Even before I officially joined the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions in February of this year, we began talking about the need to refresh the current www.ALSBOM.org website. While the previous design was great, it definitely was showing age in several ways.
Studying our analytics (how people use our site), we discovered that a growing number of people are using mobile devices such as iPads and smartphones to access the site. The previous design relied on some technology that did not translate to these devices, so we changed it to be more compatible with tablets and phones.
The previous site was based on a smaller screen resolution than what is typically used today. When viewing our site in its native size, there was a lot of room at the bottom and on the sides.
Research shows that people are willing to scroll down a little bit for content, expanding our potential space even more. The new site now better takes advantage of these changes.
Over time, as we outgrew www.ALSBOM.org, we also created several new sites. Each site had its own unique feel and address, but in some ways the sites seemed to divide us in our external marketing. Also, with so many sites and only one person dedicated to working on our websites and social media, it was easy for some of the smaller sites to get lost in the mix for maintenance. We decided that to better reflect us, these sites would be incorporated back into the main site, sharing some resources but in many cases still maintaining a unique look and feel. At the very top of the new site you’ll notice tabs that go to some of these previous sites like GreatCommissionGPS.com and SBDR.org. Also, RickLance.com was integrated as a blog while TheStudentHub.org, OneMissionStudents.org and the student ministry blog formed one new site.
Back in 2008 when the previous website was introduced, social media was in its infancy. Now it’s a necessity, since we use it daily at the state board and in our personal lives. With our new design, you will find links to our social media pages at the top of every page of the site, and you can share any content you find via share buttons located at the bottom. You will even find feeds from our Facebook and Twitter accounts on our home page. At the top of every page, you also may notice a picture area that is very similar to the cover photo that you find at the top of your Facebook page.
We researched many sites, from the largest corporations to local Baptist churches, and found ideas that were cutting-edge yet comfortable for our average user. An example of that is our mega menus. These have allowed us to bring ministry areas to the surface, digging them up from beneath the office structure that required knowing how the state board staff is organized. We also wanted to emphasize that our audience is churches within Alabama, so we needed our site to feel comfortable and easy to use for people who are used to visiting church websites.
We’ve introduced several new items that you may have seen integrated in the previous state board site as they were developed for the new site. All of these are free or low-cost items that you can use for your websites:
- Google calendars have been used to develop event calendars for each ministry area. They also serve as central event calendars.
- Wufoo was integrated to use for event registration and forms.
- Our relationship with PayPal and its credit card payment integration through Wufoo has been a great new resource.
- Mailchimp was brought in as our email marketing tool. It allows you to receive content that is most relevant to you and where you serve. Its integration in Wufoo has proven extremely valuable.
- We still use YouTube to share videos, but most of the videos we have produced are now available through Vimeo, which adds the ability to download any videos you may need to use in your ministry. With Vimeo, we also can control the environment surrounding our videos so that objectionable content isn’t accidentally accessed.
- With so many areas for photos on our site, we chose Flickr as a solution for storage and sharing. These images are available for churches to download freely and use as needed.
In the end, what you see now at www.ALSBOM.org is the culmination of nearly nine months of work and the combination of seven websites and more than 1,000 pages of content. None of this would have been possible without the full support of Executive Director Rick Lance, Missions Support Team Leader Bobby DuBois and Communications Coordinator Doug Rogers. These guys bought into a vision drawn out on a sheet of paper and trusted me and our partners at Details Communication to make it happen. I’m personally very proud of the work that has been completed on this project and look forward to finishing up a few more tweaks.
I hope and pray that you find the site to be a useful resource today and for years to come, that it helps to further your ministry and meets its goal to represent our motto: One Mission — The Great Commission; One Program — The Cooperative Program; Many Ministries — Great Commission Ministries.
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