Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Maria,
Having visited many church/ministry sites I would not say the organization looks confused or irrelevant.

Mostly I am looking for times of services (for a church) and statement of faith. Where I think some fall short is these things are hidden behind too much flash content.

Get the statement of faith up front. Get the mission statement upfront...and skip all the corporate lingo. People want a CLEAR statement of what a non-profit is doing.

Michael

I can't help much, but it sure looks as if you might beneft from the MarketingProfs webinar tomorrow, Thursday, