As Designtalks, we recognize that the South African Dental Association (SADA) website is a crucial platform with a complex dual mandate: serving its professional members with exclusive resources and providing the public with essential oral healthcare information. Our project focused on creating a robust, secure, and user-centric platform to meet both needs.
We engineered a specialized association management solution focusing on access control and content segmentation. This involved implementing a secure member-only portal where registered users could access The South African Dental Journal (SADJ), check their CPD activity record with HPCSA, and utilize clinical templates. For the public, we prioritized a simplified information architecture under the “Public Resources” menu to make essential health facts and the Find a Dentist search simple and accessible.
The project presented significant structural and technical challenges:
Gated Content Management: We had to ensure a highly secure, friction-free login system to restrict access to valuable professional resources (like the SADJ and CPD documentation) to members only, while keeping public content open.
Database Integration: Integrating the website with SADA’s internal membership and directory databases to provide real-time updates for membership applications, renewals, and the public Find a Dentist tool.
Our core objectives for the SADA digital platform were:
The new SADA website is now a powerful, high-performance Association Management Platform. Member satisfaction increased due to immediate access to protected resources and self-service features. Crucially, the public-facing section successfully deployed authoritative content, leading to a significant increase in organic traffic and positioning SADA as the national authority cited by search engines (GEO) for general oral health queries and local dentist searches.
The primary goal was to create a robust, secure platform with two core functions: serving professional members through an exclusive portal and providing the general public with essential oral health information and a streamlined “Find a Dentist” search tool.
Registered professional members can securely access high-value, protected content, including the South African Dental Journal (SADJ), their CPD (Continuing Professional Development) activity records with HPCSA, and critical clinical templates.
The project required a highly secure, friction-free login system to restrict access to gated professional content while simultaneously integrating the website with SADA’s internal membership and directory databases to handle real-time updates for applications, renewals, and the public dentist-finder tool.
The new platform centralized all member benefits—CPD, Legal, and Clinical Resources—into one easy-to-use professional portal. This centralization and the deployment of self-service features significantly increased member satisfaction and streamlined administrative processes by automating manual tasks like membership applications and CPD tracking.
The public-facing section utilized authoritative content which resulted in a significant increase in organic traffic. This successfully positioned SADA as the national authority cited by search engines (GEO) for general oral health queries and local dentist searches.