The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Challenge
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) helps unify, promote, educate, and support Catholic dioceses and churches throughout the United States. USCCB reached out to Alliance to modernize and redesign their digital presence. They needed a digital partner to create a more constructive experience for millions of monthly visitors seeking information and inspiration. As a Washington D.C. based digital agency specializing in nonprofit web design and development, our team collaborated with USCCB to implement a site redesign to engage its members and inspire new visitors from around the world to take interest in issues such as education, charity, and immigration. To best serve its wide range of audiences, USCCB needed a digital agency that could help consolidate its numerous systems into one cohesive infrastructure. USCCB comprises numerous offices and subcommittees, each with its own responsibilities that serve the organization’s mission. USCCB needed an enterprise-level website design that would better serve its visitors and members, while also capturing new visitors through engaging and spiritually rewarding content. The existing website and infrastructure was well past its useful shelf life, which was not only costly, but also restricted the ability for content editors and administrators to deploy new website content easily. Our research uncovered a significant portion of visitors who were coming to the site with mobile devices and were unable to easily read, explore, or share content. The existing content management system inhibited team members from making most content changes, while more sophisticated tools were largely disconnected from a cohesive website experience. Our multi-day, in-person and virtual town halls also discovered a number of pain points from handling large volumes of documents to the need for better navigational systems, to helping visitors find information to drive their learning and involvement.
Solution
The new website is designed and built to be flexible. With over 80 website administrators and contributors, we had to make sure that the experience of adding and managing content was intuitive and fast. Main content pages were built with an extensive library of customized page panels that can be easily incorporated and reorganized on any page. Alliance worked closely with the USCCB team. From detailed content audits to user flow testing to focus groups, we spent our time developing a strategy to not only convert Catholic audiences, but also showcase key theological resources available from USCCB. New tools included a ‘Find a Parish’ tool that geolocates visitors, as well as mass times and driving directions throughout the United States. Maintenance & Hosting Because USCCB recognized the importance of follow up and assistance, they selected Alliance to provide hosting and website maintenance services, with the goal of keeping the various websites and campaigns running smoothly and ranking well. Our team performs monthly database backups, reviews site analytics, and improves the user experience, while helping to usher in future projects and continuously improve the site with new functionality.
Results
As we continue to advance our partnership, we’re excited to help USCCB to grow and expand its mission. We continue to explore how millions of visitors are interacting with elements on the website and with digital campaigns to help deliver even stronger brand engagement.
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