A proposed mobile app for the Murugan Temple of St. Louis Prepared for temple leadership · Sources reviewed September 2026
Every app screen in the accompanying deck is a conceptual design. No app exists, nothing has been purchased, and no vendor, payment provider or launch date has been chosen. This document asks for permission to investigate, not permission to build.
The temple's website already carries a great deal: the mission, a 2026 calendar, pooja and abhishekam bookings, several routes for giving, a volunteer sign-up and a live-stream page. What it cannot do is reach a devotee between visits. A focused mobile app would bring the schedule, services, sponsorships, giving, volunteering and timely updates into one place a family already carries — and would give volunteers a lighter way to run events. This is a complement to the website, not a replacement for it.
| What changes | |
|---|---|
| Personal | A devotee sees their own RSVPs, sponsorships and receipts, rather than everything at once. |
| Timely | A notification reaches the family who would otherwise miss a time change or a closure. A web page only helps someone who thinks to open it. |
| Fast | Directions, add-to-calendar, watch live and show-my-pass become single taps. |
| Current | Open or closed, today's programme, crowd and parking are accurate at the moment somebody asks. |
Confirmed from the temple's own website: the live page asks devotees to bookmark it and check back, so nothing tells a family a stream has started; attendance, abhishekam sponsorship and donations all move through the same store and cart; the calendar, digital calendar and cultural events sit on separate pages; volunteer sign-up is an embedded form unconnected to any event; and opening hours are not published on the site.
Not confirmed — proposed as hypotheses for discovery: that staff spend meaningful time answering the same questions; that there is no fast way to reach families about a change; and that volunteer coordination outside the event listing creates real workload. These are labelled as hypotheses throughout the deck rather than presented as findings.
Home with hours and status · events and family RSVP · reminders and change alerts · a manually updated crowd status · QR and name-based check-in · volunteer sign-up attached to each event · entry points for donation and sponsorship.
Deliberately left for later: automatic crowd counting, Wallet passes and widgets, in-app payments if the temple prefers its existing route, multi-language until confirmed, streaming built into the app, and anything requiring a new vendor.
Four states — Quiet, Moderate, Busy, At Capacity — each carrying a word and an icon, never colour alone. The screen shows when the status was last updated, gives a wait estimate only when one is reliable, and states plainly that the figure is an estimate entered by staff. In a first version a volunteer taps one of four buttons. Later, RSVP and QR check-in data could inform it. An anonymous entrance counter would only ever be considered after validation. There is no continuous location tracking at any stage.
These must never share a single checkout.
Every action in the app has a route that is not the app: telephone the office, or ask a volunteer at the desk. A volunteer can add an RSVP on a family's behalf and find that family by name without a code. Type is large, contrast is strong, tap targets are big, and status is never conveyed by colour alone.
A short discovery phase, a clickable prototype, then a limited pilot on one recurring pooja and one major festival — the first to see whether a habit forms, the second to see whether the app holds up under crowd, parking and check-in pressure.
The pilot would measure RSVP completion, attendance against RSVP, notification opt-in, reminder engagement, crowd-meter use, check-in success, volunteer participation, donation completion, reduction in repeat inquiries, administrative time saved and devotee satisfaction. No numerical targets are proposed — the pilot establishes the baseline.
Duration and cost are estimated after discovery, not before. Known cost drivers: the number of integrations required, whether payments run through the existing store or a new route, the volume of content to migrate, and the ongoing volunteer time needed to keep the app current.
Approval for a discovery phase, interviews, validation of temple policies and constraints, a clickable prototype, and a limited pilot. Not a production build, a budget commitment, a vendor or payment selection, or a launch date.
All temple pages reviewed September 2026.
| Topic | Source |
|---|---|
| Home and mission | murugantempleofstlouis.org · /our-mission |
| Services and pooja events | murugantempleofstlouis.org/store |
| Abhishekam sponsorship | /store?model_number=Annualabhishekam · /store?model_number=monthlyabishekam |
| Priest information | murugantempleofstlouis.org/priest |
| Temple calendar | murugantempleofstlouis.org/calendar |
| Digital calendar | murugantempleofstlouis.org/mts-digital-calendar |
| Cultural events | murugantempleofstlouis.org/upcoming-mts-cultural-event |
| Donations | /donation · /donate-stocks · /donor-list · /donor-upgrade-plan · /progression-plan-participants |
| Square-foot giving | /store/donate-one-square-feet · /store/square-feet-monthly-donation |
| Volunteer sign-up | murugantempleofstlouis.org/volunteer-sign-up |
| Live streaming | murugantempleofstlouis.org/mts-live |
| Youth programme | murugantempleofstlouis.org/youth-mayuram |
| Contact and location | murugantempleofstlouis.org/contact |
| Reference patterns | tirumala.org · ttdevasthanams.ap.gov.in · official TTD mobile app listing |
TTD material was used only as a reference for transferable patterns — service discovery, booking and confirmation, reporting instructions, donations, live content, visitor guidance, accessibility provisions and FAQs. Its scale, branding and operating model are not proposed here.
Note on imagery. No temple photograph, logo or devotional image has been reproduced anywhere in this package. All visuals are original, and the app screens use a restrained placeholder treatment in place of any temple asset.
Nothing below has been decided. Each item is a question for discovery.