We’re back with another WDW and apologize for the missed showcase last week. Two weeks ago we featured Okapi Studio for their great design which touches on many web trends. This week we have another WDW for you, showcasing Watermelon Ministries and the concepts and trends they’ve incorporated into their site.
To start the analysis, we’ll look at the homepage. Upon load you’re immediately hit with a graphical header blending itself into the background color, which is something I personally love. 
This provides a really outstanding look from the start, and ultimately leads the user down the page. The interactive main navigation is also a great feature of the header, bringing further engagement of the user. One thing I would personally like to see is a bit of a larger logo, but the current design is by no means in a state of mandatory upgrade.
As you scroll down the page, you’ll find a four-section slider featuring various parts of the Watermelon Ministry site. Continuing down the page, you get a sneak peak of a few blog entries and a couple calls to action. These CTA’s, Get Involved (Both Creatively or Financially) and the SeedPlanter’s Digest Newsletter signup, are graphically treated, bringing a further element of enticement, engagement and hopefully interaction resulting in the user’s pursuit of knowledge by clicking these calls to action. There is also a fairly large footer at the bottom of the page, which I love, bringing iconography to their Get in Touch section, a quick view and link to the About Us section of the site, and a graphically treated quick view and link to another internal page, The Journey.
With such an extensive, but proper, hompeage, rather than diving into a complete site-wide review, let’s look at three pages, which certainly encompass the site’s offerings as a whole. First, lets go to the What We Do page, a child page of Services. What We Do is graphically treated, which is well suited, as Watermelon Ministries seems to be a fairly media-savvy non-profit. As you scroll down the page you come across a graphical table, which contains highlighter-esque emphasis points describing who Watermelon Ministries is, and how they differ from other non-profits. Continuing down, you’re taken to an infographic revealing their seven-step creative process.
Moving to the portfolio page, you’ll find something relatively rare in showcasing work: a small portfolio. Whether this is based on either design structure or a limited portfolio, it works for them. The page itself is incredibly handy, providing a fairly large example of the specific work, a description of the project, the client’s name, the launch date, and a link to the live project. Seems like they’ve covered the bases, even with such a small portfolio.
Lastly, let’s look at the “Stories” page, which is Watermelon Ministries’ blog. The thing I like most about this page is that it incorporates everything the non-profit has to offer for someone else. Well written blog posts, an attractive layout, bringing along recent stories to the right side bar, and great photography. Blogs are a great way to not only connect with your audience, fans, family, etc. – but also to show potential clients what you’re capable of. If someone offers “outstanding web services, ” or “the best in the state,” like a few claims I’ve recently seen, and their own website looks terrible, it doesn’t say much about the quality of their services. I found it refreshing to see that Watermelon Ministries hadn’t overly gloated about their offerings, but rather displayed, rather than told, what they can do.
Hats off to Watermelon Ministries, and good luck! Thanks for our second WDW!
