Empower Users & Employees to Make Content Management Easier

When you’re trying to access content and you hit a roadblock, the whole marketing engine grinds to a halt. No matter whether you’re a new visitor on a website, a regular visitor who has to log in and out of portals to see member content, or an employee trying to make changes to content—you aren’t providing the best experience for your users if they can’t get to the content they want quickly. User frustration in accessing content is something all marketers and content creators need to minimize at all costs.

The American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (AAPM&R) was dealing with this issue multiple levels. Employees weren’t able to make changes quickly, which meant it was harder for a new user to find updated information. At the same time, members had to jump through multiple sign-in attempts to access the research that could help them work with patients more efficiently. This left everybody unsatisfied, and AAPM&R knew they had to move on from their existing management system.

Solving Problems for Multiple Audiences

AAPM&R understood they had to make a change from the organization’s SharePoint system, which was becoming expensive and lacked the functionality they needed. As they evaluated their options, a key consideration was solving the challenge of user experiences.

Every month, thousands of visitors land on the AAPM&R website to learn more about physiatry after a physician has recommended a specialist in the field. At the same time, they serve as the primary medical society for American physiatrists, and their 10,000 members depend upon them for clinical learning, guidance and advocacy.

If they were going to leave SharePoint and start from scratch, they needed to make sure their system would meet all their needs for the long term—and to be manageable by their small IT and marketing staff. It also meant the site had to support single sign-on for their members and make content management easy for all necessary stakeholders, it had to organize content by hierarchy and taxonomy, and on top of it all the user experience needed to be responsive and easy to use.

Update Content in Minutes, not Days

After careful research, AAPM&R decided to implement the Progress Sitefinity CMS through Vanguard Technology. Within months of going live, more than 20 stakeholders were able to manage and update content—as opposed to just four stakeholders under the old system. “The impact on our workflow is tremendous,” said Megan Brunner, AAPM&R digital marketing manager, describing the process of changing content that once took days but now takes an hour.

Remove Headaches with Single Sign-on

Single sign-on was also a key challenge the new CMS had to address. In fact, support for it was a big part of why AAPM&R went with Sitefinity over Drupal. John Schroeder, AAPM&R director of technology, noted that “the issue of needing to log in multiple times was one of the largest complaints of our members.” With single sign-on rolled out across the site, the user experience was instantly enhanced for thousands of members.

Ready for the Future

Sitefinity’s content hierarchy and taxonomy helped AAPM&R structure their content in a way that was easy to manage and discover, boosting user engagement. As a result, traffic and member engagement has increased since their new site has gone live.

The AAPM&R doesn’t plan on stopping there, however. Vanguard is working with their client to enable personalization of content to enhance member experiences even further.

Read the Full Story

In just eight months, AAPM&R succeeded in launching a successful new website, increasing engagement and enabling continuous further improvement. Learn more about how Sitefinity can help you do the same, or take a look at AAPM&Rs full story right here.