The Greater Metropolitan Association of REALTORS ® (GMAR) is a member organization of the National Association of Realtors ® devoted to serving real estate agents, brokers, appraisers, and affiliates in Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne County in metro-Detroit. GMAR has more than 10,000 Realtors ® who subscribe to a strict Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice.
THEIR NEEDS
The original GMAR website needed a complete design overhaul and new integrated functionality. Their goal was to create a modern, mobile-friendly website with a design that accurately met the needs of their membership.
Our team for the project included several developers, UX/UI designer, and a project manager. Our UX/UI designer worked closely with the client's graphic designer to bring the mock-ups they created in-house to life and easily usable and accessible to all site users.
The original site structure needed to be rebuilt; they had a cumbersome menu that made site navigation confusing and difficult for members to access the resources they needed.
Custom backend integration with their existing database management system was required to create new calendar and event functionality and allow staff to continue membership management functions within their existing software.
PROVISIO'S SOLUTION
Working closely with GMAR's in-house graphic designer, Provisio's UX/UI designer built their new site to meet the association's updated brand vision. A new navigation menu was created to offer easy access to the plethora of resources and content GMAR produces.
GMAR required robust content creation and management abilities that adhered to their branding and style guidelines. Provisio created multiple areas, including front-page banner sliders and blocks, accordion elements on inner pages, call-to-action elements, and more that staff could update as needed. New content could be added, and existing content updated or edited using while seamlessly fitting within the new design aesthetic.
Our lead developer focused on seamlessly integrating the client's existing association management software with the new site. We custom-built a new calendar while working through API obstacles to achieve an integration that offered members a convenient way to find, sort, and register for events.
GMAR currently utilizes two platforms for event management: one for members and one for non-member events. We built a system to integrate their back-end member portal with their front-end website to display and manage events from the same calendar.
Role-based user permissions allow them to give staff access to the areas specific to their responsibilities.
We designed and built our system to be scalable to add more membership management and eCommerce features in the future.