Emergency Nurses Association Rejuvenates Ecommerce, Boosts Mobile Traffic with Progress Sitefinity

Emergency Nurses Association (ENA) needed a better web ecommerce experience for its 50,000 members, making it easier for them to access courses—and donate to the organization. Thanks to Progress® Sitefinity®, the ENA web experience is now the picture of health.

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Challenge

When the Emergency Nurses Association wanted to upgrade its ecommerce experience and streamline backend management, it turned to Progress Sitefinity. 

Solution

Sitefinity offered a seamless user experience and ENA gained business agility via API integration.

    Result

    Sitefinity dramatically reduced shopping cart abandonment and streamlined backend and frontend management.

    Story

    Challenge

    With 50,000 global members, the Emergency Nurses Association (ENA), is the premier professional nursing association dedicated to defining the future of emergency nursing through advocacy, education, innovation and policy work. Founded in 1970, the association is always looking to better serve its members who visit the site to access everything from policy news to continuing education and clinical best practices. Its online shop sells on-demand digital access to evidence-based emergency nursing education meant to keep members at the forefront of their industry. But with a sub-optimal user experience, too many members were abandoning purchases before completing their checkout transactions.

    “We embarked on a digital transformation effort to maximize our digital capabilities,” said Bridget Walsh, Chief Governance Officer for ENA. “For ecommerce, we needed an improved experience for purchasing products from us.”

    An underlying cause was ENA using its association management system (AMS) to manage ecommerce, which had few API’s and was not mobile-friendly. This created a disjointed shopping experience as members transferred between platforms mid-transaction. The platform constraints created a drain on resources and hampered the organization’s ability to grow and evolve, “It was really labor intensive as far as programming and updating. It had a very-limiting set of capabilities, when you came right down to it,” added Eileen Glynn, web developer for ENA.

    To improve, the team sought a seamless commerce experience for both desktop and mobile— whether members were buying goods or registering for courses. But most importantly, it needed an automated way to funnel data back to their system of record for operational analysis.

    Solution

    ENA chose Progress® Sitefinity®, along with its new turnkey integration for Ucommerce. The ENA team then integrated API’s with a host of solutions, including to manage member’s SSO experience, its learning management system to track online course completions, and other API’s for shipping, finance, PCI compliance and more.

    “Now, when you login to the website, members can access courses, profile information, certifications, payment history and their wish list. Streams of data flow seamlessly from our AMS and their cart,” said Walsh. “We no longer need to make members wait to come to the shopping cart because the shopping cart is integrated throughout the website.”

    ENA was able to implement a frictionless ecommerce experience, not only for members, but for foundation supporters as well, making it easier for them to actively donate to the organization. Both commerce transactions could be completed in one connected experience—on any device.

    The team now uses roles and permissions to create tailored web experiences appropriate for each user’s membership level: members, board members, state and chapter leaders.

    “From a management perspective, it’s much easier than SharePoint ever was. We can let staff create their content and then look it over to make sure it’s in conformance. I can’t imagine using SharePoint over Sitefinity. It doesn’t make any sense,” said Glynn.

    Result

    With a website page design enhanced by 20 Sitefinity widgets both for content and commerce, ENA members now get a seamless buying experience with all data flowing directly back to their system of record. The user-friendly backend enables the marketing department to easily update landing pages with featured and related products to help boost conversion and keep content fresh.

    “It’s created an opportunity to try new approaches to highlighting key products and categorizing products. Sitefinity gives us the flexibility to test, trial and improve,” said Walsh.

    The backend data sets are so easy to access that, for the
    first time, ENA can see which products were browsed before carts were abandoned. From that user data, they can develop strategies for A-B testing and conversion optimization.

    Looking ahead, the team plans to enhance the commerce experience to make it easier to accommodate “impulse” donations to the ENA foundation and improve inventory management through the API between Sitefinity and their system of record.

    “We are always looking for feedback and opportunities to continue to improve the experience,” Walsh added, “The Sitefinity platform allows us the ability to do that in a very agile way.”

    About the Emergency Nurses Association

    Founded in 1970, the Emergency Nurses Association (ENA)
    is the premier professional nursing association dedicated to defining the future of emergency nursing through advocacy, education, research, innovation and leadership. Through its more than 50,000 worldwide members, ENA advocates for patient safety, develops industry-leading standards and guides emergency healthcare public policy. Learn more at www.ena.org.

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