Minding Your Business: Changes at EBRHA are coming!

By Chris Tipton

The East Bay Rental Rental Housing Association (EBRHA) is constantly re-evaluating its processes, infrastructure technology, and services. Our goal is to improve the user experience and help our 1500 members operate thriving rental housing businesses.

In recent years, some of the biggest challenges for our members have been navigating our website and accessing the association management system we use. Both the external member experience and the internal management of the current system have been a real challenge. There is difficulty finding relevant website content, accessing third-party resources, billing, and getting timely updates that are essential to the rental housing community. Some of our members have shared their frustrations and have provided important feedback to us on the problems they have experienced.

There’s some great news to share. The EBRHA team has been working diligently over the last few months to address our member’s concerns. We’re very excited to announce that a new and improved website and association management system are coming! Here are some of the improvements on the way:

Less Login Friction. No more temperamental passwords or constantly clearing your cache. Login information is stored more easily, with greater security, self-troubleshooting, more customized member settings, and easier password resets.

Effortless Event Registration. In the past, the system would log members out without warning or notification. Members were either charged a non-member fee, had to log in multiple times, or had to reset their password and clear their browser cache. Our new member portal remembers the user’s device, fetches information from each user’s profile and automatically populates the information during the event registration process. Active members who accurately complete their profile and keep it up-to-date will breeze through the registration process from beginning to checkout to claim complimentary member tickets to exclusive EBRHA events.

Better Website Navigation. Our current website had cluttered menus and clunky redirects due to our inability to customize the pages. Members can look forward to clean navigation, more organized and searchable content, and easy and intuitive flow throughout the site!

Searchable Supplier Directory. Pageswere slow to load and often had broken links after supplier information was updated. Members will soon see a clean, stylish directory that loads quickly and has a search filter to find exactly what is needed! Supplier management users can update their company’s information from contact info and social media channels so that the information in the directory is always the most accurate and up-to-date. Changes live immediately and more advertising promotion opportunities are now available to supplier members

Superior Search Functionality. Over the years, as new content, services and resources were added to, the website’s became less and less organized, making it extremely difficult for members to quickly find what they needed. With the upcoming launchf our new website, we have taken the time to re-organize everything. Our website’s new platform offers greater user functionality with more structured data that is intuitive for users so they can find what they’re looking for! A powerful search tool looks across the site for relevant matches. If users are unsure where to look or what they need specifically, the new search tool can help!

Personalized Membership Experience. Historically, EBRHA’s staff had no way of providing communications to specific member types or sending targeted reminders, notifications, and messages to specific groups of members. We had to post a variety of messages on the home page which confused everyone if the message didn't apply to them. The new website allows for more personalized and customized communications. EBRHA can create groups based on a variety of profile fields to ensure that relevant communications only land in the inboxes of those who need them! The Member Compass can be customized by each user. Members can see upcoming or past events when they have registered, and past purchases and users will be able to view/print past invoices and easily pay an invoice with a credit card or electronic check (ACH).

With the year ahead, we welcome all EBRHA members to explore new areas of opportunity using technology to help manage and grow your business in 2023. The new website is scheduled to launch in mid-February. More features and website resources will be announced soon, so stay tuned. We really appreciate all of our member’s feedback and input that helped us take this very important next step to better support the community of housing providers. At EBRHA, we like to say that it’s our business to mind yours.

Thank you for your dedication to supporting and providing accessible, safe, and affordable housing to the communities we serve.

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