Behind the Screens: TMA’s Website Makeover Success Story

New website captures the TMA member experience

I interviewed Jodi Talley, Senior Director of Marketing & Communications at the Turnaround Management Association (TMA). We discussed her "behind-the-screens" experiences leading TMA’s website redesign, including what worked (and didn’t).

About TMA

The Turnaround Management Association (TMA) has a staff of 12 and nearly 10,000 members in 54 chapters worldwide who comprise a professional community of turnaround practitioners, consultants, attorneys, accountants, investors, lenders, appraisers, liquidators, academics and executive recruiters.

TMA members come together to work with distressed businesses, helping them to restructure or find an investor or navigate a bankruptcy.

Website redesign goals

TMA members rely heavily on professional connections and networking - and that's what they come to TMA for. However, the website wasn't effectively serving their needs.

Talley reports: "Our old website site didn't reflect our community's warmth and support. It was hard to navigate, lacked member engagement, and didn't prioritize user experience."

Involving key stakeholders

The decision to overhaul the website involved discussions with Talley's small team about what TMA wanted the website to be and the strategy needed to achieve that. 

TMA involved key stakeholders - staff, board members, committee members, and members at different stages of their careers - to define core requirements. According to Talley, "It's so important to take the time, especially at the outset. We did a really good RFP process."

Engaging members & connecting them with TMA

The up-front planning process ensured that the new website would meet member (and staff) needs.

Talley acknowledged that, with the old website, "it was really hard to find anything, and it visually was absent of what makes us who we are." In contrast, the new TMA website is more engaging and connects members more quickly to what they're looking for.

"Probably most important was fixing the navigation. Results Direct has a really scientific approach with card sorting and tree testing that TMA went through to learn behaviors of people on the website and where they expect to find things. The new website is really intuitive, and the design is based on actual user data."

Also important was visually capturing the TMA member experience. "We've always been a people-centric organization. The new homepage is welcoming, vibrant, and, most importantly, member-centric."  

Testimonial videos play a large part is conveying what it's like to be a TMA member. "Our members like to see and hear from their peers, and they have a lot of great things to say about the value they get from their membership."

Empowering staff & integrating a mobile app

The redesigned TMA website uses Wordpress CMS, which is easy to use and doesn’t require a lot of technical expertise for staff to manage.

In addition to launching the new website, TMA also launched a new mobile event app with Results Direct, which enables staff to manage content in a single place (the app) and publish it to the new website.

The new CMS and mobile app both enable TMA staff to manage branding and content for multiple conference microsites without doing double the work - which previously was a big pain point for TMA. Members also use the app to connect with one another.

"The mobile app has been a really, really great decision for us. Members really love that they can exchange business cards through the app and download their business cards at the end of an event."

Celebrating success & looking forward

"We've come a long way," reflected Talley. "This journey has reinforced the importance of listening to our members and leveraging technology to better serve them. We're ready to showcase our new digital home to the world."

To ensure that TMA is empowered to manage and scale its new website in the future, Results Direct provided comprehensive staff training and equipped the TMA team with a Website Style Guide that they're now using across all their digital communications.

"We've already incorporated it into everything - new membership brochure, flyers, PowerPoint slides, Zoom backgrounds - so it's cohesive throughout the organization."

Ready for a website makeover? You can hear more about TMA's website redesign in this 25-minute video interview with Jodi Talley.