Fresh Oil Ministries Website Design

Designing a website experience for a local Orlando church.

User Research

Wireframing

Prototyping

Usability Testing

4 months

DURATION

MY ROLE

Overview

“I heard from a friend of a friend that this was the place to be.”

Since its inception in 2011, Fresh Oil Ministries has rapidly grown to receive over 400 visitors each Sunday, making them one of the largest Church of God churches in their region. For Pastors Richard and Dr. Erika Notice, the rapid growth has been an adjustment that they’ve struggled to keep up with on the technological front.

Information about church events get sent out through WhatsApp group texts and then spreads through word of mouth. In a similar fashion, due to their limited online presence, members learn about the church through family members, neighbors, and friends, making it difficult for Fresh Oil Ministries to grow membership in the 18 - 35 age base. 

The clients asked me to create a website that would expand their audience but would also be intuitive enough for their elder audience members to use. 

THE PROBLEM

The existing information delivery system is antiquated, making it difficult to attract new members and for current members to be aware of events and offerings.

THE GOAL

Create a website that will inform non-members about the church while also being an informational asset to the existing community.

Background

 It was important for me to understand the surrounding church base

To get an understanding of the surrounding church base, I conducted a competitive analysis and feature analysis of other Orlando churches. 

  • When doing this analysis, I looked at churches around the same size as Fresh Oil Ministries and ones that were much larger. I wanted to see what features the larger churches had on their website and if it had any effect on the size of their membership base 

  • I found that small to mid-size churches lacked information about their ministries while for larger churches it was easy to find

User Interviews

To understand what was needed in a church website, I interviewed members and non-members, using 3 different methods

I wanted to learn more about what information matters most to them and how they interact with existing church sites.

SURVEYS

I wanted to get an overall understanding of the audience base demographic and what they would use the website for (events, livestreams, giving, etc).

ONE-ON-ONE INTERVIEWS

I used this time to learn more about their level of comfort with technology, what information they research when looking up a church, what devices they use regularly.

REMOTE MODERATED TESTING

I wanted to see how users of all ages interacted with a neighboring churches’ website. On the user’s own device, I had them explore the site, asking them questions about the interactions they were making.

Findings & Analysis

Non-members were concerned about ministry group offerings, existing member prioritize events and live stream

  • Older members have difficulty finding interactive hidden information

  • Users prefer simple designs because things are easy for them to find

  • Seeing ministry offerings for themselves and for their kids is important to non-members

  • Members find the site useful for referring people, viewing events, and watching sermons

  • "I like simple sites because it's so much easier to find what I'm looking for"

  • "It's important for me to see what their youth ministry is like"

  • "A church website would make it so much easier for me to keep track of church dates and events"

DEFINING THE USER

After interviewing current members, potential members, and speaking with the client, I created two user personas that best represents the users of the site.

Designs

I began designing what the website would look like

SITE MAP

After talking to the users and the client, we worked through what information would be best to include and what the order of that would be.

LOW-FIDELITY

MID-FIDELITY

I neatened up my initial sketches and presented the mid-fidelity wireframes to the client.

After the mid-fidelity stage the client informed me that some ministries didn’t have events often so they wanted to see a version of the ministries page that didn’t have an events section.

HIGH-FIDELITY

Usability Testing

I conducted usability tests with three different age groups to see if the site was easy for them to use

I had users go through the site, asking them to explore. During the process, users gave their insights:

  • Scrolling wasn’t intuitive - The older users didn’t realize that they could scroll down and instead went straight for the navigation.

  • More information about the ministries - Users wanted to see more about ministry activities

  • Adding contact person for events - Users wanted to know how to make contact on certain events that had a point person.

Designing for adults with lower literacy

After speaking with members and the client, I was notified that a few of their members are adults with lower literacy. This meant an underserved group in their community would be shut out from key information.

Since this was a environment I wasn’t familiar with, I researched best practices that I could implement on the site and narrowed it down to three key points:

  • Use common, every day words

  • Use multiple types of content (video, pictures, etc)

  • Use easy to follow design features like lists

High Fidelity

Implementing changes and adjusting for the user

SCROLLING

To make scrolling more intuitive, I shortened the landing page, leaving whitespace so that users know that there’s more information below.

MINISTRIES

Since the clients informed me that some ministries don’t have events frequently, I used images of past events to inform users of the types of events ministries have had previously.

ADDING WAYS TO CONTACT

To address the concern of the users need to contact event organizers, I added a contact button for certain events.

DESIGNING FOR LOWER LITERACY USERS- EVENTS PAGE

Those with lower literacy may have difficulty reading about the events. To mitigate this problem, I embedded their Sunday morning announcement video, that has an accompanying narrator, to the site.

DESIGNING FOR LOWER LITERACY - GIVING

Instead of just using text to inform the users on the ways to give, I added icons and the platform logos (Zelle and Cash App) since those are more recognizable.

Reflection & Impact

It has been such a fun challenge to design for a unique user base and seeing how design can be tailored to fit their needs. This entire process has shown me how important collect feedback from a large variety of users and how important creativity is to problem solving.

Since publication, the website has led to a 35% increase in online service attendance with the most utilized pages being the “Events” and “Care Resources” page.