Associations often make their online dues payment processes hard to navigate for their members. Given that dues still form a significant chunk of any association’s revenue, it’s shocking how hard some of them make it for their members to give them money. These five tips focus on how to make your online dues payment system ridiculously easy in order to gather as much dues online as possible.

• Remove all extraneous form fields from the payment process. Do not ask them to complete a survey or provide demongraphic data before providing payment. You will lose people for each additional unnecessary element you make them complete which requires you to then gather dues payment through the much more expensive snail mail methods.
• When possible, pre-populate any fields you do require them to complete. You know their mailing address. Don’t make them enter it again!
• Instead of posting dire warnings about not clicking submit twice (which can cause double payment depending upon your system), disable the submit button via javascript after the first click. Why threaten the user when you can easily disable the behavior that causes the problem? Threats like that make paying online scary. You will lose people who don’t want to risk it.
• Send an e-mail notification for paying dues online well in advance of mailing your paper invoices. Remove those who have already paid online from your later mailings to save money on printing and postage.
• Include an encrypted link in your e-mail notification that bypasses your login system to your online dues payment system. When the member clicks the link generated just for them it should automatically authenticate them and allow them to immediately pay for their dues without having to remember their login. This link should expire after a few days and it should only be applicable to paying dues, not to logging them in to the rest of the site.

The point of all these tips is to make it as easy as possible for your members to do the one action your renewal notice should spur: paying dues.