Grace Cathedral is a welcoming congregation located in the heart of San Francisco, California. As a house of prayer for all people, it embraces visitors from around the world. Recognizing the need to expand beyond the limitations of their in-person church services, Grace Cathedral’s leadership began evaluating community engagement and exploring ways to welcome more people into their spiritual family.
Their diverse community includes rural and urban members, Latino, Chinese, and Japanese American congregants, individuals from various economic backgrounds, and people representing a wide range of lifestyles. One thing was clear: all these individuals consider Grace Cathedral their spiritual home, and they needed a website that could truly serve and connect them.
Grace and Affari conducted surveys and interviews with congregation members, community members, staff members and the board of directors to make sure they were hearing from a range of voices. Considering the results of those surveys and interviews, Affari developed an information architecture for the website that structured the necessary information in a navigable way and accounted for all the new functionality that Grace wanted to add for their congregation members. With an abundance of important information, it was critical that the navigation be easy to understand and manipulate.
With Grace Cathedral's stunning architecture and captivating photography, the real challenge was striking a balance between the visual elements and the extensive content that needed to be included. Affari employed an ethereal color palette inspired by the cathedral itself, incorporating shades of purple and gold drawn from its architecture and stained glass. To enhance visual clarity, pops of color were introduced to represent different informational pillars of the church.
By seamlessly blending design aesthetics, with thoughtful information architecture and robust functionality, Affari created a comprehensive yet flexible system, perfectly suited to building out Grace Cathedral’s website.
SEO takes time- but it's worth it!
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) takes time, but it is worth the effort. Over the same 4 month period from 2023 to 2024, Grace Cathedral saw an increase in total clicks go from 76.1K to over 101K with their Total Impressions going from 1.41M in 2023 to 1.97M in 2024! The SEO practices implemented increased the site’s visibility and made it easier for both current congregation members and visitors to locate online.
Web traffic increase of 38%!
Grace Cathedral saw an overall increase of 38% in their total traffic when comparing 2023 to 2024. Traffic increases like that are a result of quality content and diligent local and technical SEO. Having a website is important, but routine SEO work is one of the most cost-effective and impactful ways to grow online visibility, attract high-quality traffic, and drive long-term business success.
