The brief
The Crockford’s Clerical Directory is one of the Church of England’s flagship publications. First published in 1858, it contains biographies of over 25,000 UK Anglican clergy; details of English, Welsh and Irish benefices; churches and much more. The brief was to take the entire Directory online, incorporating a robust and marketable subscription model.
Our approach
The site’s appearance had to reflect the branding for Crockford and the Church of England, whilst also facilitating online subscription and powerful search facilities. The solution was a distinctive, strongly branded website with a very straightforward interface.
The Church of England's internal clergy database provides weekly data feeds to the website database. Baigent’s job was to transform that data into an accessible format with a user-friendly search engine. This demanded advanced ranking technology so that of the 25,000 names (plus 20,000 named benefices) users could quickly find the person they were seeking. Baigent’s intuitive search approach is based on user’s exact language – for example, a title ‘nickname’ or common phrase like “Archbishop of Canterbury”. Because simplicity was key, the interface was constructed so that users only need to complete a simple two step system to search the entire database.
The site provides initial search results to all users, but full clergy member biographies are available to subscribers only. Subscriptions (by credit card) and renewals are easily conducted online and the site automatically generates renewal reminders - substantially reducing staff time spent managing the subscription process.
The results
Up to 15,000 visits per month and over 1,800 subscribers: "... We expect online subscribers to outnumber book buyers within the next few years.” David Green, Electronic Publishing Manager, Church House Publishing. |
