OVERVIEW
Arvada Adventist Church is a small church without a staff member to update their website regularly which resulted in it either not functioning or being outdated.
*I’ll shorten Arvada Adventist Church to AA Church.
The site they most recently had designed didn’t update and wasn’t functioning, so they defaulted to an older version of the site just to have something online. As a result there were sections that were completely missing content.
There were also sections with outdated information. Teen Worship & Indonesian Worship are no longer at these times or location.
The leadership wanted to find a website solution that would be low maintenance but also recognized there was a bigger issue to address.
Churches struggle to encourage members to engage beyond weekly Sabbath attendance and gain new members.
In order to serve the community, the church relies on contributions of time (volunteering) and money (tithes & donations) from members to expand their programs and reach.
This puts church growth at risk as time goes by if they cannot reach the next generation. The church leadership wanted to emphasize strategies to engage the young people through digital features on their website.
Across the Adventist Conference young adult and teen attendance is at an all time low.
Surely Arvada Adventist Church wasn’t the only one experiencing these challenges.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
I wanted to see how other churches served their communities through services and programs as well as their online presence.
I conducted a comprehensive competitive analysis of four local churches and their websites in the Denver metro area. This included two other Seventh Day Adventist churches: Chapel Haven & New Day as well as two other Christian churches: Grace Church & Red Rocks Church.
I summarized what I discovered into some relevant key findings.
Each church had different ways to represent themselves online.
CHAPEL HAVEN
Their mission and beliefs are clearly outlined in the about Us section, however the page is very text heavy.
NEW DAY
The homepage utilizes both top level navigation and call to action buttons in the hero section.
GRACE CHURCH
A sticky banner highlights the live stream of their services. These cards give quick visual access to various programs and offerings.
RED ROCKS CHURCH
This is a clear way to let people know different formats where they can access messages. The most recent message is placed first noting translations that are available and a previous sermon gallery could be found below.
AA Church could gain insight from other church’s websites and consider their strengths to put their best “digital” foot forward.
RESEARCH
THE WHAT
Objectives
Find out why and/or when people come to church.
Discover what people enjoy about church services and/or programs.
Understand what people don’t like about church services and/or programs.
Discover barriers to attending church or programs.
Understand ways that the church can support its members.
THE HOW
Methodologies
Interviews
I interviewed 5 people of various ages that attend church. There were a mix of newcomers and seasoned members as well as occasional attendees and active volunteers.
Survey
I also took a survey to capture a wider range of responses.
THE WHO
Participants
Occasional church attendees
Active volunteers
Newcomers
Long time members
High school students
Young adults
Parents
INTERVIEWS
Access to online service videos is a priority for church members and leadership.
Live Stream of Sabbath services as well as past sermons are currently offered on Arvada Adventist Church’s website. You can see that they are utilized by both existing and prospective members.
"If I go in person and my kids have to work, because they work weekends, then we sit at home later and watch the service together.”
-SARAH
“I watched the service online for the first few Sabbaths before attending.”
-AARON
Church members seek calendar or event listings updated in real time.
Members experience frustration when they plan for an event and it gets rescheduled at the last minute.
“If I see an event on a calendar, I want to know that I can count on that. There are a lot of last minute changes.”
-JEREMY
Programs lack consistency and adequate promotion.
While this member only attends once or twice a month, Gym Nights are a program that Arvada Adventist Church has been hosting since this the fall. The program date is not consistent and the promotion of this event is not reaching its audience.
New members can lose interest when programs that they enjoy are not consistently offered.
“I have not attended a Gym Night... I didn’t know they had a Gym Night.”
-SARAH
“I do miss the Bible studies we were doing. I’d like to see that get going again.”
-AARON
Church members seek programs for a variety of ages with detailed descriptions and proper promotion.
Tiffany hasn’t gotten involved beyond weekly services because the additional programs don’t serve younger kids and the Women’s program hasn’t piqued her interest due to lack of information.
“We mostly attend on Sunday services. I’m waiting for the kids to be old enough to participate in the summer camp. They have a women’s “Connect” group but it seems kind of vague to me.”
-TIFFANY
PERSONAS
I created three research-based personas and considered their unique perspectives to help guide user needs and goals.
PROBLEM
People struggle with motivation and availability to stay engaged at church.
Balancing commitments, lack of access to resources to deepen their faith, clear entry points to volunteer opportunities, and consistency in church programs are some contributors to lack of engagement.
IDEATION
Empathizing with church members through storyboards shed light on some real life challenges.
One common need of church members is to watch a service when they can’t attend because of work schedules and other commitments.
A common need of newcomers to church is knowing when upcoming events or programs are happening which is challenging when you don’t know many people.
I compared leadership needs from our initial meeting to user needs revealed in the research process to guide project goals.
I determined the following must-have features.
