American Society for Nondestructive Testing
Investments & Wealth Institute | Associations | Storyblok | Branding & Messaging
Enriching Member Experience, Elevating Association Value
Challenge
Revitalizing the ASNT Legacy
Since 1941, the American Society for Nondestructive Testing has been recognized as the leading standardizing and certifying body for NDT professionals. They are the heart of learning, innovation, and career advancement for the people who ensure safe and reliable infrastructure, vehicles, products, energy production, and more.
In the 15 years since their last brand and web refresh, the society has strengthened and expanded their global partnerships and built innumerable layers into their online presence. But for website users, it was increasingly difficult to navigate those layers and access the value that the society provides.
To address those pains—and elevate their organization as the global leader it truly is—ASNT had embarked on a bold digital transformation, updating or replacing major member-facing technologies and systems including their association management system (AMS), learning management system (LMS), marketing platform, publications hub, and member community platform.
At the heart of these systems are three core websites: ASNT.org, ASNT Certification Services, and ASNT Foundation—all inextricably linked across the experience with ASNT.
ASNT turned to Refactored to manage and execute their complex web transformation.
They leaned on our expertise and guidance to ensure the new sites delivered:
A modernized and simplified user experience across their global digital presence
Unified technologies and systems in a streamlined, simplified ecosystem
Empowerment for content editors across their operations
Deliverables
Three complete and complementary websites:
ASNT.org
ASNT Foundation
ASNT Certification Services
Unified, modern visual design
Modern, centralized Storyblok content management system
SSO across all sites and systems
Accessibility conformance for all sites (WCAG 2.2 AA)
Advanced search
Service Offerings
Discovery & Roadmap
Branding and Visual Design
Web Content Strategy
Content Development and Writing
IA/UX Design
Web Accelerator
Web Accessibility Validation
Website Development
Systems Integration
Training on Storyblok CMS
One Framework. Three Sites. Endless Functionality.
ASNT.org
NDT 101 and Industry content
About ASNT Society, Standards, and Certifications
Membership, Volunteer, and Board information
Education, Events, and Publications details
NDT Careers and Mentoring connections
ASNT Certification Services
Certification selection and requirements
Process, costs, and examination information
Recertification process and requirements
Employer Based Certification accreditation
Verification for certification holders
About Certification Services and board
ASNT Foundation
About Foundation purpose and mission
Educator resources
Grants, fellowships, and scholarships
Research funding
Donations
Foundation events
Requirements
Digital Transformation Reveals Valuable Opportunities
Over the course of its rich history, ASNT has become a treasure trove of not just standards and certification resources but also information, training, publications, industry leadership, advocacy, mentorship, and technological innovation.
And of course, all those interconnected parts have become more complex over time. Both site visitors and staff struggled with the complexity of finding information and completing tasks—especially because many tasks ranged across more than one online platform. The society, too, struggled with the cost and resource intensity of operating sites on three separate, expensive, and unwieldy platforms.
Thus, in addition to modernizing their overall brand and online presence, updating these essential sites provided opportunities for truly impactful improvements.
Simplicity is key
Create uniformity and consistency across sites
Mobile-first and accessible design
Centralize and simplify site and content management
Optimize integrations with other systems
Eliminate or reduce costly, redundant technical infrastructure
Improve user journeys
Streamline navigation within and across sites
Provide context-driven user cues
Reduce clicks needed to accomplish tasks
Clarify certifications processes
Improve entry-points, providing top-of-funnel decision information
Differentiate certification options
Simplify steps for certification application, exams, and renewals
Centralize self-management of certificants' work and experience logging
Optimize content structure
Simplify content discovery for all visitors (members, prospects, NDT career seekers)
Increase visibility of NDT 101 content
Enable easier access to professional and technical resources
Clarify cross-site interactions, especially between membership and certification
Increase visibility of member benefits
Meet member expectations for modern functionality and self-service
Enable easy management of membership, certifications, and learning
Streamline purchases, renewals, event registrations, and course signups
Improve access to volunteer, committee, mentoring, and career-development opportunities
Discovery
Mapping the Journey to a Modern, User-Centric Digital Presence
ASNT had a lot of motivation to move their project forward and a lot of ambition about how they wanted to reposition their organization. However, they also knew they needed to validate the direction they were headed with their members and their internal stakeholders.
So before jumping into web site redesign and CMS replatforming, we led them through a comprehensive Website Discovery & Roadmap project. This project phase was enormously beneficial for corralling the complexity of ASNTs project. The process enabled us to:
Define business needs, starting with stakeholder interviews across 8 distinct organizational hubs to create aligned project objectives, priorities, and KPIs
Determine member needs through individual interviews and survey analysis to determine user expectations for features, functionality, and engagement with online services
Document current and future website states, including existing challenges, required features and systems to deliver them, the full technology ecosystem, and the role and structure of content
Deliver an organized project scope, including a detailed timeline and codified budget requirements
Solution
Web Accelerator for Storyblok Enables Strategic Application of Modern Headless CMS Technology
For this multi-layered global society, providing autonomy and control for their teams was critical—as was providing a seamless experience for visitors performing tasks across sites and systems.
