Moving Forward/APS Strategic Plan Implementation

Digital Strategy Enhances APS Online Presence

In the coming months, the APS online presence will undergo an overhaul to make the many APS-run websites better coordinated and more user-friendly. The changes were prompted by the strategic plan, which called for “seamless integration across the APS web sites” so users can have a more personalized experience.

“It’s an effort to bring all of the digital initiatives of the Society together in support of the strategic plan, so we’re not doing things in such a fragmented way,” said Tracy Alinger, APS’s Director of Information Technology at College Park.

Currently, different departments of the Society operate a variety of websites, including the Society’s homepage at www.aps.org, and ones run by education, outreach, meetings and the journals. The plan is to develop a system that more closely ties the sites together, both through common branding and content sharing.

“We want to have a lot more consistency and we want to put cross-site navigation in place,” Alinger said. “The long term goals are to have more personalization, to make it easier to get around our sites, and to increase members’ awareness of all the things that we do.”

Over the last several months,  the Society has been working with consultants to study ways to improve branding and to make the content transferrable from one site to another. In addition, APS is developing a universal login for both the membership site and for access to the journals.

“In the long run if we do our job correctly, users will be more engaged with APS, they will be better able to find the content and activities that best suit them,” said Mark Doyle, Director of Journal Information Systems. “The idea is to build more of a community to better serve our members.”

Other improvements that are in process include making the APS webpages more compatible with mobile devices, and increasing social media presence.