Occasionally, one’s personal life and professional life intersect in the most meaningful ways. My heart for racial reconciliation and interest in website development started around the same time in 2003 when I started working for a multiethnic church plant in Little Rock, AR. I served there for nearly five years as the young adult pastor, and that is also where I taught myself how to build websites, eventually starting a side business that became my vocation.
Guiding Target Audiences
Here we are seventeen years later and my faith and heart for reconciliation and experience helping people create impactful websites have intersected with an opportunity to redesign saltermcneil.com, the website of Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil. Dr. Brenda has been a thought leader and advocate for racial reconciliation for the last 30 years. She is also a pastor, professor, and author.
After she reached out to me about redesigning her website, we scheduled time one Saturday morning in late April to discuss her vision for saltermcneil.com and the work that she does. During our spirited conversation about her work and website, we surfaced several opportunities for improvement that we agreed would present her target audiences with clearer calls to action related to their reasons for visiting the site and provide a clean layout to promote her upcoming book Becoming Brave: Finding the Courage to Pursue Racial Justice Now.
We discussed how various target audiences should know what action to take based on how their needs line up with Dr. Brenda’s services. This would be solved by creating different “doors” for users to walk through based on why they are coming to her site. The “doors” are:
- Cohort Mentorship
- Church Consulting
- Campus Coaching
- Books
- Speaking
Content Audit and Site Navigation
After this initial conversation, I conducted a Content Audit of the existing site to check which target audience questions are or are not answered by the existing content. This exercise showed us where gaps of content existed and what could be repurposed. It helped frame some decisions before jumping into exactly what the site would look like because you need to know what you’re going to say and to whom before you decide how to dress.
After completing the content audit, I reimagined the site navigation and page hierarchy. How would we organize the menus to reflect to visitors that the doors mentioned above existed on this site and provide an intuitive landscape for them to navigate their journey? To visualize what the revised navigation would look like I quickly stubbed out a new site instance in Dr. Brenda’s Wix account. What I sought to highlight was reimagining the site’s navigation to direct people to mentorship, consulting, coaching, buying books, and speaking engagement requests.
Site Buildout
After Dr. Brenda reviewed the content audit and site navigation recommendations she started sending me new or updated content to tell the story relevant to the three target audiences (mentees, churches, campus ministries) as well as revisions to other areas of the site. She provided stunning professional headshots and group photos of previous cohorts and churches with whom she has consulted. We were off to the races at this point!
From that point, I would build out pages of her site with the updated content, and she would provide feedback. We iterated on this a few times until getting to the finished product which went live on June 26.
Before and After Comparisons
Here are comparison screenshots of the previous site and the newly launched site.
Home page
About page
Events page
Books page
New landing pages
Thanks!
“As a reconciliation leader, who is also the founder and president of my own speaking and consulting company, I’ve worked for years to develop a compelling and engaging website. That’s why I’m thrilled about the new website Rob McBryde designed for me! Rob has a unique ability to help his clients clarify their message and his years of experience and heart for inclusion and diversity is reflected in every page of his work. I LOVE my new website!” – Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil, www.saltermcneil.com
Thank you so much, Dr. Brenda, for this opportunity to partner with you in your work of racial reconciliation! May your new website serve to connect others with your mission to “give the next generation practical strategies to achieve more than a temporary, external difference.”