A Weblog entry posted on Wednesday, January 09 2008

Reflect Case Study: Bellevue Student Ministry by Aaron

A few weeks ago we launched a new website for the Bellevue Baptist Church Student Ministry. This website was built using our Reflect website management system, and is a good example of what can be accomplished using Reflect.

About Bellevue Student Ministry

Bellevue Baptist Church is one of the largest Southern Baptist churches in the United States which inevitably includes one of the largest student ministries as well. Having their website easy to update and interactive was a priority that wasn’t being met with their previous design and content management system. The Bellevue Student Ministry came to Clear Function to design and develop them a new website that met these needs.

The Design

When dealing with an age group ranging from 6th to 12th grade (and the parents of all those students), there are unique problems you have to deal with in order to communicate quickly to each audience. Bellevue desired a simple homepage that clearly directed the audiences into middle and high school. But in order to keep the homepage more in depth than just a simple splash page, we added some recent photo galleries (one of the main thing visitors come for) and a free form area to mention some of the upcoming events or announcements.

Homepage design

Once you get past the homepage, the design aims to focus on each specific audience. Through Reflect we were able to pull in content like photos, videos, blogs and events according to the section you are in. For example, when you’re under the “Middle School” section you only get middle school content, etc… Here's what Bellevue had to say about their new website:

"Not only is the Reflect system easy to use and understand; the guys at Clear Function are easy to talk with and really seem to have a desire to make the website what you want it to be and not just what is easiest for them. You don’t find that to be the case with many others! On top of all that, our website looks professional, it is informative, and at the same time unique to our needs. We couldn’t be happier!!"

— Jason Pyron, Middle School Minister

The Features

This website is pretty packed with features from photo/video galleries to an events calendar and blog. Through Reflect’s extensive customization, we were able to meet all the design and content needs of the Bellevue site.

• Photo & Video galleries

  The bulk of what the Bellevue Student website does is to communicate about the many events that go on throughout the year. Sharing these events on their website with photos and videos was key. With the Reflect photo and video galleries, we were able to create an easily organized structure for their photos/videos based upon their different age groups and ministries. The Reflect galleries also made it easy to manage hundreds of photos, with features like bulk uploading that saves time. In addition, the video gallery makes it easy to pull in YouTube videos.

• Blog & Events Calendar

  Having a blog is a great way to provide interaction on any website. We gave a simple blog implementation so that each minister could have a spot of their own to interact with the students. In addition, we implemented an events calendar that allows Bellevue to communicate about their many events that happen throughout the year.

With the launching of the Bellevue Student Ministry website, our Reflect system is getting that much closer to its official launch early this year. We hope to provide more information and examples in the near future as we get closer to Reflect's launch.