Con-Solatio
Website redesign for a Catholic missionary organization — from IA to WordPress implementation
Overview
Con-Solatio is a Catholic missionary organization based in Brooklyn. About a year before this project, I redesigned their logo and established their brand colors — work that seeded both the visual direction and the relationship that brought me back for the site.
The site needed to do three things: communicate the mission clearly, give prospective missionaries everything they need to take the next step, and make donating or sponsoring easy.
Discovery & Workshop
I ran a working session with the leadership team — open discussion into sticky notes, screenshots, and affinity mapping. Three audiences emerged: prospective missionaries, sponsors, and donors, each with distinct paths and needs.
A recurring theme: prospective missionaries were underserved. The old site scattered formation info, application steps, and missionary life content across multiple pages with no clear path and buried calls to action. Key structural decisions: consolidate giving pages, absorb the standalone domestic program page, and unify media and blog under Stories.
Information Architecture
From the workshop I sketched a site map, reviewed it with the team, and we locked direction. The sprawling nav collapsed into four clear sections:
Home · Mission Program · About · Give · Contact
Mission Program Page
The centerpiece of the redesign. Rather than scattering missionary-related content across the site, everything a prospective missionary needs lives in one well-sequenced page:
- Pillars — the three values that define life on mission
- The Invitation — a direct, human appeal to give a year to Christ
- Meet Our Missionaries — real profiles from the field, linking to individual pages
- Stories from the Field — blog, testimonials, and their published book
- Where We Serve — 18 countries, visualized on a world map
- Ongoing Formation — what preparation, support, and re-entry look like
- Application Process — a clear five-step sequence from first contact to acceptance
- Upcoming Dates — live events pulled dynamically, so the page always stays current
- FAQs — practical answers to the questions that would otherwise stall a decision
Calls to action appear at multiple points throughout — not just at the bottom. A prospective missionary who arrives ready to apply can act immediately; one who needs more context has a full picture before they ever have to contact anyone.
One mid-project addition: a dedicated contact form for prospective missionaries, separate from the general contact page. A generic form wasn't the right entry point for someone discerning going on mission.
Design & Implementation
The redesign extended the logo and brand colors from the prior engagement into a cohesive web presence. I implemented it directly in WordPress, customizing the theme in HTML and CSS alongside the client team.
Outcomes
"Take a moment to explore our newly updated website! We are grateful to our friend and benefactor, Eduardo Crespo, for his generosity, time, and expertise that made it possible."
— Con-Solatio Newsletter, 2025
Supporters consistently described the new site as "clean and smooth" — the clearest sign the reduced noise and sharper hierarchy landed.
Reflection
The prior logo work mattered more than I expected. By the time we started the site, there was already a foundation of trust — and I understood the organization well enough to make decisions that felt true to it. The missionary contact form wasn't in the original brief. It came from listening closely during the workshop.