It’s easy to get stuck in the Jurassic age, to not evolve but you know what happened to the T Rex - extinction. And that’s what we all need to avoid and we think user experience is critical. Let me introduce myself - my name is Lisa, I work as an Innovation Manager here at BCS and I’m part of a team responsible for improving BCS membership product and services.

It’s all about the experience…

Did you know 68% of users leave a website because of a poorly designed User Experience (UX)? On top of that, 62% of user’s base future engagements on past experiences... Well it doesn’t take a genius to realise the importance of getting your website’s UX right!

So what exactly do I mean by User Experience? In the broadest sense, it can be defined as the overall experience you have when using or interacting with something - we have hundreds of ‘user experiences’ everyday - you are having a ‘user experience’ right now reading this blog...

In 2017 an organisation’s website can be critical to business success and getting your web UX right is no easy feat. Getting the user experience right is an art, when it’s good, the user won’t even notice - they will get done what they need to get done and move on - simple. But a poor experience can trigger frustration, impatience and on a bad day - rage. We tend to hear about the bad experiences more than the good and bad news spreads fast.

So how do you improve your user experience? Well 6 months ago we embarked on a project to improve our online member experience. We created a team of multi-disciplined individuals responsible for member insight, copy writing, user design, coding and web design with a single goal to completely reinvent how a member experiences membership online. Well, we are nearing the end of that project and we are ready to let you in on some major spoilers....

Spoiler alert - The new platform is called MyBCS …

MyBCS will replace the current ‘Member Secure Area’. MyBCS is ...

... all about members

We have used member research to inform our development plans - to improve the areas we know members most engage with and reposition the benefits which members do not necessarily know we offer but say they want.

... all about the UX

MyBCS improves how we deliver member benefits online - we have reviewed and completely overhauled the online user journeys so that members can get to benefits and services fast in a visual and interactive way.

... all about functionality

MyBCS offers improved user journeys and new features such as interactive maps, video content, dynamic content and push alerts (such as membership renewal notices). 

... all about future-proofing

MyBCS is running off a new open-source CMS platform Umbraco which will allow us in the future to offer personalised content which will be based on the information we learn from a member’s user habits.

... all about iterating

We have a roadmap for future releases for MyBCS. Once we launch MyBCS in July that is not the end - we have lots of future functionality we plan to release and we want to work with you - what would you like to see?!