Adam Findley said...

I love the design of the new site! It has a great layout and I think that it’s really important to use a common denominator video watching tool similar to YouTube because of the diversity of the viewing audience, so I think that was an excellent choice. It’s simple and very effective.

I have a few things that I think might improve the user experience though: When I finish watching the question video, I click on the text expecting to get an answer video, but instead I get a bunch of text. I feel like of the change in format discourages people from reading what is there (I didn’t bother). I really wanted to see a video of their answers, and then have text surrounding or easily accessible for when I want to learn more.

With the videos at the bottom there is an action, whether getting a Book of Mormon, a video, or something else, and I didn’t have any reason to click on them because I don’t know how that answers my question as to “why I am here on earth?” A short reason would be helpful for me.

The site also seemed to run a little slow here on my mom’s computer, which I believe to be a rather run of the mill machine (AMD 3000+, 512 RAM, and Firefox 2.0.3)

The site looks really great though, and I think with a few small changes it will really pull many people in.

April 29, 2007 4:32 pm #

Mike said...

Maybe it is just me, but I don’t like the width of the window. I have to scroll left & right in order to see the entire webpage. Scrolling down (or up) is fine, but I just hate sites that expect me to have some mega-high resolution.

April 29, 2007 8:26 pm #

Sanford Loobins said...

Joel-

What will you do with the old mormon.org once the new one[beta] is live?

[Joel: It will either go away or will be archived.]

April 30, 2007 7:28 am #

Dando said...

What kind of impact are anti-Mormons making on the chat line? Are you being overrun?

[Joel: Not bad, really. Most people are considerate.]

April 30, 2007 9:52 am #

Kim Siever said...

I agree with, Mike. My browser is 900px wide and requires horizontal scrolling.

April 30, 2007 11:23 am #

Joe Lindsey said...

Wow! Very good layout, good message, great video clips, down to earth, personal testimonies. This should go a long way to promote the gospel to the many interested parties.

I have a rather nit-picky comment and you can disreagard it if you wish… but think about it first. In the section titled MEMBERSHIP IN THE CHURCH there is topic of “Holidays and Observances.” It is significant to mention that Christmas and Easter observed. But from a “worldwide church” perspective where is says…

“Pioneer Day is held on 24 July, celebrating the arrival of the first Latter-day Saint pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, and members of the Church worldwide honor the pioneer heritage of the Church on this day. ”

…I question the wording regarding the celebration being “held on July 24″. That may be true in Utah and perhaps a few other LDS communities in neighboring states. Outside of that geography, however, Pioneeer Day is not generally known. There are no parades and no store closings and so on. The existing wording tends to promote the view of a “Wasatch Front” organization which ignores a more global view of the Church.

I live in Californnia. Pioneer day is not “held” in this state but many wards/branches will have some sort of function or party to “celebrate” it. I would reword it to say something like…

“Pioneer Day is celebrated on 24 July, commemorating the arrival of the first Latter-day Saint pioneers…”

April 30, 2007 3:10 pm #

Karen Anderson said...

Regarding site width… hasn’t 1024 x 768 become the supported standard? It seems as though a number of large sites have recently stopped supporting 800 x 600. IMO, a smaller page width wouldn’t have created the same rich experience. It pleases me that the church is at the front of the pack rather than following up at the rear. Well done!

May 1, 2007 5:34 am #

Mario Hipol said...

A couple things:

I think that the video clips need to be identified as such. (i.e. Click here for video…or Listen my conversion…etc. The little boxes don’t jump out as multi-media. Also, there should be a simple Close button in the corner of the video pop-up. I looked for a way to close the window before just clicking the black background. I think that the term “Basic Beliefs” makes it sound like “this is what we want to tell you but there’s more we aren’t sharing…” I think a simple “We Believe…” would be better. If it were really just basic all you would need were the Articles of Faith. Which I also find missing from the site. If I were to designate the content for Mormon.org I would focus heavily on these topics:

Jesus Christ
The Articles of Faith…
Why are families so important…
Tell me about your temples…
Who was Jospeh Smith…
Are you really Christians…

Those are the answers that I find people looking for over and over again….I also think that there should be content and banners that we as members could share on our blogs, group and social sites. This would help tremendously to answer sincere questions by friends and others. It also wouldn’t hurt the church’s SEO perormance to have those links out there. Right now when you search you get a couple church links then other not-quite-so-honest sites.

Anyway, sorry for the long post but that’s my feedback.

May 1, 2007 11:18 am #

Paul Vaughn said...

