EKKW: Church Digital - A relaunch into the future!
All churches are struggling with declining membership figures, and one strategy to counter this is digitalization. The relaunch of the EKKW website is an important step towards remaining relevant, especially for young people.
The EKKW approached us for the relaunch and we were able to convince them with our concept; we went online with a new website based on TYPO3 just in time for Easter 2024.
You can find out more about this project and why workshops and the conception phase are so important for such projects in this case study.
Who is the EKKW?
The Evangelical Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck (EKKW ) is one of the largest regional churches in Germany and is divided into three main regions, the so-called Sprengel. These are Hanau-Hersfeld, Kassel and Marburg. The provosts are called upon to support the bishop in her office and to lead the district in consultation with the bishop by providing pastoral advice, guidance and assistance.
The districts are in turn divided into a total of 14 church districts, which are led by deans. The church districts contain the respective parishes, which are led by church councils.
280
employees
>700.000
Members
686
legally independent parishes
The challenge
The EKKW approached us in fall 2022 with a request to prepare a proposal for the relaunch of its website www.ekkw.de.
The key points of the implementation were a new communication concept, a conversion of the technical basis and infrastructure and a migration of data and content.
The EKKW media house had already drawn up a catalog of requirements and had therefore already thought about the relaunch in advance.
The previous proprietary system "Open Text" was to be replaced by TYPO3 and the entire website was to be given a modern design. A content guideline had also already been created and was handed over to us with the requirements.
After reviewing the requirements, we quickly realized that the EKKW had chosen the right CMS with TYPO3. Since the authorization concept with different departments in the church would also be an important element in the project.
One of the most important challenges in this project is to use the preparatory work that has been done and to transfer it into a modern design system with a suitable information architecture.
As for all churches, the loss of members is a key issue. Remaining relevant as a church for young people and not losing existing members is no easy balancing act.
Reaching people on the new website with the right design and the right topics or allowing them to find the right articles quickly is another challenge in this project.
Concept phase
Workshops are always an important part of our project work, especially at the start of a project. Together with our partner agency for design, UI and UX "made in", we have been standardizing our workshops for years and adapting them to customer needs.
In the case of EKKW, we quickly realized that in addition to our standard kick-off, dedicated workshops on the topics of navigation, page structure and information architecture were also necessary in order to further develop the already created content guidelines in a meaningful way.
This initial concept phase is important to facilitate further development. It is important to us that both the designers and the developers work together with the client from the very beginning of this process. The interaction of content and structured data requires close coordination if, for example, articles are to be played out to the right target groups.
The fact that we at made in and punkt.de understand faith and the church helped us a lot to achieve rapid progress in the concept phase with our contacts on the customer side.
Concept phase
Workshops are always an important part of our project work, especially at the start of a project. Together with our partner for design, UI and UX - the agency made in - we have been standardizing our workshops for years and adapting them to customer needs.
In the case of EKKW, we quickly realized that in addition to our standard kick-off, dedicated workshops on the topics of navigation, page structure and information architecture were also necessary in order to further develop the already created content guidelines in a meaningful way.
This initial concept phase is important to facilitate further development. It is important to us that both the designers and the developers work together with the client from the very beginning of this process. The interaction of content and structured data requires close coordination if, for example, articles are to be played out to the right target groups.
The fact that we at made in and punkt.de understand faith and the church helped us a lot to achieve rapid progress in the concept phase with our contacts on the customer side.
Implementation
The framework conditions for the technical implementation of the relaunch had already been specified by the EKKW and we were able to follow the technical decisions.
TYPO3 as a future-proof CMS, which has everything for simple rights management, SEO, responsive optimization and is free of license costs, has also been used by us in many projects for over 20 years.
In addition, there was a connection for Cleverreach for newsletters and Matomo for web analytics. These are also applications that are used in many of our projects. Of course, we were also able to take over the hosting and operation requested by the EKKW with our proServers.
From this perspective, the project was less of a technical challenge than the implementation of the information architecture for the individual service areas.
An important part of the implementation was also the search, which not only had to deliver high-performance and well-structured results, but also enable the EKKW to specify keywords. The end result was a Solr-based search with weighting and keyword assignment.
As in many projects, the migration of data and content played a major role in the relaunch of the EKKW. Old articles and, for example, the lector's sermons were to be transferred.
The lector's sermons can be found as a service on the new EKKW website and can be used by members as a template for church services. Members can download the lector's sermons with a login; older sermons are freely available. We have also taken over the daily motto and events and integrated them as a function into the new site.
A live tour at Easter and a look into the future!
After we began the conception and development phase in August 2023, the new website went live on March 26, 2024, just in time for Easter. Of course, our collaboration with the EKKW did not end with the go-live. Here, too, we continued to pursue the continuous relaunch approach, in which incremental adjustments are made.
In addition to further development, it is of course important for us to involve the customer's editors, so we also held an on-site and remote workshop to explain how to work with the backend to around 80 editors from the service areas. Even if the editors only have very limited authorizations for their areas, an introduction to the new system is of course essential.
We are also working with the EKKW beyond the project in various workshops, e.g. in the area of adult education, and are shaping the future together.
Are you interested? Then here are your next steps:
Give us a call, send us an e-mail or find out more about our kick-off workshop to get to know each other!
