active representatives can post content and enter password-protected forum to share views and resources.
- Email bulletins - Usdaw can email any piece of content to their overall mailing list, or one of their targeted mailing lists.
- Usdaw publications available online.
- Dynamic campaign sites with online petitions and surveys, allow members to send through case studies.
The Future
Usdaw is considering using more forums and other interactive features. With today's busy lifestyles, unions are finding it increasingly difficult to get people to attend meetings. With the site already performing extremely well and increasing numbers of people organizing online and supporting their campaigns, it would be a logical progression.
QUOTES:
SUPPORT: "Absolutely marvelous. I can't fault the support, it is second to none. We have an excellent support site where we can trace any request and see what stage it is at. Everything is solved to deadline which is fantastic."
BUILDING THE SITE: When asked about the process of having their site built, Nicola says it was "very very professional, found it absolutely superb, had very bad experience two years ago with another organisation and thought that the process always had to be complicated. Paul and his team were a breath of fresh air, delivered what we needed - a sustainable organising site. Paul completely understood what the union was about, what we wanted to achieve and how we need to interact with our members."
FAVOURITE FEATURE: "Ask Jan, our virtual union official who answers members' queries. We were sceptical about this, imagining most people would contact their representative or official with questions. Paul Smith at Social Change Online had to convince us to integrate this feature. Now we find it a source of great interaction with members and representatives, allowing us to get a feel for issues important to our members. It has also revealed that many members don't know who their representative is, or that they can be accompanied by a representative when they have a problem at work. Ask Jan allows us to continually improve the way we represent our members."
"Our site allows us to get our message across. We are now listening to what our members need. You can't put a price on helping people get organised."
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http://www.usdaw.org.uk