Adam,
Thanks for the feedback. Your comments are spot on. We on the team are addressing the “answer videos” in a couple of ways:

1. The answer videos are contained in the upper right of the body of text but are not obvious enough. We are changing the design of the small video box to look more like an actionable item than just an image.
2. The answer videos will also be brought forward into the carousel to give more substance and testimony earlier in the user experience.

As we approach the live launch we are collecting, analyzing, and acting on the feedback that we can accomplish and that seems appropriate to change. Thanks again for the great feedback. We hope to move the work forward with this new site and offer opportunities to people around the globe to learn more about Christ and his Gospel.

May 2, 2007 7:42 am #

Paul Vaughn said...

Mike and Kim,
Thanks for the feedback. We are making some minor adjustments to the width and height to make sure that no horizontal scrolling takes place when the user’s resolution is set to 1024px x 768px. Also, we are taking some vertical dimension out of the home page and the video carousel page to assure that the important interface elements are above the fold. Still, depending on the users browser bars settings, and start bar depth it will change the dimension of viewable space. Thanks again for the great feedback.

May 2, 2007 7:51 am #

Joe Lindsey said...

Just out of curiosity, I compared the new “Beta site” with the old “mormon.org” site and found that there is not much about the Book of Mormon on the new site. I think we are missing a great opportunity here to say something positive about that great book.

I know this blog is not a doctrinal forum but considering that our “competition” is constantly bringing up negative things about the Book of Mormon (direct lifts from the KJV Bible, no new-world archeological evidence, and so on)… why not include some infromation that the honest and sincere people can glean from what the Book or Mormon really teaches.

Some examples: (Please note that these questions are not original with me. I borrowed them from another source.)
1. What is the purpose of man’s existence? (2 Nep 2:25)
2. What happens to our spirits at death? (Alma 40:11-14)
3. How can a person turn his personal weaknesses into strengths? (Ether 12:27)
4. Why was Jesus baptized? (2 Nephi 31:4-9)
5. Do little children need repentance and baptism? (Moroni 8:1-24)
6. with so many conflicting voices around us, how can a person judge what is good and what is evil? (Moroni 7:14-19)

Any comments or thoughts?

May 10, 2007 5:07 pm #

Tatiana said...

I love the new site! I think it lets the message shine through clearly, and doesn’t get in the way. I clicked to chat with a missionary live, because I wanted to ask how you get to be one of the people who answers questions live in online chat. I’d love to do that part time in the evenings, if I can do it from home. The young man with whom I was chatting said he was a full time missionary completing his training in the MTC. We didn’t communicate very well because of some severe lag. Whether he was a slow typist, or whether the interface is just very slow, I’m not sure. He would respond to something I said several lines back. He also could possibly have been carrying on 12 conversations at once, I suppose, but I definitely didn’t feel a good connection going on, for whatever reason.

So I have two questions about the live chat part. Is the chat something that can be done by members online from home? (I mean signing up to be an online missionary and chat with investigators who have questions.) And secondly, is the interface fast enough, is the response time sufficient, and are there plans to improve?

[Joel: Members cannot today do this at home. We will be looking at how to make it better. Thanks for the feedback!]

May 13, 2007 8:19 pm #

Tatiana said...

I just tried again, and again I was getting severe lag. The responses from the missionary were delayed significantly. I asked him this time if he was a fast typist and he said yes. That definitely need to be fixed. I’m on cable modem, so I don’t think it would have been any bottleneck on my end.

But once the bugs get ironed out, I think it will be an AWESOME missionary tool. I am so excited about this! I’m going to tell everyone I know to check it out.

May 13, 2007 8:36 pm #

Tatiana said...

One more comment. The meetinghouse locator doesn’t work well. I put in my zip code and it brought up only one ward, in another part of town far away from here. When I tried several nearby zipcodes, I got the same ward on the other side of town. Finally I found one fairly distant zipcode that brought up my ward and another one close by. I realized, though, that had I been an investigator, I would have given up after that first search, thinking it correctly showed me the closest one to me. That’s a shame if it’s happening to investigators who then decide not to try to visit our wards. How can it be fixed?

[Joel: Thanks for the feedback. We'll check in and see what's going on. We've re-architected a replacement and have been implementing for a few months.]

May 13, 2007 8:53 pm #

Michelle said...

Joel,
I think the live chat has potential (I’m thinking not only about the benefits for investigators but also for young people who may not be able to serve proselyting missions for health or other reasons). This also might have some potential for problems, though. I recently stumbled upon a chat posted on a website of a person who obviously has an axe to grind. The chat was posted to make the missionary and the Church look bad. I realize that some people will twist anything we do in any way they can no matter what we do, but it seems there is a potential liability with a chat that can be saved, recorded and shared. Especially with young missionaries still in training who may not know how to handle a tough situation (so many of us older folks don’t always know best how to handle these things, either!), I am concerned about having these kinds of things captured in a way that they can be exploited. (Are there tweaks in the software that could prevent this?)

