Case Study in Web Design: Westwood Christian Assembly

By: Jesse Orndorff|Posted in: Perspectives

I want to introduce you to Westwood Christian Assembly in Seattle, WA. Westwood is your typical mid-size church located in a urban community. Westwood has been around for over 70 years and has a passion for their community and their congregation. Only problem is, like most churches, their website is outdated, not organized very well and does not match the feel of their church. So over the next few weeks I want to take you through their website re-design and launch. This will show you my process when approaching church websites, from first conversation to launch.

We will be building Westwood a brand new site on WordPress, using some great plug-ins to add functionality, and hopefully we will provide them a website that matches their vision and church goals. If you want to take a look at their current site, you can view it at: http://www.wcaseattle.org.

After talking with Pastor Colby for about 10 minutes, I could get a good idea of the direction he wants to go with his website. First, here are things that he told me that Westwood wanted for their church website:

1. Allow new people to find the service times & directions easily.
2. Highlight events at the church for regular attenders and new comers.
3. Show church staff information in a way that allows people to easily contact to the staff member they need.
4. Display “What We Believe” in a way that makes it easy for the user to find.

Taking down this information allows me to go back and draft up a series of goals and plans for their website. I feel that it is always important to develop a clear set of goals before starting my website wireframes and first drafts. So let’s look back at the feedback Westwood gave us.

The Goals

• Allow new people to find the service times & directions easily.
  Goal: Drive new users to the service times and directions area of the website.
• Highlight events at the church for regular attenders and new comers.
  Goal: Create an events solution that increases church user interaction (Registration, questions, etc.).
• Show church staff information in a way that allows people to easily contact to the staff member they need.
  Goal: Increase personal staff contact through the website.

For now, I am leaving the 4th comment off our goal list. I know that our website content is going to be better organized by the  new design. So users will be able to find the What We Believe page easier. Now we have a set of goals that will allow us to draft up a wireframe that will serve as our baseline for our new website. Make sure you come back next week as I share the wireframe process.