When I joined the Academy of Management in 2018, the scholarly nonprofit was using a website that had not been updated in almost a decade. I wrote the request for proposals, vetted and selected vendors, and led the redesign process from wireframes to launch.
The new aom.org site is now mobile-friendly under a mobile-first design, with a new modern content management system (Sitefinity) that is designed for nonprofits, featuring new video, advertising, and personalization options. The site search is federated and faceted, linking seamlessly via SSO with the Atypon academic publishing platform and the Higher Logic community platform used by AOM.
A year after launch, aom.org site traffic had soared. Users were up over 30%; sessions were up 40%; and pageviews were up 21%. A sample of informal monthly traffic reports can be found here, written to complement graphics reported with Google Data Studio.
Internal polling showed user satisfaction at a high, especially with regard to mobile usage and the efficiency of the new CMS.