With chat, of course there is also the downside of no eye contact, no voice inflection, and thus the high risk of misunderstanding because of the limited medium.

So, while I am thrilled to hear that people have joined the Church as a result of this effort, I do worry about some potential downsides.

Would voice chat be a possibility? That would enable a bit more human connection, make feelings more perceptible, and reduce risk of the liabilities of the printed word. Just a thought….

Also, is there an option to have people send in questions before a chat so missionaries have a bit more time to study and ponder and pray (as they are encouraged to do for investigators in Preach my Gospel)? This might also allow for some feedback, a question database if you will, that could provide some concrete data on what people are asking about our church. I have heard complaints here and there that sometimes we don’t address online what people really struggle with when they hear about our church. Not that we need to address every “hard question” in this way on a website, but that it might be interesting to have updated and ongoing information about what people want to know most about.

[Joel: All great ideas. Thank you, Michelle. Right now we are just experimenting with different technologies. We will be looking at what works and what doesn't. Voice chat is certainly an option--we have a phone you can dial; why not a voice chat? "Questions from Church members" is a great idea. The challenge will be in figuring how to implement. This is whole new world for the Church.]

May 15, 2007 12:26 am #

Michelle said...

OK, while I had seen the chat feature, I hadn’t looked closely to see you can email a question. Sorry for my ignorance….

May 15, 2007 1:15 am #

Michelle said...

Hm. Looking more closely, that still seems like more a feedback-for-the-site kind of link rather than a you-can-ask-a-question-about-the-Church kind of link. Wouldn’t it be good to separate those out, so you have a technical feedback link and a doctrinal/investigative link. That would be easier to manage, no?

[Joel: Yes, slightly easier to manage. But more complicated for the user. We tried to be very simple with this web site.]

May 15, 2007 1:18 am #

Michelle said...

Another benefit of voice chat could be that companions could approach a discussion together. I think there is power in two witnesses and two people working together, keeping that “two by two” principle that is so important in missionary work.

Sorry for the many comments…just have been mulling over some of these things for a while….

[Joel: Don't apologize! I appreciate the feedback, Michelle!]

May 15, 2007 1:00 pm #

Tatiana said...

For that matter, companions could be a feature in text chat, as well. It could put you into a chatroom with a missionary companionship, whether of full-time or at-home missionaries. I think there is a large segment of especially younger people, though, who would feel very comfortable text-chatting one-on-one with a single member or missionary, who would feel less comfortable with voice chat or with a companionship in a two-on-one situation. Young people are very comfortable with instant messaging, and there is a feeling of security with the distance and anonymity that will coax people into taking the next step. A phone call is much more of a commitment to make than just an online text chat.

I don’t think the fear of chat transcripts should be anything to keep us from spreading the gospel in whatever way is most effective to each investigator. After all, almost all missionary discussions are actually edifying and uplifting and by the spirit. The more those get out, the better! =)

There’s an online tutoring company called tutor.com who handle this sort of situation really well. Tutors connect one-on-one with students over the internet. Each tutor has a mentor, who reviews the tutor’s chat logs week by week for a few weeks, then monthly thereafter. (They pick random chat logs to review from the month.) The mentors give their tutors feedback on how tough situations can best be handled, and specific areas they need to work on. I think online missionaries could be handled the same way, with training, guidelines, and then a mentoring system. It would be an awesome calling! I so want to be the one who sets up this program and gets it started. =) Maybe I’ll do that when I retire and serve a full time mission.

May 16, 2007 6:53 am #

Michelle said...

OK, I have one more piece of feedback. The home page feels a little dramatic/emotion-focused to me, with the questions fading in and out and the like. Rather than having the videos as the focus (which are good, but limited in the scope of what they can communicate, and also limited, I think, in audience they will appeal to), I would personally rather see more informational content immediately (an outline, maybe, like what shows up if you click on “Basic Beliefs”?), with the option to click on video answers to questions (because they are good ones). Here’s my concern: I think especially given the media attention we are getting at an increasing rate, we might want to appeal to a larger audience — not just assuming that people are “searching” for something doctrinally or spiritually (about restored truth or the purpose of life, etc.) but may be simply looking for more straightforward information about the Church. (Especially on the internet, I think you will get a lot of people wanting information for their brains first, and then they might want more for their hearts.)
I wonder if and even worry that someone might be turned off by what could feel like a play on emotions when instead they are looking for simple and direct information.

