I’m delighted to have launched a new website for the West Australian Music Teachers Association at wamta.au!
The old website was hosted in Joomla, and was a regular source of discontent. The teachers directory doesn’t rank for search results (unless you are googling a particular teacher’s name), and the member’s area had been set up as a free-for-all that anyone could create an account for, and had to be disabled as it was riddled with spammers.
The new website is in WordPress, and makes use of S2 Member to provide a completely customisable experience for members. Their level of membership will determine what they can and can’t access, and moving event registration to Humanitix allows for a seamless and beautiful integration.
The site is designed to both be an invaluable resource for members as well as an effective marketing tool to attract new members. I conducted a site audit of the old website as well as the other Music Teacher Associations around Australia and AUSTA, to determine the information architecture for the new site. All the information was overhauled, with numerous new pages added to really expand on the benefits of membership. So far, the Association has gained 6 new members in the first fortnight following the launch!
The new Teachers Directory is still under construction, hopefully to be launched in the next couple of months. Since the target audience is different to that of the main WAMTA website, I have split it off into a separate website, as that will also allow for better search engine optimisation. (In recent years I have likewise split off separate sites for the Recital & Concerto Competition and the WA Piano Pedagogy Conference).