St Columba and Stephen Hill churches are at the heart of the Crosspool community, providing support, event spaces and community groups to those well beyond the numbers of its congregation. We were tasked with making one website for the two churches to share, with an emphasis on simplicity of ongoing management and ensuring easy navigation/access to information.
Website
”“Working with volunteers and committees poses its own challenges, but Wilkes Wood were exceedingly professional, as well as patient, and became friends and colleagues to those of us who worked on the process with them.
Steve EllisReader & Focal Minister
The end result was exactly what we wanted, mainly because of their skill and expertise. An ideal company to work in partnership with.”
Merging Two into One.
St Columba’s and Stephen Hill Methodist Church are two very independent entities that required equal and respectful representation through one website. We took the time to understand the unique features of both churches, and ensured that both teams were able to provide feedback and input as we moved through the phases of design.
Emphasising Accessibility
Both churches needed the ability to provide information relating to worship as well as room hire and the many events, youth and children activities, and community groups available. We took all this information, removed any duplicate content between the two churches, and grouped it to ensure a seamless site navigation was possible regardless of whether a site visitor wanted to book a room for their mother’s birthday or find out more about Sunday service.
Easy to Manage.
St Columba and Steven Hill churches required the ability to independently sort site updates and event management. As admin staff frequently rotated, it was also vital that new members of the team could be trained swiftly to manage the website, even if they had no prior experience. We took this all into consideration when designing the site, keeping complex code blocks to a minimum, and utilised Squarespace as our chosen CMS to ensure it was as easy as possible to edit and update. We also provided recorded training sessions to all admin staff post-launch.