John Ivins Worship Band is a Christian rock outfit singing songs of praise in the hope of attracting younger people. Although, US-based, they perform worldwide to Christians of all ages. John is also a speaker and hosts over 70 Christian retreats.
The band itself might have been successful, but their website was seriously off-key. Visitors to the site came in little more than a trickle, 500 a month being typical. The client had acknowledged that the website was not working in terms of hits, design or attention-holding, and knew that the only solution was a ground-up reworking. This meant redesign visually and navigationally, a re-emphasis on SEO and marketing, better coding and generally making the site more attractive to the youthful demographic.
Websitehttp://www.johnivins.com/
 |
The Challenges Designing a complete package of web design and marketing is in some way less problematic than doing just some parts. When everything is in-house, information can flow from department to department in formats we all recognize (appropriately in this case, you could say we were all singing from the same hymn-sheet). It also allows an entire project to be mapped out with precise timetables and expectations. |
 |
The Solution This site needed to be energetic, attractive to young people and full of interesting and exciting content, especially photos, videos, music, a calendar and news stories. There was also the need to have a shopping cart function via which John Ivins official merchandising could be purchased. We decided that visually, the site should be Flash-based and full of color and movement. In terms of marketing, we fully optimized the site and submitted links to a host of general and specific directories. We also set up Facebook and MySpace accounts for the band and posted videos of video sharing sites, all linking back to the main site. Finally we created a content management system so that the band can update the site as and when they please without having to work through us. |
 |
The Results The project was an unqualified success, with increased hits, positive feedback and an overall increase in awareness of the band throughout the world.
|
