Madison Church Website Redesign
Luther Memorial Church, Madison, WI
Terry created a beautiful, user-friendly website for Luther Memorial that reflects our mission and values. He understood our goals and expectations, and his creativity and sense of humor make it always fun to work with him. Communication was excellent, deadlines were met, and the final result exceeded our expectations.
—Robin Wagner
Director of Communication, Luther Memorial Church
Luther Memorial Church in Madison, WI, was founded in 1907 as a mission for University of Wisconsin Lutheran students seeking English worship. By 1923, it moved to its Gothic Revival building at 1021 University Avenue. Today, this intergenerational congregation maintains traditions of classic liturgy, music, university ties, and community service.
The website was using the RealChurch WordPress theme, purchased in 2015. The theme was released in 2013. We talked about what was working in the current theme and possibilities in a redesign. We carried over the large hero image collection and top-of-page section navigation with dropdowns that the community was familiar with.
Old design
Click to view old design
The stock theme had elements that fit some church needs but lacked flexibility.
The feel of the new design is lighter and brighter to allow for the often-darker colorful images from inside the church. The current events blocks are brought higher on the page and upcoming church services and musical performances have their video embedded directly on the homepage.
New design
Click to view new design
The new design delivers embedded video and more visually intense homepage content.
Ease of use
The visual redesign is a much smaller part of the improvement. The admin side of the WordPress configuration makes managing the site many times faster and more efficient. Everything is designed to handle Luther Memorial’s specific needs and there is an extensive documentation subsite that the web content manager can access once logged in.
Mobile responsiveness
The new theme is fully responsive and looks great on mobile devices.
Click to view old mobile design
The old design had a single, rudimentary mobile dropdown menu.
Click to view new mobile design
The new design has a responsive mobile menu.
Phone frame image by David Chivasa from Pixabay
Logo upgrades
As part of the project, I created new, vector versions of the church’s logos.
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