Here's how to refresh your homepage in 30 minutes (or less!)

Mar 31, 2023 by

Katie Cerni

Experience digital tools that work with you to create something beautiful

Your eCatholic-powered website comes with all the tools necessary to give an efficient (and beautiful!) makeover to your homepage. Simple changes can improve your site’s visual impact and give visitors a truly enjoyable browsing experience.

Refreshing your website may seem like a daunting task that takes days on end - but the eCatholic team thinks differently! In our latest webinar, we put our website tools to the test in order to accomplish an entire homepage makeover in under 30 minutes. To see how we did, be sure to watch the webinar recording above!

And don't forget - if you love what you see, but simply don't have the time or resources to complete a website makeover on your own, be sure to check out our Homepage Makeover Service. It's our most affordable website redesign for existing eCatholic customers!

Step 1: Update your website theme

The quickest way to change the “look and feel” of your website is to update your theme. eCatholic offers a versatile selection of free themes which you can customize with curated color palettes, unique font pairings, and more! Plus, we release a few new free themes every year, so your design options are always expanding. :) 

If you’re not sure which theme to choose, here are some helpful suggestions:

• Choose a theme that uses a Sections Layout - When choosing your theme from the handy theme selector in the Design Studio, be sure to filter your theme options to include Sections. Now, you’ll have access to only the themes that will offer you the latest eCatholic technology! 
• Highlight your Catholic identity - If you’re looking to integrate the beauty of our Catholic faith into your website, we recommend using the following free themes: Eden, Moser, Tabor, or Sinai. They all offer unique Catholic background images and illustrations that feature Jesus, Mary and other saints that lift your designs up to the heavens!

Step 2: Activate a Sections Layout

Updating from a Standard Layout (which expands vertically down the webpage) to a Sections Layout, you can create distinct horizontal content sections that can be layered down your entire page. Horizontal content regions provide a more pleasurable browsing experience for site visitors, allowing them to take in distinct segments of content and style with each section. 

A Sections Layout also looks great on any cell phone or tablet. In 2022, over 60% of all internet traffic was viewed on mobile devices. So, not only is a Sections Layout something that can beautify your site, but help it to be more functional for your mobile visitors as well.

Not convinced yet? Check out these 3 reasons why we think you should use a Sections Layout on your website.

Step 3: Analyze your homepage content

Here at eCatholic, we’re big fans of making sure you don’t put everything on your homepage!!!

And we get it - sometimes saying “no” can be difficult. But if you’re not sure how to decide what should live on your homepage, here are some questions you might consider asking yourself:

• Will this content work better in a different location on my website? Can I remove this module to an internal page, the website’s footer text, or possibly in a quick link in the navigation bar?
• Can I showcase this information in a different way? Should I take advantage of different modules or section types like News and Events or even the Headline Section?
• Is this content still relevant to our website visitors? Can I simply delete this module / information?

Step 4: Clean up your site map

Oftentimes, your website’s Site Map can be accidentally ignored or neglected, resulting with too much info in your navigation that becomes cramped and difficult to read. Nobody means to neglect their Site Map, but sometimes it just falls to the wayside… *sigh*. What’s a web administrator to do?

Well, it’s never a bad idea to take some dedicated time to clean up your Site Map, but if you want a few quick fixes, here’s what we suggest:

• Limit the number of items in your navigation bar - Sometimes, less is more. Get creative or look at other websites so you can see how others consolidate pages and direct visitor traffic.
• Utilize Quick Links and Mega Menu Groups - eCatholic provides these special features so you can trim up and optimize your navigation by grouping like-items together.

Websites need maintenance on a regular basis, just like you need to change the oil in your car every few months. Hopefully, you now have the confidence needed to go forth and make all these updates in a jiffy!