First Baptist of High Falls Project

Industry

Religion & Charity

Location

High Falls, GA

First Baptist Church of High Falls is a faith community located in Jackson, Georgia. They conduct weekly Sunday services, manage a preschool, and regularly fundraise for charities. The church wanted to stand out among other churches and spread their message online, so they decided to design a website. However, when they tried to build the site from scratch, they quickly felt lost. That's when they reached out to Hickman Marketing & Website Design. We know that building a brand new website is hard work. Many of our clients initially tried to build a site themselves before becoming overwhelmed. We were happy to step in and create a streamlined church website design.

Challenge

The major challenge in this project was creating a website that could handle multiple types of tasks. First Baptist Church of High Falls wanted to set up a church live stream to accommodate the many people who attend their services remotely. They wanted to create an easy-to-navigate online tithing system. They needed a clearly visible section of their website for posting updates and upcoming events. On top of all that, the members of their congregation use a variety of digital devices to connect, so the website needed to display well on all device types. To create an effective religious website design, we needed a platform that was capable of performing all these tasks.

Approach

We started by gathering information from the church's leadership team. We asked about their existing ministry programs and their future goals. The church has eight ministries: Sunday School, Worship, Team Kid, Preschool, Student Ministry, Women's Mission Union, Men's Ministry, and Operation Christmas Child. Ultimately, we decided to create devoted webpages for each individual ministry. Throughout the church website design process, we tried to create the platform so that the church leadership team could make changes on their own once we finished. Since mobile searches are becoming more popular, we settled on a responsive design. As a result, people looking for information about the church's programs were able to find full descriptions of each ministry by simply browsing the website. Whether those people were using a laptop computer or an iPhone, the website rendered clearly on their screen.

Solution

The final website design was highly interactive. Members could worship online using the church live stream. They could donate to charity using a secure payment gateway. New members could learn all about the church's ministry options and decide which programs they wanted to get involved with. The church leadership was delighted by the new website. Congregants confirmed that the design was fast and able to operate on all devices. This was thanks in part to the fact that the website is hosted using Amazon Web Services. Amazon Web Services was chosen because it has very good uptimes, which fit with the church's goal of high connectivity and easy access. The final website accomplished all of the initial goals of the First Baptist Church of High Falls and allowed church congregants to connect to their community in a whole new way.