The Marine Retailers Association of the Americas, MRAA has announced that through the introduction of a new website, it has embarked on an entirely new way of conducting business. The new website, found at www.MRAA.com, not only boasts an array of new features for the association’s members, but it also integrates numerous critical business functions into one digital platform.

The new site incorporates a database management system, customer relations management and e-newsletter tools, e-commerce opportunities, event registration functionality, news feeds and members – only content, in addition to full community functionality and an easy-to-use content management system.

“To put it simply, this new website provides us the platform to reinvent the way we do business,” says Matt Gruhn, President of the MRAA. “It may seem a little overblown to make so much of what appears to simply be a new website, but this is much, much more than a simple redesign, or a couple new features. This allows us to interact with our members in ways we’ve never explored, and it provides much greater value to both our retailer and supplier membership experiences.”

While the new site design, which was created by Lighthouse Media Solutions (formerly known as Allen Roche Marine), is the most visible component of the change, integrated into the site are many features never seen before on the MRAA website. The community functionalty may be the most significant among those new features. Through it, members will be able to maintain a profile and interact with all other members of the association through direct messaging, blogging, article ratings and commenting, and chat functionalty, as well as news feeds, event calendars and messaging that are all specific to the member’s regional, state or local marine trades associations and other groups on the site.

“All of this new functionality is great for us as we move forward, but the thing that has us the most excited is the clear value this upgrade will have for the member experience we offer,” Gruhn says. “It used to take up to nine total steps to become a member of this association; today, we’ve reduced that to two. Fill out a form, click submit, and you have instant access to all of the members-only benefits, the priveleged access to the MRAA online community and all of the members-only content. Plus there are many more such benefits to be announced in the coming days and weeks.”