Membership experience driven by Drupal 8
HCI, a leading provider of continuing education and expert content for HR-professionals, services its members exclusively through in-person events and online learning through its Drupal platform.
Originally built on Drupal 6, HCI needed a new, integrated platform to combine best of breed third-party software with a modern member experience. An as Drupal 7 end-of-life approached, it meant time was against the Drupal migration.
Events. Digital content. Online learning. Transcripts. Commerce—HCI does it all. The member experience is a complex mix of online and offline systems, and the new Drupal 8 site needed to fill a lot of gaps for member and HCI administrators alike.
Coming from a heavily modified Drupal 6 instance, our goal was not to remake what already existed, but to find new and better ways to move forward. This meant simplifying where possible and leveraging best in breed third-party technology to provide an optimal, end-to-end user experience. As Drupal consultants, we had to rethink the site, feature by feature, to ensure all the parts would come back together, and provide a sound foundation for HCI’s business going forward.
INTEGRATION > INVENTION
Rather than build every feature from scratch, our Drupal developers configures the CMS as the integration point between multiple systems. For HCI, Drupal would not own any data exclusively, but instead be an integration point between multiple platforms: Salesforce as a single source of truth for member data, Aventri, for event management and event experience and Pardot for marketing automation. Two-way integration between Drupal and Salesforce means both systems keep member records up to date as members interact with each system.
AAA MEMBERSHIP EXPERIENCE
Some features had to be built from the ground up. But where we could, our Drupal developers leveraged both Paragon and Drupal contributed modules to get the job done. One of the largest set of features revolves around the HCI member profile. Dashboards, credit transcripts, and activity history all help members explore content, register for training, and take assessments to better learn how to adapt to an ever-changing HR environment.
Taking it up a level, memberships extend to entire enterprise organizations whose employees all take advantage of HCI’s education and training. Detailed reports on usage and engagement are provided to each enterprise group through their portal, allowing enterprises to easily track ROI.
CONTENT FIT FOR A KING
Heavy attention was paid to the content browsing experience. Curated topics aggregate HCI’s industry-leading content into themes based on key HR challenges. Content streams span multiple digital formats including podcasts, live webcasts, and downloadable content.
Meanwhile, events were completely redesigned to feel more like what they are—highly valuable gatherings of top HR professionals, sharing their expertise with peers. For products with larger price tags, it was important the presentation matched the quality of content being delivered. But the innovation didn’t stop there. Event pricing structures, sessions, speakers and other event details sync from Aventri to Drupal for a seamless checkout experience.
SITUATION REPORT
A critical piece of functionality, reporting, again relied on tight integration between Drupal and Salesforce. Individual usage, sponsored content performance, and enterprise usage reports are accessible by HCI admins through the Drupal UI, drawing data directly from Salesforce for accuracy.
HCI relies heavily on daily insights into member activity, potential sales leads, and the effectiveness of sponsor relationships to make decisions and evaluate what content to produce next.
IMMEDIATE RESULTS
Since launching in late 2019, HCI’s Drupal-based member platform continues to show marked improvements compared to the previous site. With a nearly 30% increase in online traffic, new user experience drives users to the right content and encourages conversion.
online checkouts
new visitor traffic
increase in dashboard usage
