I just signed up for CPE conferences and was so impressed with your website that I feel obligated to say something. Everything flowed well, looked great, was easy to navigate and the topper was being able to click on the seminar links in the end and save it in Outlook. Wow! Haven't seen such a well thought out website in a long time. Someone went the extra mile and did it right. Congratulations on a great job!
WICPA Member
The Wisconsin Institute of Certified Public Accountants is the premier professional organization for CPAs in Wisconsin. WICPA approached Vibation with two mandates. First they wanted their design to look bright and warm rather than the "stodgy" look they felt most CPA societies had. Next, Wisconsin was looking for tools that would facilitate learning and collaboration between their members.
The website designed by Vibation for the Wisconsin Institute of CPAs was so much easier to navigate and our members could access the information much more quickly and efficiently. The members' ability to register for seminars and conferences online was greatly enhanced which helped expedite the process and provided increases to the bottom line.
Sherry Albrecht - PR Graphics & Technology Specialist, Wisconsin Institute of CPAs
Unique Among Their Peers
There might be something in the water that makes WIPCA just a little different. WICPA is brave in communicating that they don't see their members as numbers or boring old CPAs. They know their members have passion, individuality, and a life outside of work. WICPA honored that by having professional photo shoots of their members in their varied work environments and passions outside of work. This type of duality is also communicated in the design through bold playful color choices with hard working designs minus the stiffness, unique for a CPA society... a truly unique CPA society.
Giving Knowledge to Their Members
There were two main information design challenges to overcome. First, how do we communicate to the members the breadth of the content across the site when they are focused on CPE. Secondly, how do we effectively use wikis and discussion boards, but prevent free for all discussion. Vibation was able to solve both with the concept of the Knowledge Center. This area of the site would aggregate content types from the entire site in topic areas. First time site users interested in a topic such as "Banking" can access News, articles, links, related committees, events, CPE, and discussion boards, all in one location. Targeting the discussion board on specific topics and assigning member leaders to facilitate the forums made for the most focused valuable discussion possible.
A Flexible and Varied framework
The problem with many CMS implementations is that all the pages on the site begin to look the same. With 1,200 plus pages it was not possible to design each page. The system that Vibation designed included multiple page layouts and a library of content styles. The system allowed the site administrators to select a layout for each page and to plug any of the components from the library into each page. The system allows the administrators to feel creative when building site pages, while keeping the design constrained within the brand guidelines (no random freelance design).
THE RESULT - Playful Site with Powerful Stats
The new website sincerely reflects the personalities of the association and portrays WICPA as an organization that truly cares about their members. It has set them apart from the other CPA societies with many very positive responses from the members. With the navigation being easier, more members are renewing online verses calling in which has made it a lot easier on the society. On top of that, the web traffic hit a 75% increase and the website helped WICPA grow to a membership size of 8K!
About Wisconsin CPA Society - The Wisconsin Institute of Certified Public Accountants (www.wicpa.org) is the premier professional organization for Wisconsin CPAs, with more than 8,000 members working in public accounting, industry, government, nonprofit and education. Since its founding in 1905, the WICPA has grown from 10 to more than 8,000 members. The purpose of the organization was to promote and regulate the study of accountancy in the state of Wisconsin.