Enhance Your HOA Experience with Member-First Website Features

Does your homeowners association website make it easier for your residents to participate in your HOA and abide by its rules and covenants? That sounds like a no-brainer, but unfortunately, many HOA website software platforms don’t seem to make resident needs a priority. With confusing sign-up procedures, a jumbled presentation of member data, and a lack of cohesion in their online interfaces, many of these platforms treat the resident as an afterthought.

Whether you’re developing a homeowners association website to comply with state laws or setting one up to make your HOA easier to administer, your residents need to derive as much value from your site as you and your fellow administrators, your board, and other leaders. After all, if you’re like most homeowners association administrators, you’re working to improve and sustain the life and value of the community in which you live, so the success of your website matters to you on more than one level. Look for these member-first website features in the homeowners association website software platform you choose.

It’s all on the dashboard

If you’ve been researching HOA website software or have experienced one or more packages yourself, you already may expect your software platform to provide you with a well-organized administrator dashboard that highlights essential aspects of community life and resident participation. But what about your members? Ideally, your HOA website software will meet their needs with equivalent support—and answers to the questions that arise as a routine part of community life.

How much do I owe for my community assessment, and when is my invoice due? What kinds of neighborhood events are coming up, and how do register to participate? If there’s a community newsfeed, where can I find the latest headlines and highlights, and how can I read more about stories that interest me? I filed a request for an architectural modification, so what’s the status of the administrative review?

A well-designed member dashboard answers all these questions and more with a thoughtfully structured user interface that presents highlights and links to full details in an easy-to-navigate layout. In fact, that layout echoes the look and function of the administrative dashboard that powers your view as a community leader.

Website power

Along with the legal compliance that a homeowners association website enables you to maintain in those jurisdictions that require one, you’re probably accustomed to thinking of your site as a way to market your community to prospective residents. Whether you manage your community yourselves or work with a property management firm, you need a destination to which you can direct prospects so they can find out about your neighborhoods and gain a fuller understanding of the advantages of life in your community. But along with that marketing function, you also need your website to provide a cohesive source of information for your residents themselves.

If I’m new to the community, how can I find cohesive information about school districts, utilities, trash pickup, and other routine aspects of neighborhood life? Can I send you pictures from the latest block party or another event and share them on our site? Can I pay my annual dues online, and trust that our website will protect my financial information? Where do I go to reserve time on a tennis court, in the pool, or at another community amenity? Can I sign up for community events online?

These are just some of the functions that your residents expect your website to make easy for them. The motr your online property enhances community life and simplifies the process of compliance with HOA rules, the more it becomes an essential tool for community administration. In other words, when you make life better for your residents, you improve life for administrators as well.

The power of the profile

If you’re accustomed to setting up online accounts to accompany your enrollment in financial institutions, for online shopping, and so on, you’ve probably seen a large number of online member profiles. In that case, you know that they’re not all created equally easy to fill out and update.

Some of these profiles seemed designed to incorporate complexity for the sake of complexity. Just the process of setting up a profile can require you to click on multiple tabs, or follow a string of “continue” buttons through multiple pages of increasingly specific questions. You’re left wondering why you have to traipse through so many steps and provide so much information just to make a purchase or manage a bank account.

The right homeowners association website software platform simplifies the process of member signup with a customizable form that captures the basics—­name, email address, phone number, street address ­along with optional questions designed to elicit community-specific essentials. As an administrator, you can add the targeted questions that enable you to understand each resident, and as a member, you can appreciate the simplicity of a form that takes mere moments to complete.

Design and create with ease

All these online goodies rely on your ability to create, manage, and update website pages with ease and convenience. You don’t want to have to build each page from scratch, and work through the complex process of putting together all the resources necessary to support the online features you need.

The right homeowners association website software platform puts you ahead with tools that simplify all these tasks. Professionally designed page templates speed up the site-building process, and quickly accommodate all the features and functions you need your site to include. Modular content areas make it easy to share essential information in an easily readable, eye-catching design. You can build your navigation system at the same time you create your individual pages, and the entire process of site design comes together expeditiously—with great-looking results.

Put it all together

It’s not difficult to compile a list of homeowners association website software providers to consider for your community website. The difficult part lies in making the right choice among them. At HOA Start, we’ve studied the needs of homeowners associations like yours—and we know that each unique community expects many specific things from an HOA website. We’ve also studied our competition, and we know that we can offer you the complete package of features, convenience, support, and thoughtful design that will ease your administrative tasks and make your residents happy.

Sign up for a completely free 14-day trial and experience our full feature set for yourself. We’re confident that you’ll discover why HOA Start should be your homeowners association website software provider.