For this kind of enterprise-level complexity, Storyblok headless CMS truly shines, providing a central content repository and highly flexible framework that enable ASNT to:
Consolidate content operations across departments and web properties
Improve user experience through a reliable, consistent interface and content structure
Enhance security by decoupling content from front-end interfaces, safeguarding data and administrative functions
Reduce total cost of ownership by putting all web properties on a single, cost-effective platform and hosting service
Speed development with purpose-built features
By leveraging Refactored’s turnkey Web Accelerator framework, ASNT is able to dramatically reduce development overhead and costs while taking advantage of built-ins such as:
Mobile-first design
Logical content modeling
Simplified API integrations with existing systems
Modern, customizable page layouts
Membership-focused components and pages
Flexible navigation control
AI-powered advanced search
Pre-validated WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility
Enhanced usability for content editors
Storyblok’s best-in-class Visual Editor, enhanced with Web Accelerator’s flexible, best-practices-built components, delivers an environment where content teams can easily:
Edit panels, pages, navigation, and promotions
Curate resources and experiences by member type, topic, or resource
Personalize content at the page and panel level
Adapt and update pages, navigation—or the entire site
Autonomy + control for brand consistency
Nuanced governance controls help editors:
Optimize pages and meta data for search engines and site visitors
Protect member-only content
Maintain conformance with WCAG accessibility criteria
Enforce brand standards, compliance, and processes
Process
Applying insights to deliver on key requirements
With the roadmap we completed in ASNT’s Discovery phase, we moved their triple-website-redesign project forward. Our experienced teams delivered leadership and clarity by centralizing project management for the creation of all three websites. By managing the projects in parallel, we were able to recommend effective content consolidation and a logical user journey while delivering efficiencies in integrations across sites and systems.
Brand modernization and refinement
For ASNT, modernizing their global online presence started with modernizing their brand—especially their logo, which had a distinctly dated look.
Our designer started with their existing color palette, then re-imagined the logo, creating an elegant update.
From there, the designer leveraged their extended palette to create distinct color cues for each site while keeping the overall brand identity intact.
Dramatic UX and site design improvements
Returning to our site usability study, we applied UX best practices to help ASNT tell a more compelling story and reduce clicks and friction in the user journey. We developed:
A streamlined user journey map and sitemap
Interstitial pages to provide critical context for users moving from one web experience to another
A comprehensive set of wireframes, validating page flow and storytelling elements before applying visual design elements
User-centric content uplift
A primary requirement for all of ASNT’s sites was to align page content with user needs and tasks. Our account managers and content team did a deep dive into ASNT’s user personas. Then, we collaborated to:
Simplify and consolidate high-value, essential content
Re-imagine content organization and navigation
Create a fresh approach to storytelling to help visitors interact with ASNT
In addition, we wrote new entry-point, informational, and interstitial pages to create a better user guidance and enhance SEO. These pages also modeled panel and page layouts to guide ASNT’s internal content team as they carried forward content changes on their extensive internal pages.
Best-practices-driven technical build
By using our Web Accelerator for Storyblok—which provided a solid framework and WCAG 2.2 accessibility for all the sites out of the box—we increased the speed of technical development, enabling simultaneous builds across three websites.
Refactored is more than a tech support provider for ASNT. From the selection of the Storyblok CMS to building the sites to establishing integrations with existing and new tools, Refactored is an active and supportive strategic partner.
With Storyblok best-practices in place, we are able to foster seamless integrations that enable ASNT to choose best-of-breed, modern technology solutions that provide the best possible ROI in a composable ecosystem.
A New Digital Era for ASNT
From complexity to clarity in a modern CMS
Refactored managed ASNT’s complex scope and project requirements, handing literally thousands of details over nearly 2 years of transformation.
With our experienced project and account managers at the helm, ASNT’s internal team kept their society humming. They relied on our dedicated in-house experts to provide leadership in everything from UX strategy to content development, design recommendations to training their CMS users.
Today, ASNT has taken back control of their online presence with:
85% lower TCO compared to their previous web platforms
Best-of-breed technical infrastructure that enables them to adapt as their needs change
Modernized brand that welcomes their global audience and elevates their far-reaching value
Unified visual design that standardizes and clarifies the user journey
Exceptional content management capabilities that enabling autonomous site control and global brand governance
Accessible, mobile-first sites validated for WCAG 2.2 AA conformance
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