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The #TLDR version…
Game Quality is a global professional membership body for people working in game testing and quality assurance (QA).
Over three years, we worked side-by-side to take a fledgling website and turn it into a multi-functional membership and learning platform that supports community growth, drives sign-ups, and scales with the launch of new products.
The challenge
Game Quality was growing fast - new members coming in, events expanding, and a big strategic move on the horizon in the form of launching a new professional certification for QA practitioners worldwide.
Game Quality already had a working set-up when it came to handling their existing 3,000 members, however a number of issues had been raised since the initial launch.
- The tech stack was slightly complex, with a marketing site being managed separately from a membership site and a heavy reliance on Zapier which would sometimes slow down performance
- Whilst the marketing site was okay, the UX needed a bit of a facelift in terms of better working user journeys, and looking slicker in order to represent a cool online community for industry professionals to join
- Work was needed to map out in more detail the varied membership journeys across:
- individual and corporate options
- corporate self-management
- End to end journeys that were on brand - from onboarding, to renewal, to end experiences and integration between the web platform and their discourse community server
- Last but definitely not least, we were asked to scope out, design, develop and launch the new Game Quality Academy product - the first professional, certified qualification in games QA
In short: They needed an online presence that could truly champion and own the unique and essential industry that they represented; the world of Games QA…
Our approach
We treated this as a long-term growth partnership rather than a one-off site build. The work fell into three connected streams:
1) Make the website a stable, clear membership hub
We reworked the structure and UX around how people actually engage with Game Quality:
- a membership-centric homepage with a clear proposition and strong sign-up routes
- dedicated navigation for Membership, Qualicon (“the main event”), Academy, News, and their Glossary of QA knowledge
- a layout built for discoverability and scale, so new resources and products could slot in naturally over time
This meant less “where do I click?” and more “oh nice, I want to be part of this.”
2) Integrate member services end-to-end
Membership bodies live or die on friction. We implemented and refined:
- smooth sign-up and renewal journeys
- smooth “add-on” journeys, e.g. “as a Game Quality member, I’d like to enroll in this training programme”
- member login with access to curated resources
- event listings and schedules with clear calls-to-action
- a setup that separates public vs member-only content without making the site feel gated all the time
Everything designed to make membership feel valuable the moment you arrive.
3) Simplify the tech stack
We merged the marketing and membership sites from a multi-site set up into one, immediately improving the editorial ability to publish articles only once across logged out and logged in pages. This also enabled better SEO as whilst we understood the need for membership pages to remain only visible to members, optimising them to at least appear in search results and then present a “only available to members” velvet rope was definitely a good idea.
Sounds easy, but it never is. Domain jiggery pokery, redirects, and we also threw in a server migration at the same time, just to “challenge ourselves”
4) Launch the Academy as a real product, not a page
Game Quality Academy wasn’t a “nice extra.” It was a brand-new flagship offer: the first professional certification in global games QA.
We delivered:
- product and UX thinking to help define how the Academy should work online
- design and development aligned to existing brand, but with its own identity
- multi-system integration including:
- set up of the Academy learning management system (LMS)
- Integration and tracking of user progress with the online exam taking platform and process
- pass and fail journeys and relevant comms for each
- retake journeys and process
- and of course, upon success, official certification and delivery of the awarded qualification
- a platform that can evolve as the Academy expands
This wasn’t a brochure. It’s a product.
The outcome
Three years in, Game Quality now has:
- a stable, credible, B2B-appropriate membership platform
- a site structure built for community, events, certification and knowledge sharing
- integrated member services that reduce friction and increase value
- a fully-launched Academy platform supporting the industry’s first certified QA qualification
- CRM and comms foundations ready to scale with membership and products
- a clear emphasis on organisational / team memberships, not just individuals
Most importantly: their digital platform now matches their ambition - and can keep up as they grow.
Why this matters
This project is a great example of what we do best: building digital platforms for organisations that need to combine public presence, community, membership and learning products - and making the whole thing work as one joined-up ecosystem. If you’re an industry body, membership organisation, or community-led platform trying to scale, this is the kind of work we love.
