We are pleased to be able to launch our new website for the Diocese of Ely.
It has been created in conjunction with Church Edit, who are supporting a number of Church of England Dioceses in the improvement of their websites. By teaming-up with a number of other Dioceses and with the support of the national Church of England digital team, we have been able to leverage the technical and financial benefits of being part of a wider shared website platform.
Over time we will also benefit from realising shared website developments, meaning new features and website tools will come along faster than before and at significantly less costs to the Diocese than would have been required if we ‘went it alone’.
Some key things to point out
The website structure: We have tried to structure the website with the visitor in mind. This is most obviously demonstrated by the new “Your Church Role” drop-down menu item. This means that most of the webpages that we believe are most directly relevant to a particular role holder, should appear in the same place.
There will of course be exceptions….. and everyone differs slightly in what they believe to be the ‘correct’ structure. However, once some additional ‘tagging’ technical developments come online, it will further allow us to push relevant information to a church role page, regardless of where it was added on the website, so that visitors don’t have to spend so much time searching for information.
Tagging: We have spent a lot of time ‘tagging’ website content using keywords. This means that in the website document library users can click on one of these keyword tags, and any document tagged with that keyword will appear in the filtered list. These tools will be improved upon as new website features become available.
Searching: We have spent a lot of time making sure that the search box experience on this website is helpful and intuitive. We are now confident that when you search for something, using the website search bar, you should be able to find what you are looking for quickly in the results list. If you can’t, it’s either not on the website, or you have found a niggle, either way please tell us so we can do better!
Visitors will also notice that when they search for something, the results will be returned as a list of webpages and as a separate list of documents. It’s hoped this will help you finding what you’re looking for faster.
A Church Near You integration: We are very pleased to be able to incorporate information from the Church of England’s national “A Church Near You” (ACNY) website into our own website. The data is pulled through live and should help you contact the relevant church you’re searching for.
The ACNY pull-through is only as good as the information added by parishes to their ACNY pages, so please make sure your ACNY page is up-to-date as this is such a value tool for those not familiar with a particular parish to find a church close to them.
There is still much to do and work is ongoing to ensure the quality and usefulness of the content on this website is what our visitors can expect. But we believe we now have a platform from which we can affordably build upon to best serve our church communities.
If you have any questions about the website, or suggestions for how you think we might be able to improve the content, please do email them to the Communications Team on communications@elydiocese.org. All suggestions will be collated and where appropriate fed into future site developments.