WATCH PAGE
Featuring Live Stream and past sermons
DYNAMIC FORMS
For general info, prayer requests, and volunteers.
WORSHIP & STUDY PAGE
With service & class times and links to resources
NEW MEMBERS PAGE
For quick access to relevant info for newcomers.
EVENTS PAGE
Including upcoming events and ongoing programs
ABOUT US PAGE
To express the church’s mission and personality.
I performed a card sort to help the navigation items match up with Emma’s mental models.
Information on the website could generally be grouped into the following user identified categories.
Worship & Study
Watch
About Us
Get Involved
Get Support
Find Us
SITEMAP
EARLY USER TESTING
I presented a collection of low & mid-fi iterations of desktop screens for initial user testing.
For the Homepage Users preferred to have the CTA visible vs. nested in a rotating carousel in the hero section. Below they liked cards for easy visual access of key content.
Users preferred to have the Live Stream player embedded on the Watch page vs. clicking away. Additionally, they liked the Past Sermons as bold clickable cards.
I also tested additional mobile screens with users.
For the Get Involved page users preferred to have a list view of upcoming events vs. a calendar view.
For the Get Support page users preferred to have the accordion menus for mobile so they could see all the categories, but were fine with the full cards on the desktop version.
“Something For Everyone” section was discarded.
The “Something for Everyone” section on the homepage was very popular however, it was determined that there was not enough content to justify including it.
Instead a New Members Page was featured to consolidate information relevant to newcomers.
The CTA’s were re-evaluated to elevate Live Stream in the hierarchy.
“Live Stream” was originally grouped with “Worship” lower in the hero section. It was brought up to the top level navigation, given the brightest color, and maintained as the only CTA button at the top in the mobile version.
BRANDING
I recommended that the logo be refreshed.
I felt like the concept of the logo represented the church well, however it was not readable or visually clear. They chose the design on the bottom right to replace the original on the top left.
I also recommended new color palette for the site.
The purple they were using felt generic and unrelated. I chose the deep teal for its emotional associations with serenity and stability, the lighter green represents growth and renewal and the gold and neutral beige for warmth and positivity.
USABILITY TESTING
To prepare for usability testing, I identified four key tasks based on user needs expressed during the interviews.
Watch the service’s Live Stream or sermon at a later date.
Find or confirm the date and time of an upcoming event.
Access lesson materials for a class.
Submit a prayer request to church staff.
TASK FLOW
This task flow helped people like Maria submit their requests for support through prayer.
DESKTOP PROTOTYPE
It was important for Daniel to have multiple entry points for key content.
Most key content was made available through a combination of top level navigation, CTA buttons, cards and links.
ITERATIONS
The navigation went through some changes.
In usability testing users found some language to be confusing and not direct enough. “Programs” changed to “Events and Activities” and the navigation was updated as well.
“Outreach Programs” was regrouped with new navigation item: “Missions & Outreach”
After settling on highlighting the church’s mission work in the About section, the leadership wanted to add “Outreach & Missions” to the navigation. After renaming “Get Involved” to “Events and Activities” it made sense to move the original “Outreach Programs” from “Get Involved” to “Outreach & Missions”.
There were two minor adjustments made to the prayer request form.
In usability testing a participant noted that they would appreciate some guidance on how much they could write in the message section. Also adding an “Other” category gives flexibility if their inquiry doesn’t fit into the categories provided.
Priority placement was given to the Support form.
In mobile usability testing, some participants did not scroll down enough to see the Support form. I swapped the placement of the Get in Touch section to give better visibility to the Support form.
Links were added for translation services and sermon notes of the English service.
Usability testing revealed the need to add a link to the translation services offered of the English service in addition to promoting the Spanish service on the campus. The sermon notes link was request of the leadership as an additional resource for people who watch online.
A donation point was added to the Outreach and Missions page.
A usability testing participant suggested adding a a donation point on the Outreach and Missions page for both directed monetary donations through Adventist Giving and a place for the Street Beat ministry to request specific non-monetary donations at different times throughout the year.
MOBILE PROTOTYPE
The mobile site often utilized accordion menus to make the most of limited screen real estate.
NEXT STEPS
In a final meeting with the church leadership we identified the last remaining tasks for them to complete before passing the designs to a developer.
Review content to reflect the voice of the church.
Develop specific content for the Missions section.
Create 30-90 second videos in place of text in the About Us section.
Replace any stock photography with high quality photos of the church and its members and programs.
SUMMARY
The church’s website now has a clear structure to engage existing members and draw in newcomers.
The church leadership signed off on the navigation and layout of the site. They will be in touch with me to develop any areas in the future.
MORE PROJECTS
Diversity Corner is a feature addition concept to help community members access titles highlighting diversity & inclusion through the HPLD website.
A mobile app concept for moms that streamlines the process of finding and planning hiking meetups with family and friends to support their health & wellness.