Our New Site and Logo

Have you visited iministries.org lately? No? We don't blame you. We haven't done much with it in the last year or two and we don't feel badly about it either. We've been busy working on your websites. We finally got around to an update and wanted to tell you about it. Specifically, we wanted to go over some of the choices that we made which we feel might help you think about your own website.

First off, we want to point out that we absolutely use our own product. Our site is built entirely using the same tools that you use.* With this being the case, you might choose to use some of the same techniques.

Simplified Navigation
We've simplified our navigation to make it easy for visitors to find what they need. We've chosen five simple top-level menu options (right in between the 4-7 recommendation which we will talk about in a future blog entry) and have chosen to have only a single level underneath of no more than five items.

Using Blogs
We've chosen to use blogs to highlight our portfolio, system updates and this little feature where we tell you things. This allows us to put each new client out there and to accept comments very quickly, communicate to our users about system updates and get our thoughts out there. Find out how to use RSS and subscribe to any one of our blogs. We feel that you will be glad you did.

Using Photo Galleries
We're using photo galleries to provide you with thumbnails that you can use in your own website. These are royalty free so you can use them as you see fit.

Simplified Homepage
We have simplified our homepage to offer a little less information up front. We have learned over the years that if you have too much information, it scares people. If you go to a website that has so much information right out of the gate, it seems a little overwhelming. We don't want visitors to feel like there's too much there and have them decide to "come back later." Instead, we have selected specific things to present.

New Logo
Not that anyone has asked, but you might have thought for a second, "What's the deal with your new logo?" We are glad you almost asked. Our goal these days is to provide the most flexible websites for churches and ministries. We want the tools and design options to be flexible. We hope that you are able to use your website for just about whatever you can dream up.

Our new logo is supposed to evoke the flexibility of a rubber band. I have to admit, we think it's pretty sweet both as a concept and in its execution.

Custom Design
We want to offer a big thank you to Baron3, our design partner. A good number of you have probably already worked with Nate Baron. Nate designed our site and logo personally and we are very grateful for it. We're pleased to offer a professional look and feel. If you'd like to look into a custom design or a refresh of your site's design, please let us get you in contact with Baron3.

We hope you like our new look as much as we do.

* I feel compelled to state, for the record, that our Pricing page is a custom-built page we built to pull the pricing from our database so we don't have to update it in two places. Otherwise, we use everything else "out of the box."