Corporate members often like to tout the affiliation with industry or professional associations, however it’s important to make sure the members aren’t making false claims
Introduction
Industry or business trade associations often supports their corporate members to become successful in their trades or businesses. In most cases, being a member of an industry association serves as an authoritative online representation of the mission of that association and its affiliates where applicable. Similarly, organizations are usually proud to be members of the association. To tout their membership and provide consumer confidence, members are often encouraged to display the associations member seal on their websites.
The Challenge
In some cases, organizations will need the help of their development team to add an associations member seals to their websites. If their membership lapses, the association will have to rely on the organization to remove the seal from their website in a timely manner. A better solution is to give the association a way to remotely remove the member seal from the organization’s website.
The second challenge was that non-members are able to display the association’s member seal by grabbing the .jpeg image online. Our solution heightens the security around who can display this industry accolade by making the seal link to their active membership listing.
Thirdly, whatever image is being used as a member seal was static and could not be clicked to verify the member as well as the seal. Often associations will list their active members on their website serving as a verification source for visitors but there is no relationship between the verification data and the membership seal. A better solution is to create a link between a member seal and their membership details on the association’s website.
The Solution
To solve these problems, website seals have created a portal which allows associations to generate and issue dynamic website seals to their corporate members.
Features of the Solution
- Certification and licensing bodies can issue website seals by generating a simple and unique code snippet from a central management system.
- The code snippet is easy to install and can be placed on your preferred location anywhere within the member website.
- The generated site seal code can then be sent to certification members to add to their website.
- Automatic expiration of site seal linked with membership status – site seal automatically display as expired where the member certificate or license has expired.
- Ability to remotely and centrally revoke a site seal in a case where a license or membership certification is revoked. This means that invalidity of the site seal is also displayed.
- Design and customize your site seal to reflect your brand and use the same template design for all site seals issued.
- Since site seal is linked to membership status, you can use different images for Active, Expired and Revoked seals for dynamic and automatic update whenever website is loaded
- Option to merge and display membership information dynamically on seal: Certification Name, Membership Name, Membership Number and Membership Status.
- Site seals are responsive and display perfectly on desktops and mobile phones and can run on any website technology.
- Our seals are clickable which means users can click on the seal and be redirected to a verification source or web assurance seal service’s website which verifies the validity of the seal.
- The dynamic Site Seal contains real-time security indicators and guarantees the identity of the website’s owner.
- Membership name and number can be displayed on the site seal representing the unique identifier.
Conclusion
Corporate members often like to tout the affiliation with industry or professional associations, however it’s important to make sure the members aren’t making false claims. If the organization is no longer a member, they should not be allowed to promote themselves as members of the association. Since we cannot force the organizations to remove from their website, or assume they know how to remove it themselves, a remote solution can take pressure off the associations allowing them focus on their core business.