Ocean Church
A website redesign I proposed for Ocean Church, an English-speaking international church in Oysterbay, Dar es Salaam. It answers what a newcomer asks first: when the services are, where the church meets, what a Sunday is like and who leads it.
Ocean Church meets every Sunday at the Little Theatre in Oysterbay, with four services in English. Its people are locals, expats, students and young families from all over the world.
I planned the redesign around one visitor: someone new to Dar es Salaam, checking on a phone on Saturday whether this is a church they could walk into the next morning.
The challenge
The redesign answers a newcomer’s questions in the order a newcomer asks them, and each answer leads to a page with more.
- 01Before any design, I studied the current site page by page, its 202 sermons, its media library and a year of the church’s Instagram posts.
- 02The answers a newcomer needs are on the current site, spread across several pages and pop-ups.
- 03The church’s media library holds 589 photographs larger than 2,000 pixels. The redesign puts them to use, so a newcomer can see what a Sunday looks like before they arrive.
When are the services, and where?
Answered byJoin us this Sunday. Four services, from 7:30 in the morning to 1:30 in the afternoon, at the Little Theatre in Oysterbay. The menu shows the same times, with a Directions button.
Will I fit in here?
Answered byWelcome home, the first heading on the page. It says who comes to Ocean and who is welcome, from people in Dar on a two-year contract to people who have lived there all their lives. Nine Sunday photographs follow it.
What happens on a Sunday, and what about my children?
Answered byPlan your visit, a page that sets out a first Sunday in five steps: parking, the welcome team at the door, checking children in at Ocean Kids, a 90-minute service in English, and a next step for people who are new. Ocean Kids has rooms for every age from six months to 13.
Can I hear a sermon before I come?
Answered byThe sermons page, with every message grouped by series and topic, and a search. Where a sermon has a video, it plays at the top of its page, with the written notes underneath.
The site map
The pages sit in four groups, so the pages a newcomer needs come first.
- 01Sunday: everything a first visit needs, with Plan your visit, the service times, the address and Next Generation for children and youth.
- 02Life in the week: connect groups, men’s and women’s ministry, prayer and serving.
- 03Pages that grow: sermons, series and events. Each new one takes its layout from a ready-made template.
- 04Seasons: campaigns with a start and an end, such as It’s Time and Summer Camp. They leave the menu by themselves once they are over.
Art direction
The church’s logo and its own font, Aeonik, stay as they are. The rest is built around them in gold, charcoal and white, with the church’s own photographs throughout.
ColourAntique gold, on charcoal and white.
I kept the church’s gold and softened it into an antique gold. A deeper shade is used for gold words on white, and a lighter shade for gold words on charcoal, so both are easy to read. The gold buttons have dark text.
TypeHeavy capitals, with one word in gold.
Headings such as WELCOME HOME and WHAT WE VALUE use heavy weights of Aeonik. The body text uses lighter weights of the same font. There are no italics and no script fonts on the site.
PhotographyReal Sundays, from the church’s own library.
The photographs come from the church’s own library: the welcome team at the door, the band, a baptism, friends laughing after the service. The home page alone uses more than 30 of them.
PatternWaves and the swirl, kept in the background.
A pattern of small arcs, like waves, sits behind the menu. The swirl from the logo appears faintly behind the pastor, and large in the footer.
IconsOne set of icons, in one line weight.
A calendar on Plan your visit, a pin on Directions, a play sign on the sermon buttons. All the icons share the same thin line, so they match the type.
MotionMovement that follows the scroll.
Headings rise into place, photographs settle as they come into view, and the six value cards stack on top of each other as you scroll. When a phone is set to reduce motion, these movements are turned off.
Copywriting
The church’s own words stay theirs: the vision, the six values and their Bible verses, the names, the times and the address. I rewrote the text around them in plain, warm English. Each page closes with one clear next step, such as Plan your visit or Get directions.
What changed
The logo, the font, the church’s words and its photographs stay. What changed is where things sit, and how quickly a newcomer finds them.
- 01The current menu shows About, Sermons, Give and Events, with more pages behind a menu button. The redesign has a full-screen menu with every page, a short line about each one, and this Sunday’s times beside them. Plan your visit stays in the header.
- 02In the current menu, Sermons opens a single sermon. The redesign adds a sermons page with every message, grouped by series and topic.
- 03On the current site, the service times are typed on more than one page. In the redesign, the times, the address and the children’s ages are typed once, in one place, and every page shows them from there.
- 04The current home page opens a pop-up for the It’s Time building campaign. In the redesign, It’s Time has a section on the home page, with the amounts to raise and pictures of the planned building, and a page of its own.
- 05Besides the opening film, the current home page shows one photograph. The home page of the redesign uses more than 30 of the church’s own.
- 06The current buttons say “Learn more”, “More info” or the name of a page. In the redesign, each button says what happens next: Plan your visit, Watch the sermon, Find a group, Pray with us.
The welcome section, on the current site and in the redesign.
The Sunday service times, on the current site and in the redesign.
Meet our pastor, on the current site and in the redesign.
The result
A newcomer can find the service times, the place, what a Sunday is like and who leads the church from the home page, then plan a first visit on one page.
- 01Built as a custom WordPress theme. Times, sermons and events are edited in simple fields, and each fact is typed once.
- 02On 19 October 2026, a check of 212 pages and 1,446 files found nothing broken.
- 03The design went through 18 versions. Two earlier directions were set aside before this one.
A full church website of 17 page layouts, planned around a newcomer’s first Sunday.
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