It’s not about the hardware. It’s about the association industry trends that steered us there.

Yes, ATS just won the ASI Authorized iMIS Solutions Provider of the Year Award + the ASI iMIS Solutions Innovation Award for our Online Marketplace e-shopping cart application. Was it hard work and are we proud? We’d be lying if we said we weren’t.

But we’re also fortunate enough to have recognized the association industry trends that drove our hard work in the first place. Things are changing rapidly when it comes to the member user experience with association websites. And it’s important that we all recognize the rapid shift.

The fact is, member expectations when it comes to association websites are rising exponentially. Why? For the simple reason that members are also everyday web users and consumers. They experience amazing technology on a daily basis as they interact with world class websites like Amazon.com , Netflix, etc., etc. These sites recognize preferences. Make recommendations. Spur interactive user feedback and dialog. And make the whole shopper experience incredibly simple and easy.

So when your members then go to your association website, they naturally expect the same or similar. The sad fact: if they don’t get it, they are disappointed or worse (worse being that they may leave your site altogether, move over to Amazon to purchase that same book that they should have purchased from you).

Lehman & Associates recently did a survey of the non-profit industry. One of the top things association members identified being dissatisfied with also had the highest importance: association online stores. That was a major focus for us, and we have a solution to that. The key was to take the strategic investment Associations already have in iMIS and leverage the power of the application as a base component. From there, our Online Marketplace e-commerce tool builds on this base to bring a high impact shopping cart experience. Now associations can compete against other non-association entities with the same high caliber tools, bells and whistles. It’s all about competing for member dollars, and about taking associations to the next level with strong features and functionality.

This same lesson applies to other association website and back end functionality. Your members are expecting more and more. The key is to build on the strengths of iMIS with other mission critical functions and cool features. For example, on a critical application process, eliminating the need for multiple databases to work together. In the end associations are looking for solutions that help increase revenue, decrease expenses, and increase member satisfaction. The ATS solutions in the marketplace let associations do all three.

Association technology is going to have higher and higher expectations placed on it going forward because of the bar being set by the outside world. It is all of our roles to be nimble enough to take technology to the next level within the association realm.