The WPA website: newer user‐friendly functions
Authors: Roy Abraham Kallivayalil
Journal: World Psychiatry (2020)

The WPA website (www.wpanet.org) has been re-designed with several new functions and has gone live since May 2019. The website has now a number of features that make it a tool which is useful and user friendly. Several of these innovations are highlighted below. A first new feature is that the website is able to tap into and take advantage of ongoing developments on a regular basis. So, the system is constantly being updated with the latest technological improvements. We use a sort of “pick and mix” approach which enables us to add the capabilities most useful to our visitors and to forego the ones that are not. For example, we have added a robust search system and the capability to translate into multiple languages. The site uses a simple, intuitive navigation system that allows users to find the content they need through a variety of different pathways1-3. In terms of data (according to Google Analytics), we have approximately 150 visitors to our site per day. The majority of these visitors are from the US. The top five countries using our site are US, Brazil, India, UK and Australia. Of the people visiting our site, approximately 85% are new visitors and 15% are return visitors. Users are going through 4-5 pages of our website per visit. Visits peak considerably when something is sent out by the WPA Secretariat. We also saw a huge spike in visits (unsurprisingly) during the World Congress of Psychiatry held in Lisbon in August 2019, with more than 1,500 visits across the three full days of the Congress. When on our site, approximately 10% of visitors use the search button to find what they want. The rest use the navigation. This is a good sign, as it means that people are finding what they need using the navigation alone. The majority of visitors to our site are seeking information on meetings, followed closely by publications (about half of those then moving to World Psychiatry). After that, visits are focused on Scientific Sections (mostly requests to join), News and finally, Education4-10. We have an average of 1-2 enquiries and requests to be added to our mailing list submitted via the website each day. To improve the website further, we are working at the moment on several new features. We are close to launching all our application forms for meeting co-sponsorship and continuing medical education (CME) as online submissions. This will mean that users no longer need to download and compile forms by hand, then scan and send them to the WPA Secretariat with various attachments. Instead, they will be able to simply compile them electronically, upload any attachments and submit all in one session. Obviously, this will also have great benefits at the other end, as the WPA Secretariat will no longer have to manage everything manually. We are also close to launching an online payment function, which will allow to make payments to the Secretariat directly via the website (for meetings fees, CME requests and, eventually, member subscriptions as well). We are building out our education pages to ensure that we have all our educational resources accessible via one central point. This is one of the biggest pieces of work going on behind the scenes and will be a really useful tool for our members and other stakeholders. The new format of the website ensures that we have the most up-to-date information at our fingertips. It allows us to add news as it happens and to provide visitors with a more interactive experience. This is a new beginning, as we are working behind the scenes, adding more materials and targeting it more precisely, so that every user can find the information relevant to him/her, and introducing more and more automated processes. We hope that our collaborative work will make the WPA website an instrument to usher in innovative changes in psychiatry and mental health.