A full website revamp -- a new style guide, added features, and more places to share information. Read more to see what's new for Mt. Olive Baptist Church.
Out with the old, in with the new.
Before reaching out to us at Luminary Media, Mt. Olive Baptist Church's website was created with Wordpress and managed by a third party. However, they wanted to have a fresh design and more control over that design and content updates. Here at Luminary Media, we use Wix as our site builder, which is more user-friendly for those without website design or coding experience. Also, Mt. Olive now has full control over their website and can make updates as needed, which they couldn't do before. We helped them migrate their site over and gave them a fresh design. Below, we highlight a few of the unique features that come with their new website design.
A New Style Guide
Firstly, the style guide of the old website did not match the church's image. We chose to migrate away from the red/black/white design and lean into mountains and olives. This led to a new color palette with greens, browns, and an accent peach color, as well as vector images of branches and mountain peaks. A subtle branch pattern can be seen as the background of some pages as well. Two new fonts make the site feel welcoming and creative. This new guide feels more polished and calming. There are also many opportunities for photographs of church members to make the church feel more friendly and people-centric to newcomers. Learn more about brand style guides here.
New Feature: A Blog Section
Mt. Olive wants to keep their church informed about the community, events, opportunities to serve children at home, and more. With the addition of a blog on their site, church leaders now have a new platform to share information with church members and visitors. Having a blog is also great for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because it creates more opportunities for the website to appear when searching on the web.
Updated Page Layout: "What We Believe"
The previous design for the website's "What We Believe" page was just a bulleted list. This is a huge chunk of text that is easy to get lost in. The new design has each bullet point separated by a box, and the boxes expand when the cursor hovers over them. This new design makes each belief feel separate from yet unified with the rest.
Updated Page Layout: Small Groups
Previously, the small group pages were all listed in a dropdown from the site menu. However, they did not accurately represent the full expanse of ministries available. Also, there were a few links that didn't actually lead anywhere. When the links did lead somewhere, there was only a Bible verse and didn't actually provide information about the small group.
The new page contains all small groups, a photo, their meeting times, leaders, social media pages, and links to join the groups. The page is uniquely designed to where someone searching for a group can choose their desired category (Co-Ed, Men, Women, etc.), meeting day, and meeting time, and the website only displays the groups that fit the searcher's criteria.
The new website was a perfect opportunity to incorporate some other resources Mt. Olive uses to better organize information and connect with their members. They use a site called Church Center with their small groups, so we added each group's unique Church Center link to its page.
New Feature: The Latest Sermon Is Embedded into the Website
It's easier than ever to watch the latest Sunday sermon! The church's sermons playlist is embedded directly into the website, and the playlist will automatically show the latest video without having to update the website each week.
New Feature: An Interactive Calendar on the Events Page
Now churchgoers can view the calendar on the website. This calendar is linked to Google Calendar, so any changes made from the church's Google account will automatically update on the site. This allows for church volunteers to update church events without having to be granted access to the website.
New Feature: Searchable Bible Embedded into the Site
There's Scripture listed on the website, so why not a place to look things up? Bible Gateway offers an embed code to search the Bible, so we added a page to Mt. Olive's website to access the Bible.
New Feature: Site Search
Website visitors now have a search bar to find relevant information. The search combs site pages and blog posts to find keywords that the user is searching for.
Optimized Mobile Version
The new website is optimized for mobile users. Site visitors don't have to worry about features not working or battling poorly sized widgets. Some of the vectors have been resized or removed from mobile pages, and text has been reformatted. Both of these changes improve legibility and to reduce clutter on a small screen.
Design Hours to Build: 25
Like the new website? Go check it out at mob.church and click here to learn more about website design.
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