NEW UCG.ORG Website to Launch
April 7, 2015
2nd Quarter 2015
UCG.org to Re-launch with Responsive Design and Other Improvements!
The Internet team at the United Church of God is always looking for ways to improve our visitor’s experience. Over the past several months we’ve been very busy building something that we think you’ll love! We’re very happy to say we’re almost ready to unveil the new UCG.org website!
Why a new website?
The Internet is constantly shifting in capabilities, browsing habits and tons of other factors. We like to stay as current as we can—so that we’re ready to give an answer when people are searching for God’s truths. We’ve thought long and hard about the best way to organize the new site, what it should look like, and how it will function. We didn’t want just a face-lift. We wanted a change that can be expanded and improved upon for years to come—with a strong backend and thoughtful organization. We think you’re going to love it!
What Can I Expect on the new site?
- New, mobile-friendly responsive design
Beta sample of new UCG.org home page
We’ve redesigned the site from the ground up to make it more accessible on your smart phone, tablet, television or any other device that you use. A responsive design means the site should be accessible no matter what screen size you’re on at the moment. Over 50 percent of our traffic is from mobile phones and tablets now, so it is important to us that everyone has a seamless experience when they visit the website.
- More deliberate focus on presenting who we are as a Church
The Internet has changed really quickly! For years the strategy was to put as much content on your homepage as possible so search engines could find your site and make sure that visitors could find the information they were looking for. With advances from search engines this isn’t the case anymore. We’re planning to move all gospel-preaching content off of the “United Church of God” section of the website, and really focus in on who we are as a Church.
We’re going to give visitors a much clearer way to find a congregation near them and a really good idea of what they can find when they get to services. We’ll show them our outreach efforts, sermons, and even invite them in to watch a webcast Sabbath service so they can answer God’s calling.
- More deliberate focus on presenting the gospel message
Beta sample of home page for new UCG.org Beyond Today media section
Just because you won’t see all of our media content on the “United Church of God” section anymore doesn’t mean we’re shifting focus. The new “Beyond Today” media section of the website will be better than ever!
With the coming magazine name change from The Good News to Beyond Today, our gospel message will be more findable and more robust than ever. Beyond Today is not just a television program anymore. Beyond Today is a place where people can find all the wonderful truths of God’s way of life in tons of different ways—videos, Bible studies, blogs, booklets and study aids—and all mobile-friendly and accessible to millions around the world. With a clear focus on our gospel-preaching effort, we’ll have the opportunities to reach people in many new emerging markets and emerging devices.
- New Congregation Websites
Along with the other changes we plan on slowly rolling in our local congregation websites, with tons of new features. All the sites will be searchable and findable inside the main UCG.org site now, which means a seamless experience for the user and a much better interface for the local congregation website helpers. All posted sermons given in local congregations will be findable on our main UCG.org website for everyone to hear, and we have a lot of great things in mind for those as well.
- New Members’ Website
In Quarter 3, we also plan on integrating the members’ site into the new UCG.org. It will provide a much more seamless experience for our members looking for pertinent member content.
Other Changes
We’ve also been keeping an eye on feedback from users and we’re deciding to sunset a few things.
- Simplified user accounts without in-site friend requests or messages
Friend requests and personal messages in-site will not be in the new website. We found a vast majority of users are not using this functionality, and there are many other options for interactivity on the Internet today.
To replace messaging we will allow any user to configure their account with a contact form so others can send them an e-mail message. All e-mail addresses will be obscured for privacy on UCG.org and the function will be able to be turned off. This lets site visitors drop a note to their favorite UCG.org authors and start to build a relationship right away. You should archive any messages you wish to keep now because when the site rolls over you will not be able to access the archived messages.
- Look for us on other devices you use!
The future of the Internet is having your website’s content on whatever device someone uses—be it a smart TV, set top box, wearable, phone, or something we haven’t even considered yet. We’ve built the new site with this in mind and hope to jump onto emerging technology as quickly as possible. Our Roku channel is the first example of this, but we want to make sure we’re available on streaming devices everywhere that people have a question about the Bible.
We look forward to everyone’s feedback as we start rolling the project out live. You can expect the first round of updates sometime in Quarter 2 of this year, and more improvements throughout the rest of 2015. We really appreciate everyone’s prayers for God’s blessing on the project and the continued support of the entire Church.
Tom Disher—Senior Web Developer & Beyond Today Media Promoter, UCGIA
Record-Breaking Month at UCG.ORG
January 2, 2014
We are very pleased to report that December 2013 was a record-breaking month with more than 1 million unique visitors to the United Church of God‘s primary website at www.ucg.org.
A total of 1,026,510 unique visits were recorded—with more than 1.8 million page views. By way of comparison, the month of November, 2013, saw 682,653 unique visitors (also a very good number)—for an increase month-to-month of more than 50%!
December, 2012, was our best month-to-date at that time, and throughout 2013 we saw many months also reach that target. So, our prayer for 2014 is that more than 1 million unique visitors will become “the new monthly norm” for 2014 as well!
Please continue to pray for our dedicated production staff and Web employees who work tirelessly to bring this about. We post several items of new content each day at UCG.org—ranking the Church’s website at number 13 in the entire world among Christian denomination websites (alexa.com).
May God bless us, and may the good news of His Kingdom reach fertile ground amongst our millions of readers and viewers.
Peter Eddington—Operation Mangar, Media and Communications Services
Record-breaking Quarter at UCG.ORG
October 9, 2013
We are very pleased to report that our website traffic at www.ucg.org continues to climb very favorably. The 2013 July-September quarter resulted in the highest number of unique website visitors in our history: more than 1.4 million. Please note that this is not the total number of visits, but the number of unique visitors. Many of these people visited multiple, multiple times throughout the same time period.
As a result, we are on track to log 5.5 million unique visitors for the 2013 calendar year. Please see the following chart that illustrates our website visitor growth over the past eight years. The final quarter of 2013 is a conservative estimate based on the average number of visitors for the first three quarters. It may actually be higher if the positive trend continues and if previous years’ Q4 are any indication.
Please continue to pray for God’s blessing upon the United Church of God’s diligent effort to preach the gospel of the Kingdom of God around the world with increasing reach and effectiveness. Also, please ask God that our Good News magazine readers and our Beyond Today television viewers will be inspired and feel compelled by the gospel message to become more involved in the work of God’s Church—as donors and coworkers, but especially as newly converted Christians part of Jesus Christ’s flock in this end-time Work.
We are presently in the middle of a further redesign of our website to gain the most opportunity from mobile Internet technology—especially for our readers and viewers who use smart phones and tablets (like the iPad). Our dedicated team of website professionals are hard at work on this new update. I’m sure they would appreciate your prayers to God on their behalf as well.
Peter Eddington—Operation Manager, Media and Communications Services
New Video: Focus on God’s Work
June 7, 2013
Information Technology
The home office has released its fifth monthly Focus on God’s Work video about its Information Technology department. Richard Kennebeck, Information Technology manager, gives an overview of the work done by his team, and the auxiliary projects his area undertakes on behalf of serving the Church.
As earlier announced, the plan is for various managers and employees of the United Church of God to give a report about their area of responsibility that may be of particular interest to our congregations. Pastors are asked to make the video links available to our membership, and most videos will be suitable to play in the sermonette timeslot at Sabbath services if desired.
Focus on God’s Work has it’s own menu selection on the member’s website under the “resources” tab at members.ucg.org/content/focus-gods-work. This is where a new video will be posted each month.
Peter Eddington—Media and Communications Services
Inside United: Realtime 