December 13, 2005
By Mary Frances Schjonberg

People who point their web browsers to http://www.episcopalchurch.org/ beginning December 13 will find a newly redesigned website.

Similar improvements are also beginning to unfold in Spanish at http://www.iglesiaepiscopal.org/. ("Iglesia" is the Spanish word for church.)

The enhanced design, the result of nearly six months of work, offers a new, more flexible homepage and improved navigation.

The redesign also offers two major entrances or portals into the resources that the church offers to its online visitors.

The merger of the Leadership Resources section with the Life & Work of the Church section reflects the church's belief that all the baptized are ministers, according to Richard Lamb, technology consultant in the office's internet and technology department.

The new design emphasizes using technology to serve ministry and the mission of the church, and hopes to get people excited about using technology in their ministries.

Evangelism underlies the redesign. Its goal is to invite people in and to "spread the Good News and the Good News of the Episcopal Church and all the good things that are happening here," said A. Bowie Snodgrass, the Office of Communication web content editor.

She said there are "treasures" buried deep in the church's website and the new navigation hopes to help people more quickly uncover them.

The project also aims to make the information on the church's site accessible to all viewers, Episcopalian or not. The design team deliberately tried to use as little insider language or jargon as possible, she said.

While the redesigned site is the centerpiece of the church's presence on the worldwide web, it isn't meant to be a finished product.

"What we're doing now is an evolution," said Snodgrass.

"We're eager for feedback," Lamb said.

Finding your way around the new site is meant to be more intuitive, according to Snodgrass. The changed navigation has two purposes. One is to help people "get to what they're looking for in the least number of clicks," she said.

"The design is easy on the eye and tells you where to go," she said.

The second purpose of the changed navigation is aimed at helping people discover all that the site has to offer. Snodgrass said there are parts of the site that contain obvious and expected information while other parts, such a heading on the home page labeled "mystery," are place "that sort of say, ‘click me,'" she said.

And there are places where pictures and words change on a rotating basis, creating other invitations into the site and giving the site some serendipity.

"What we tried to do is balance form and function, and that if we erred, to err on the side of function," Lamb said. "You don't want a lot of serendipity that borders on distraction."

Refining the organization and navigation of the church's website was a major goal this year in the Office of Communication at the Episcopal Church Center in New York. The site "definitely needed improvement," Lamb said.

The first round of improvements saw the elimination of the flash movie on the homepage. This change made for a smaller, faster-loading file better suited for people using a dial-up internet connection. That so-called interim homepage had an added search box, a link to the site map and an A-to-Z directory. It also included links to the Episcopal Church Center, to the calendar and to listings of related groups and organizations.

The interim homepage invited people to tell the web team how they used the website and what they saw as its strengths and weaknesses. The survey also asked people what they saw as the website's primary purpose. More than 1,500 people replied to the survey.

The web team also collaborated with Episcopal communicators, members of the Standing Commission on Episcopal Church Communication, Church Center staff and a variety of lay, religious and ordained web users. Many of those people contributed writing and artwork for the new design.

The team used that feedback in correcting the site's shortcomings and leaving alone those parts that worked well.

Consultants have been used to provide evaluation and testing at each stage of the site's development.

"On-going evaluation and testing remain important priorities as site development continues," said Canon Robert Williams, the Episcopal Church's director of communication. "The web team members are to be commended for all they are accomplishing."

Future improvement projects include improving the Seekers & Visitors portal and the calendar functions, and expanding the Find-a-Church function. Additional development phases in Spanish will also follow incrementally at http://www.iglesiaepiscopal.org/.

In addition to Snodgrass and Lamb, web team members include the Rev. Alex Dyer, art director Wade Hampton, and technicians Sam Gonell, Jason Kowalewski and Barry Merer.

Episcopal News Service
The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is national correspondent for the Episcopal News Service.