soay, with all due respect do you have any idea how a website is produced? There is no such thing as a 'software package' to do this.
At the entry level you are looking at a home developed front page or iWeb type page non interactive and requiring nothing but a bit of space. As you move up a league the platform requirements become more intense and the support requirements behind it. AOPA US are well funded and have significant investment in technology, these includes the heavyweight hardware and development skills to keep it all running. AOPA UK do not have the type of funding to be able to operate the US style infrastructure to run such a site and neither do they have the size of user base to provide the scale of content that comes from having 600,000 members compared to around 4,000.
AOPA Uk have a budget of a few thousand AOPA US have a budget of hundreds of thousands for the web. If AOPA UK had a super spangly site the next discussion we would have would be around how much they were spending on that instead of representation where it's needed.
Either way they can't win!! So have to work inside the constraints that are out there. We do take input from members about content and the MWG constantly providing feedback on what we want to see. We really can't start changing things to suit people who are not even members on the promise they might join if the website was better. Lets face it, representation is about what gets done not about how spangly the website is. AOPA also have the GA magazine.