How do you organize your website content when you have a large, complex organization? You try to keep it as simple as possible and provide as many entry points as is feasible without cluttering up your homepage.
The website for the Kansas West annual conference was fewer than 20 pages built with basic HTML in Homesite when I became communications director in 2001. It became clear very quickly that we needed to put more information online rather than less, and that the website’s only function was not to distribute news. It also needed to provide access to necessary forms, rules and resources for ministry.
Once we sat down and started looking at the content we would have, we realized the site would explode. It did, and within two years, we were looking for the next big thing, a content management system to build the site on.
We also took the opportunity to reorganize information again based on user-feedback. We simplified the categories into which we placed information. To help staff become more familiar with the content and learn how to maintain their own information, we used the transfer of content from the old site to the new site as an opportunity to teach people how to use the new content management system.
The site was redesigned again in early 2007 and underwent a final redesign in April 2010. Site architecture has taken several forms as we have continued to gather user information and as new initiatives have started in the conference. The site averages 211 unique visitors a day and an average stay of more than 3 minutes. The average visitor views 4 pages on the site. The Kansas West site will be folded into a new Great Plains Conference website in 2014, when the Kansas and Nebraska United Methodist conferences come together as one conference.
Add a Comment