A test release of the redesigned missionary Web site is now available at beta.mormon.org. The new site includes multimedia and the option for nonmembers to “chat live” with missionaries (Church members should not use the chat feature). While on the beta site, use the feedback option to tell us what you think.
Redesigned Mormon.org
by Larry Richman | Apr 26, 2007
Tags: Sharing Gospel
Looks good, I like it. 🙂
I like the ‘Truth Restored’ theming too.
My first impression is fantastic but why do you have five or six different men but always the same woman? You need to have different women instead of the same one. It is too freaky with only the same woman.
Two of the women look really similar, but they must’ve added some more, because now there are 4 different women, and 6 men. If you don’t see that many, refresh your cache.
I also like it. More eye-catching and personal now. It’ll be interesting to see the results of creating more interest from non-members viewing the site.
With WinXP at 1024 x 768 and a maximized browser I shouldn’t get scroll bars but do.
Looks nice… how does it play with search engines? What were your goals with regards to making the content of this site readily (and accurately) parseable by search engines?
I have the same issue as R. Gary Shapiro. Windows XP 1024 X 768 with Firefox I have both horizontal and vertical scroll bars. The only toolbar I have turned on is the bookmarks bar. Other than that, the site look great. I am excited for the redesign.
I really like the site. I don’t know if you want any bugs submitted here but there isn’t a simple way to cancel out of a video playing. I ended up having to click on one of the links at the bottom but I would recommend a close window feature.
On a side note, do you think that the church will ever create the feature to add inspirational church sactioned video to our own sites…I know I would put video on several of my sites that could link to mormon.org. Then we could be missionaries out in the cyber field. Just a thought.
Completely agree. If there was someway to embed the video on our own sites, it could link back to mormon.org with a reason for passers by to follow through the link. Just posting a link isn’t quite the same. I’ve always thought that the Church should have it’s own youtube account where they would post talks from general conference (probably with closed comments).
I’m glad to see that the videos don’t require Win Media Player, like other Church sites. This is a needed imprvmt, and a model for them to adopt. Quality is still excellent using my Linux mm tools.
You should really take a look at this post if you have not already seen it. It has some great ideas for mormon.org
I was running our dial-up benchmarks on our BYU websites this morning and I ran the same test on beta.mormon.org and lds.org. I was using AOL, Windows 2000, and I had a true 50.6 kbps connection.
I am always a little disappointed with the performance of our pages; I am especially disappointed that we are making it difficult for our dial-up friends to access our sites and learn more about the Gospel. Are these sites designed only for those blessed with high speed Internet?
My numbers on lds.org showed that it was 26 seconds until I started to see elements loading in the window and it was a total of 85 seconds until the page finished loading. Beta.mormon.org didn’t show elements until 53 seconds had passed and the page didn’t completely load until 80 seconds had passed.
In our last user connectivity audit in Continuing Education we had 60% of our unique customers still using a dialup connection. I believe we reflect more the rule than the exception. I am curious to see why we are building pages that require more and more bandwidth? Is our customer base shifting to indicate that trend?
Honestly, the site is beautiful, reverent, and the flash is incredible. But in building such large site did we alienate our less fortunate users and make it impossible for them to access this information?
My two cents
Kevin
Correction: In our last user connectivity audit in Continuing Education we actually had 20% of our unique customers still using a dialup connection. Sorry about that, I incorrectly referenced that number.
Kevin