Summary: |
Website analysis, design, and implementation for Christ United Methodist Church - SLC
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Client Profile: |
Christ United Methodist Church - SLC (UMC), a small-to-medium sized mainline Protestant church (~215 average weekend attendance) in the Salt Lake City area
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Project Narrative: |
This client's existing website design was not mobile-responsive and was a bit dated. The backend platform for updated the website was clunky and difficult to use - in fact, even the admin user was restricted from editing certain parts of the website!
Additionally, the church was using gmail addresses instead of email addresses at their own domain (e.g., "churchoffice@gmail.com" instead of "office@churchdomain.org"). We led a migration to G Suite for Nonprofits, providing them with gmail-backed "corporate"-type email accounts at their own domain, with no monthly cost. We also migrated the web hosting to Google Domains for centralized convenience and reliability, and implemented redirect protocols for several alternate website addresses. The first phase of this project was to re-design CUMC-SLC's website for a cleaner, more modern, user-friendly look, as well as implement that design on an easy-to-maintain platform. The second phase was the G Suite migration. The project took about 3 months, allowing plenty time for custom graphics and heavy back-and-forth content editing as the new website was developed. |
Work Details: |
- Conducted a full website inventory and review of all existing content, including several rounds of back-and-forth copy editing, with advice and suggestions based on best practices.
- Full gap analysis between the current website content/functionality and best practices for church websites. - Design mockups and review based on the mission and vision, including a full reorganization of existing content, and recommendations for content to add, remove, or utilize elsewhere. - Migrated staff and ministry emails to G Suite for Nonprofits, allowing for professional-looking email addresses at the church's domain rather than @gmail.com. This also allows for better collaboration using G Suite apps. - Migrated hosting to Google Domains; implemented redirect protocols for several alternate domains, and email aliasing for common email misspellings. - Created custom graphics to present a fresh look and feel for the website and related materials. Developed a basic branding guide for standardized fonts and colors, to ensure consistency in public-facing materials. - Developed an extensive end user training document tailored to the client, to answer 99% of user questions about G Suite, and led in-person group training for website updating. |
Before:Below are some screenshots of the old homepage, taken on a mobile device. As you can see, the site was not mobile-responsive and the style was a bit dated and cluttered.
(Click on any image to enlarge it.) 
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After:The website is live at christumcutah.org - feel free to poke around! Church staff has been maintaining the site with ease since November 1, 2019.
Below are a few screenshots. The design is mobile-responsive (as you will notice in some of the screenshots) and more clean, cohesive, and modern. Fonts, colors, and other branding aspects are matched to the branding guide that we developed during this project. Visitors to the page -- whether they are regular attenders or not -- can find the majority of information just by scrolling on the main page, without having to click around. This provides a holistic view of the church without the need for multiple clicks, and helps to retain site visitors / lower bounce rates. (Click on any image to enlarge it. Note: background images in each section are one continuous parallax image; they may appear stitched together in these images due to the process of stitching together static screenshots. Each page header also has an animation effect, which is hard to capture with screenshots.)
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What they said:
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"We could not be more satisfied with the quality of work, the speed with which it was completed, or the creative skill which Jen used to accomplish the complete reworking of our website. She made it easy for us to update ourselves and answered any and all of our questions promptly. It was a pleasure working with her and we would gladly do it again should the circumstances arise. I heartily recommend Salty, LLC."
- Rev. Russell Butler |
"Jen Jesse was amazing to work with. Jen was good about listening to us brainstorm our ideas and taking all those ideas to create exactly what we wanted - and more! Her creativity with our ideas blew me away!!!
"She's extremely patient with those of us who are not website savvy. The training process on updating and changing the new website and the Admin side of creating users for our new GSuite was fantastic. "Her detailed instructions on how to transfer old emails into the new GSuite system made the transition go very smoothly for all the staff - those on site and off site (working from home). Jen made this a fun, joyful process. I heartily recommend Salty Consulting for all your website needs!" - Jeanmarie Shingleton |
