DAMTA President’s Message
November 2017
Hello DAMTA!
Vince Madison here. This month I want to give you all an update on the website upgrade. I have to say: it’s complicated!
I’ve talked to five different sources and considered possibly doing it myself. I’ve heard estimates from $2,500 to $40,000 (oh, that’s for starters!)
I am looking for the website to do quite a few different things for us. The most basic need we have is for what is called a “responsive” website. That means a website that automatically changes to look good depending on the kind of screen it’s being shown on. This is important because so many folks these days use phones and tablets on the web. Fortunately, this does not seem that hard to come by. Everyone I talked to can do it. Some are better at it than others.
I also want the website to have an aesthetic and contemporary look and feel. We are artists after all, not a hardware store.
The board has decided that we should have a “members only” part of the website where we can put things like the membership directory and meeting minutes. Things that we want to access online, but don’t want to share with the public. I feel this is important.
But the most important upgrade I want to make is harder to come by. I want to turn our website into an effective lead generator for our members. The reason for this is that I feel attracting young members is vital for the future of DAMTA. But young teachers are not likely to pay the $135 or so a year for membership unless we can provide them with something they really need. Teachers starting out need students, and I want DAMTA to help with that.
That means a couple of things. First, we need an easy to use teacher search. The one we have is ok, but we need something more streamlined. This is the most expensive component of the website, and really the reason doing it myself is not feasible. But it is vital and all the folks I talked to can do it.
But a great teacher search is useless if no one comes to our site to use it. This is the hard part. And it may be that it goes beyond just redoing the website. Should we run ads? What kind of SEO (search engine optimization) makes sense? Like I said; it’s complicated.
I’m continuing to collect information. This is going to be a significant expense, and I want to get it right. Feel free to share your ideas and feedback!
Vince Madison / DAMTA President