America's Credit Unions

The Client

America's Credit Unions represents a newly formed entity uniting over 140 million credit union members, created through the merger of CUNA and NAFCU. As a member-driven organization, ACU generates revenue primarily through events and digital products, all served through its website. The organization needed a digital platform that would reinforce its unified brand while providing personalized experiences to its diverse audience of members and stakeholders.

The Situation

Following the merger to form America's Credit Unions, the organization needed a modern, high-performing website to serve as a central hub for its diverse audience. The platform needed to go beyond simple content hosting, providing engaging, personalized experiences that could adapt to evolving user needs while reinforcing ACU's unified brand identity. ACU also required a member portal where members could access content restricted by membership level, with streamlined technology integration between previously separate systems.

The Challenge

Acquia partner Elevated Third joined forces with Swink to help ACU overcome several challenges in creating a unified digital platform:

• Implementing designs from Swink while ensuring long-term sustainability and maintainability
• Integrating different systems (Drupal and AEM) into a streamlined tech stack featuring Drupal, Nimble AMS (by Salesforce), and HubSpot
• Developing a member portal with appropriate permissions and access control using Nimble AMS
• Creating a seamless user experience between the marketing front-end and back-end member experience
• Providing efficient asset management across the entire ACU ecosystem to keep content editors in sync with administrative teams

The Solution

Elevated Third implemented a comprehensive digital transformation for America's Credit Unions:

Streamlined component system: The team reduced 60+ visual design components to a simplified system of just half that number while maintaining visual flexibility, utilizing Drupal's Layout Builder combined with their proprietary Kinetic theme to translate design components into adaptable content blocks.

Versatile layouts: Different color combinations and layout configurations allowed for creativity while maintaining speed, responsiveness, and accessibility, with structured content like events built using Drupal Groups to display extensive information in concise, user-friendly formats.

Integrated media management: Acquia DAM integration allowed central control over images and files, with access managed through Drupal and defined roles. At the same time, the DAM housed media-specific information such as focal cropping and organizational taxonomy.

Collaborative development: Acquia Code Studio allows teams to synchronize efforts, code, and deployment across more than six developers actively contributing to the project, while ACU's internal development team used Acquia Cloud IDE for an even tighter development loop.

Personalization foundation: ACU became an early adopter of Acquia Convert (transitioning from Personalize), positioning the organization to leverage Nimble's data for future personalized member experiences.

The Results

The new America's Credit Unions website showed impressive results across multiple metrics:

Performance excellence: The site achieved 100% validation on page speed tests on mobile and desktop, ensuring a fast, responsive experience for all users.

Increased organic visibility: The platform generated a 130% increase in organic search post-launch compared to pre-launch metrics, expanding ACU's digital reach.

Enhanced user engagement: The solution drove a 35% increase in returning users compared to pre-launch metrics, demonstrating improved user satisfaction and content relevance.

Streamlined content management: The new Drupal DXP delivered a seamless, intuitive content management workflow, ensuring consistent branding and scalable growth.

Future-ready personalization: As an early adopter of Acquia Convert, ACU positioned itself to lead in personalized member experiences within the financial services sector.

The unified digital platform is now a powerful tool for America's Credit Unions, effectively balancing public-facing marketing needs with member-specific functionality. The solution successfully represents ACU's new identity while providing the technical foundation for continued growth and personalization.