The American Psychiatric Association (APA), the world’s largest psychiatric organization, was founded in 1844 and represents more than 36,000 psychiatric physicians from the United States and around the world. Member physicians collaborate to educate the psychiatric profession about methods that ensure humane care and effective treatment for persons with mental disorders, including intellectual development and substance abuse.

In a few words, APA is the voice and conscience of all modern psychiatry.

Because of its huge association membership, and because its collaborative nature supports a group of professionals that literally spans the globe, the APA needed to partner with a company with extensive association experience – one that could provide an easy-to-use solution that would integrate well with the organization’s already-established TMA Association Management Software, Personify.

After careful consideration, research and deliberation, the APA decided that Bridgeline was that group, and the iAPPS Product Suite was the right solution.

Project Objectives

The APA employs a large and growing number of content managers every day that are responsible for various sections of the overall website, all with varying levels of digital expertise. Besides providing a centrally located, globally accessible  location to manage the entire association’s educational and interactive web experience, the solution would have to operate in lock-step with their established association management software – Personify – as well as with YAF open source discussion board solutions.

Along with all of that, the APA wanted to “break away” from the pack of association and medical sites and the common, often haphazard methods they employed with their associations’ online operations. The APA studied what many Fortune 500 companies were doing to support more successful online experiences, and decided that they needed to take advantage of proven success methods. They wanted the modern psychiatry industry to look on them as “Thought Leaders,” and to search within their association site  for the latest education and collaboration in the profession.

The Solution

Bridgeline Digital approached the APA’s requests as a challenge, and proved to be more than matched to the task. Their expertise with associations, paired with iAPPS’ deep integration and ease of use, became the piece of the collaborative puzzle that APA needed to bring together all of their strategies. With licenses to build and maintain their entire website with iAPPS Content Manager and to consistently measure – and perfect – its influence and reach with iAPPS Analyzer, the new website quickly became a strong anchor for the entire association. Deep, effective integration with TMA’s Personify – a leading global association management solution – created an environment that made collaboration cross the web, and across the globe, a reality.

“Bridgeline and iAPPS turned out to be the way to go,’ said Eric Fishman, Director of Information Systems at APA. “The result is a comprehensive and collaborative site our entire association can be extremely proud of. This site and its launch could not have gone more according to plan.”

Bridgeline’s long history of support for associations helped them to integrate the iAPPS solutions with Personify and YAF Discussion Boards using a broad perspective, so that the solutions worked in mutually supportive ways to enhance industry collaboration and communication. Using an extensive inventory of relevant index terms, Bridgeline provided APA with the ability to create and manage several categories of calendars to communicate meetings, collaboration and educational events across the global association.

The Results

After 17 months of research, testing, design and development, the APA launched a completely collaborative site the entire association was proud of. Deep integration of the iAPPS Suite and their association management software made management of the content and collaboration across the association easier – and more effective – than ever before.

The results were significant – and quick. In seven months before launch of the new site – which included a homepage URL change from www.psych.org to www.psychiatry.org (a move that effectively starts the numbers at zero) – the old site showed monthly growth in visits of just under 5%, and under 3% growth in unique visits. After launch, the average number of visits grew by 52%, while unique visits grew by 61%. Currently, the new site seems on track to maintain a consistent 40% increase in visits, judging by these early numbers.

The association plans to complete a fully unified and completely functional web presence with the eventual addition of the iAPPS Marketier and iAPPS Commerce platforms, which promises to add even more activity going forward.

“Bridgeline and iAPPS turned out to be the way to go,’ said Eric Fishman, Director of Information Systems at APA. “The result is a comprehensive and collaborative site our entire association can be extremely proud of. This site and its launch could not have gone more according to plan.”