A website worthy of the building
The Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King is England's largest Catholic cathedral, a Grade I listed landmark shaped by prayer, music and community, welcoming visitors from all over the world every day.
Its website wasn't doing the building justice. The old site was hard to navigate, and with in-person visitor numbers and donations both key priorities, that was a real problem. The Cathedral wanted a site as impressive and welcoming as the building itself.
We refined the brand, rebuilt the site on WordPress, and set up a retainer to keep developing it after launch.
Designing for the visitor first
Most cathedral websites speak first to their congregation. We took a different view. Regular worshippers already know the Cathedral and what it offers, so the people the website could help most were the ones who didn't: the tourists and visitors discovering it for the first time. We made them the primary audience, with service-goers and corporate event bookers close behind, and designed every journey around helping a first-time visitor find their way in.
A refined identity
Brand refinement sat at the heart of the project. The Cathedral had an existing logo we wanted to keep, so rather than replace it, we built around it. We paired it with a simple, bold typeface that gives the brand presence without competing with the mark, and refined the palette around a warm sandstone beige drawn from the building itself. The result feels considered and contemporary, while still unmistakably the Cathedral.
A device drawn from the building
The Cathedral's architecture is unmistakable: sharp angles, concrete ribs and the bold diagonal grids of its stained glass. We drew a graphic device straight from those lines, taking the angles of the windows and the building and turning them into a flexible visual motif that runs across the site. It ties the digital experience back to the place itself, so the brand always feels rooted in the building it represents.
Built to explore
The old site was difficult to navigate, which is a problem when your aim is to bring people in. We rebuilt it on WordPress with a completely reworked structure and navigation, image-led throughout, so a visitor can quickly find what they need, whether that's opening times, a tour, a service or the history of the building.
Made for mobile
Mobile mattered more than usual here. A large share of the Cathedral's visitors reach the site on a phone, often while planning a trip or standing outside the doors, so we treated mobile as a priority rather than an afterthought, and we keep refining that experience as we learn how people use it.
What's on
The What's On section brings the Cathedral's calendar into one place, from exhibitions and concerts to services, in a format visitors can browse easily. Each event has its own page with the detail people need and an add-to-calendar button so they can save it in a tap. A "Today in the Cathedral" schedule on the homepage shows what's happening right now, giving people an at-a-glance reason to step inside.
Supporting the Cathedral
It costs £4,000 a day to run the Cathedral, so making it easy to give was a priority. Donation prompts are built in throughout the site, linking to the Cathedral's online giving, alongside clear in-person options.
Built for the team to run
The Cathedral team populates and updates the site themselves, so it had to be genuinely easy to use. We built flexible content blocks that hold their shape whatever goes in, and produced a content plan that guided the team through what each page needed and why, training them from a user's point of view so the site stays clear and consistent as it grows. We didn't write the launch copy, but we're reviewing and improving it together on retainer.
A partnership that continues
The work continues beyond launch. We're reviewing the site's content to sharpen how it reads, expanding the contact forms into something more tailored to different enquiries, and improving the mobile experience as we go. Venue hire is next in line, ready to be built up as a priority when we review it. The Cathedral's site keeps getting better long after go-live.
A stronger digital experience
The new website has changed how people interact with Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral online. In the first 30 days after launch, visitors explored more of the site, spent longer on the homepage and were far less likely to leave without engaging.
Compared with the 30 days before launch, the figures show a clear improvement in how people are using the site and connecting with its content.
We at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral are really happy with the website Stride have created for us. From the outset, their communication was excellent and they took the time to understand our vision. The final result reflects exactly what we were hoping for. They were quick, responsive, and a pleasure to work with throughout the process. We would highly recommend them.
Emily Potts Marketing and Communications Officer
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