In addition, I also think that we might need a little more info on some of the harder questions, like polygamy and other things that are getting attention. I’d love to see a search feature that leads investigators to find more good and correct information about things that are often distorted by the press and enemies of the Church, or even about people who are simply misinformed.

If such an approach were taken, we also would have the burden of finding a balance between giving enough information to answer their questions while still steering people toward the doctrine and seeking spiritual truth (not just intellectual information). (All the information in the world about our history won’t help someone find the truth. But if we help remove barriers of misunderstanding, we might help them be more willing to listen to the core message of the gospel.)

May 22, 2007 4:47 pm #

Kevin said...

I was running our dial-up benchmarks on our BYU websites this morning and I ran the same test on beta.mormon.org and lds.org. I was using AOL, Windows 2000, and I had a true 50.6 kbps connection.

I am always a little disappointed with the performance of our pages; I am especially disappointed that we are making it difficult for our dial-up friends to access our sites and learn more about the Gospel. Are these sites designed only for those blessed with high speed Internet?

My numbers on lds.org showed that it was 26 seconds until I started to see elements loading in the window and it was a total of 85 seconds until the page finished loading. Beta.mormon.org didn’t show elements until 53 seconds had passed and the page didn’t completely load until 80 seconds had passed.

In our last user connectivity audit in Continuing Education we had 60% of our customers still using a dialup connection. I believe we reflect more the rule than the exception. I am curious to see why we are building pages that require more and more bandwidth? Is our customer base shifting to indicate that trend?

Honestly, the site is beautiful, reverent, and the flash is incredible. But in building such large site did we alienate our less fortunate users and make it impossible for them to access this information?

My two cents

Kevin

May 23, 2007 9:22 am #

Kevin said...

Correction: In our last user connectivity audit in Continuing Education we actually had 20% of our unique customers still using a dialup connection. Sorry about that, I incorrectly referenced that number.

Kevin

May 23, 2007 9:40 am #

Michelle said...

In addition, I also think that we might need a little more info on some of the harder questions, like polygamy and other things that are getting attention.

I just wanted to add that this is a new thought for me. I am usually one who doesn’t want to distract from our core message, and especially from the Savior and our focus on Him. I want the world to know HE is the reason the Church exists and HE is the focus of everything we believe in. I’m just lately thinking that perhaps there are people who would be more willing to listen if they had some of the “classic misunderstandings” addressed…removing some questions and concerns. But then again, perhaps I have it all backwards and we should just keep pressing forward with our core messages. As such, I think that Mario had some good ideas earlier in the comments section about being sure we really, really communicate that Christ is the center, and everything else that we believe in is there to point us and bring us to Him.

Thank you for being willing to listen. I hope that in giving feedback I don’t come across as overly critical. Like people have said, there are some neat features like the video that add such a wonderful personal touch (and maybe I have that backwards too….personal touch first then more info?) I dunno. This is why you are the expert working on all of this and we’re just out here throwing out ideas.

[Joel: Always willing to listen. We appreciate your feedback.]

May 26, 2007 1:19 am #

charlie said...

Congradualtions; you guys have done a great job there. It probably shouldn’t be beta anymore.

[Joel: It's released now. Thank you!]

May 26, 2007 5:21 am #

Alison Moore Smith said...

I agree with Michelle about addressing polygamy and other difficult subjects. There is so much anti-Mormon sentiment on the web. We really need an open, honest, faithful place to point.

June 12, 2007 4:08 pm #

Edward Lalone said...

The purpose of Mormon.org is to proclaim the gospel and it isn’t intended to answer questions regarding beliefs we no longer hold and practice. The site is not intended to answer the questions of anti-Mormons or those who have been affected by anti-Mormons. It isn’t even intended to answer sincere questions other then the basic beliefs of the Church. If those who visit the site are sincere and want their questions answered they can contact the missionaries and have an online chat or request a visit from the missionaries.

More resources are becoming available where members can publish information regarding such questions. To learn more visit http://www.mormonwiki.com, and the More Good Foundation at http://www.moregoodfoundation.org/. As for polygamy you can visit http://www.mormon-polygamy.org yet there is no reason to send people who are interested in the Church to these websites when the Church website will suffice to get them in contact with the missionaries. That is the entire purpose of the missionary program. For the majority Mormon.org will suffice. We want to expose them to the gospel and to get them in contact with the missionaries and not further expose them to topics focused on by anti-Mormons. They are quite effective at that and don’t need our help.

July 11, 2007 2:11 pm #