01Problem
Members repeatedly described the public website and the member portal as two different sites. Event registration was one of the most visible points of friction: a visitor could browse an event on the association website, click to register, and suddenly land on a third-party AMS domain with a different interface and navigation structure. A meaningful share of users abandoned the process before completing registration.
The internal team also depended on an outside contractor for routine website management. Publishing a new event or making certain content changes required developer involvement because the team had no practical way to manage those updates independently.
The website also had no direct understanding of membership status. It could not automatically determine whether a visitor was currently a member, which membership tier they held, when their membership expired, or whether access to protected content should remain active. These decisions were handled manually, creating inconsistent access rules and additional support work.
Individually, these issues were relatively small, but together they created daily friction for thousands of members.
