Since October 2014, we’ve been working to introduce significant changes to Churchdown Online and or partner websites. The existing websites, whilst very successful, had remained largely unchanged. In this post I want to give you some background to the changes we have made, and to explain the ways in which we’ve involved our users in the design process.
A website for everybody, on all devices
In the past year we have seen a shift in users visiting us on mobile and tablet devices; in the UK 50-60% of all visits are now from users on mobile, and in some countries it’s over 90%. Our original website was not designed with users on mobile or tablet in mind, and we therefore needed a solution that works for everyone, on all devices.
If you already use the Churchdown Online website on a mobile browser then you’ll be familiar with the site we are about to deploy to all devices. This has been the default experience on mobile phones for over 6 months. Thanks to your feedback, we’ve been improving it with regular iterations
In November, we started inviting users of tablet devices to switch from the existing website to the new responsive solution and their feedback has been very positive.
As well as providing a great experience regardless of device, the new website has a cleaner design and will load pages quicker. The new navigation design allows users to find news and information much easier than before.
The new solution will also allow us to deploy new features quicker and respond more effectively to your feedback in the future.
Churchdown Online App
The Churchdown Online app has been available since 2012, it’s now two year old and our customer surveys tell us that people expect more from the app. The mobile app, since launched has been a mirror of the live website.
Due to the costs of supporting, developing and maintaining an app we have taken the decision to not release any future versions but instead to continue to develop the Churchdown Online website. As mentioned above, Churchdown Online is optimized for all devices.
We are now in a much further forward position to further develop Churchdown Online. As always, we welcome your feedback and comments.