Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet

Website project

Website content strategy
Brand extension for web
Web design & development of two sites (public and internal)

About the organization

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (CSJ) are a congregation of sisters headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, with provinces and locations throughout the United States, South America and Japan. The sisters and their broader community work in various ministries, justice initiatives, and outreach opportunities.

Project to-do list

Overhaul their congregation website to reflect the new realities of their consolidation and restructuring in a time of transition
Strategize a home on the web to serve as a central hub, clarifying and uplifting their organization
Merge one of the province’s separate websites into the primary congregation site
Create a secured-members-only site for the congregation to share private information with sisters
Design a visual brand for the websites that the sisters and broader community could feel proud of and represented by
Ensure that the marketing staff will be able to update the site themselves and manage its content easily
Set them up with an easy-to-update events calendar that they can manage themselves
Set up multilingual capabilities in varying degrees for the two sites, allowing for Spanish and Japanese content when appropriate

Project milestone

Assembling our team

First, we started our project by assembling the perfect team. In addition to the two of us from Blustery Day Design, our project working group included the CSJ communications team and members of their congregation leadership. This mix really allowed us to approach the project holistically. It allowed us to reach a full understanding of what the website needed to be for the organization and for its website visitors.

Project milestone

Content strategy & site architecture

Then, we got down to strategy. After clarifying our website needs and goals together,

We did a content audit of the existing site’s pages, posts, and media content.
Then, we created a working list of content needed on the new site and strategized the perfect site architecture to hold it all.
We created a hierarchy of needed pages, grouping things in an understandable way for external audiences.
And we defined clear categories and tags for post content, so that the posts could appear dynamically in feeds throughout the site when relevant.
Lastly, a congregation-wide event calendar collects all the happenings across the congregation into one central resource.

Small circles showing color palette hues including blues, berries, oranges, and mustards. — The new extended color palette is instantly beautiful and usable.

Project milestone

Brand extension

We completed a full brand extension for the site, where we extended their aqua & navy logo to a complete web identity, with a beautiful color palette and legible web typography.

Project milestone

Site design & development

From the ground up, we built a brand new public website chock-full of features including a calendar, language-specific content, and a modern, accessible design. Additionally, we integrated a prayer requests submission form that had previously been a standalone app.

Additionally, we built a comprehensive members-only site for internal content needs, complete with varying user roles and levels, full multi-lingual capabilities, and plenty of room for engagement.

For organizations in transition, a strong and accessible website foundation can be a major asset in moving into the future. Now, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet now have an amazing tool that can grow and change with them.

View Site

Screenshot of website homepage. — The final website showcases the extended palette, rounded design elements, and dynamic feeds full of useful information.

Screenshot of menu navigation showing dropdown menu — Navigation, like this main menu drop-down, is super-clear and helpful.

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Site navigation

We crafted the perfect site navigation to help site visitors find their way. With a clear main menu, helpful sidebar sectional menus, and breadcrumbs throughout, users won’t ever feel lost.

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Location pages

As part of our bigger, comprehensive website build for the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, one of the challenges became handling their different locations. It was important to highlight each location individually and as part of the congregation as a whole.

We solved this by creating individual location hubs. Each of the CSJ Carondelet locations got their own “home page” within the site. This page can gather all of the relevant information related to the location, including recent posts, upcoming events, and information. (And our previous site architecture work of categories and tags makes sure these pages can update dynamically with no additional work by the communications team!) Finally, a special info box clearly links to the location’s address, primary website, and social media pages.

Screenshot of St. Louis page on the website — This screenshot shows the hub for the St. Louis location, with a location-specific sectional menu and infobox. Further down the page are dynamic feeds of recent St. Louis-related content and events.

“We needed to build a new website that will work into an unknown future involving a lot more collaboration within our organization. Blustery Day took on that challenge and more than just building a website framework, they also helped us clarify our goals and messaging. Together we created something that our congregation can grow into.”
Kim Westerman
Communications Director, Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet