An association site serves members who log in, prospective members deciding whether to join, and often a public audience the association exists to inform. Most of the difficulty is not in the design: it is that the site is a front end to a membership system holding records, renewals, events, education and committees, and that system dictates what is possible.
The membership system is the project
Whether the association management system integrates cleanly, how single sign-on works, whether renewals and event registration happen on the site or in a separate portal, and how member data flows. Projects that treat this as an integration detail discover halfway through that the desired experience is not supported by the platform the association already owns.
Three audiences, one navigation
Members want their benefits, renewals, events and continuing education. Prospects want to know what membership costs and gets them. The public may want the association's standards or directory. Serving all three from one undifferentiated structure is how these sites become impossible to navigate, and the fix is structural rather than cosmetic.
Accessibility obligations
Many associations serve public interest functions and some are subject to accessibility requirements directly; all benefit from building to a recognised standard. At the scale of a site with years of documents and recorded education, accessibility is a programme covering files and media as well as pages, and it is far cheaper built in than retrofitted.
Governance and volunteers
Content is often produced by committees and volunteers with varying skill, on their own schedule. Without a publishing policy, templates and an owner, an association site regrows the sprawl a redesign removed. The governance decisions are the deliverable that makes the design last.
Questions people ask about web design for associations
Should the site and the member portal be one system?
A single sign-on experience is what members expect and it depends on what your management system supports. Establish that before design, since it constrains everything.
How should member-only content be handled?
Decide deliberately what is public, because gated content earns no visibility and public content earns members. Many associations gate material that would be their best recruitment tool.
Who maintains an association site?
Someone named, with volunteers publishing inside templates. Sites maintained by whoever has time drift quickly and become inconsistent.