Untangling the Web

Back in July, our team got away for a day to remove ourselves from the familiar. We made the time to take a breath and talk about what needed to change on GCCwired.com and what needed to stay the same. Without our desks and daily routines in front of our face, we were able to clearly look ahead and come up with some ideas about what the next chapter might look like.

• The first thing we noticed is how the site had gotten bloated. We had just kept adding pages over the years and people had stopped reading them. If they're not helping--they need to go. It's like pruning those geraniums. Great time to reorganize and consolidate. But first...we documented our objectives & values.

Objectives

• Create ongoing news nuggets
• Create connection points
• Extend the experience beyond the event
• Communicate we are one church with multiple locations
• Improve access to existing content

Values

• Easy to find next steps. Answer these two questions: "Is this a fit for me?" "What do I do next?"
• Simple and consistent experience at all touch points: language, navigation AND functionality.
• Scalability and sustainability: Can we maintain it? Can we grow?
• Connect people with next step and each other: eliminate staff bottleneck.
• Traffic monitoring: what pages are used or not.
• Next we had to draft a new site map. We were able to organize ourselves better with the inspiration we got from the National Community Church and Community Christian Church sites. They had slim navigational structures and action-oriented menu picks.
  
• Just a few of the new things that resulted from our brainstorm?
  • News your way (email, RSS, Twitter, podcast)
  • The weekly Feed
  • Lurking opportunities
  • Search (moved it to the top right; easier to find)
  • Watch services (moved it to the bottom left; easier to find)
  • Pick your location

It feels like we just had virtual liposuction. See what Daryl says about the before & after.

Comments

[Angela Bengtson]

I was inspired by your 'Subscribe Your Way' page, and am working on my own.

Having landed in church communication with no background or relevant training, I so appreciate talented people like you that take the time to give the rest of us some pointers.

Thanks so much Kem!