wfn.org | ELCA Web Site Unveils New Look

[News News <NEWS@ELCA.ORG>]

ELCA NEWS SERVICE

January 7, 2002

ELCA WEB SITE UNVEILS NEW LOOK
02-03-FI

     CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Web site of the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in America (ELCA) -- http://www.elca.org  -- began 2002 with a new look.
The redesign was guided by the results of an online survey conducted
January through May 2001, said Rex Paisley, Web manager, ELCA Department
for Communication.
     The December 2001 issue of Yahoo! Internet Life magazine called
the ELCA Web site "perhaps the most thorough Protestant Web site on the
Web, with church history, time lines and LutherLink online discussions."
     "A goal of the redesign was to build a more effective bridge from
the users to the content they seek," said Paisley.  "We're presenting
the information in a more topic-driven format, to help browsers get to
the information more intuitively," he said.
     "The Web site should still feel familiar to our regular users.
Some format, content and features have remained consistent," said
Paisley.
     Of the 859 people who participated in the survey, about 92 percent
were ELCA members.  About half were between the ages of 45 and 64. About
a quarter of the participants were pastors.  About 85 percent had
visited the site before.
     Forty-three percent of the participants had visited the ELCA Web
site to find a particular resource, 33 percent to find news or
information about the ELCA, 30 percent to find specific information, 17
percent while surfing the Internet and 11 percent to learn more about
the ELCA in general.
     "One of the biggest things we learned from the survey is that our
search feature is underutilized," said Paisley.  The new design makes it
more visible, he said.
     "Weekly features" are now labeled, so new users recognize them as
regularly changing content, said Paisley.
     The church should be seen as "a welcoming place and a place of
faith," so a "welcome center" and a "spiritual center" were added to the
site, said Paisley.  People new to the site or new to Lutheranism will
find the information they seek in centralized places, he said.
     The ELCA home page now features a button labeled "Iglesia
Evangelica Luterana en America" (Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America).  Paisley said, "There was a conscious effort to draw attention
to the resources the church has developed in Spanish."
     "Quick links" make it easier to find some of the site's more
popular features, said Paisley, like the ability to locate the nearest
ELCA congregations.  "Hot topics" includes a "Top 10" list of the site's
pages with the most visits the previous month.
     Many of the quick links are to places on the Web site that
"support connectivity across all the expressions of the church" --
online LutherLink discussions, directories and other ways to be
involved, said Paisley.  "They really show the site's priorities," he
said.
     The number of "selected topics" on a pull-down menu was reduced,
said Paisley.  "Too many hinder the site's functionality," he said.
"Forms" is a popular topic for congregational and synod leaders these
days, Paisley pointed out, as many are dealing with year-end reports.
     "A good thing about the Web is that it is always changing," said
Paisley.  The ELCA Web site can adapt almost immediately to better serve
its visitors, he said.
     As video and audio capabilities improve and more users become
familiar with them, the ELCA Web site will grow along with that
potential, said Paisley.  Such features as live reports from ELCA
churchwide assemblies every other year constantly raise the expectations
of the site's users, he said.
     The ELCA Web site gets about one million page views per month,
said Paisley.  That's about twice as many as last year at this time.
The site consists of more than 10,000 pages, he said, and that's about
twice as many as last year at this time, too.

For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or NEWS@ELCA.ORG
http://listserv.elca.org/archives/elcanews.html