Cathedral Website and App to Enrich Community
Minister for Communications Brant Mills said that when he started at Christ Church Cathedral, one of his first directives was to redesign and upgrade the Cathedral’s website which launched in early February. As someone who has been through the process of creating a new site with other organizations, Mills said that the experience has come in handy as he engaged with the various Cathedral stakeholders and evaluated other church and community websites.
“The main thing people said they wanted was consistency and a design that was more updated. We’ve tried to find ways to ensure information is more efficiently organized and better representative of the visual style and personality of the Cathedral,” he said. “We wanted to design it intentionally to focus on and to promote relevant, timely content.”
The goal for the new site was that it be intuitive, so people would be able to find the information they needed easily. This includes events, which are front and center in the new look. Links to each service are listed on the home page. Both in-person worship and virtual service offerings, as well as events and educational offerings, are more accessible and easier to find information for. Upcoming events can be now be filtered by type and are sorted by date, and can be viewed as a chronological list or in a calendar layout. Options now exist to share events through social media and add them to your calendar as well.
“We want to help audiences find ways to engage and interact,” Mills said. “In times of COVID-19, people are looking for new ways to connect wherever they can.” The company hired to implement the design, Membership Vision, has worked with several other Episcopal churches in the Diocese of Texas and elsewhere.
Ministry staff will be able to update changing content in their areas. “It’s not a one and done kind of thing,” Mills said. “The new system will be much more flexible and easier to modify.”
As a companion piece to the website, Christ Church will for the first time have a mobile app too. It will be available on Apple and Google Play app stores and will roll out shortly after the website. Chief Administrative Officer Karen Kraycirik said that they had discussed having an app before but that the timing never seemed right. “With COVID, and the way in which our virtual connections have grown, needs have changed dramatically,” she said.
Designed by Pushpay, a company focused on helping churches with giving and engagement, the app will be specific to the Cathedral. And like the website, it will also be intuitive. “The app will pull from the website but will be a direct connection,” Kraycirik said. “People can stay in touch with things they care most about.”
This might include the start times for service, or a livestream of a service through the app. Podcasts, collaborative ways to plug into Making Our Home for Faith, and opportunities to simplify giving will be available in the palm of a hand.
“The app will provide some things that the website won’t,” Kraycirik said. “Like ways to message small groups and receive push notifications about special events.” Kraycirik said that the app may not have all the features to start, but over time new ones will be added. One added benefit of the Cathedral app is that it will serve both the English and Spanish communities.
“The user will be able to pick the preferred language once inside the app, allowing both the English and Spanish congregation members to utilize the same product,” she said. The new website, as well as the app, are an added form of outreach that have wonderful potential to spread God’s word and do God’s work.
“It is giving all of us access to new audiences,” Mills said. “And allowing us to draw our existing ones even closer.”
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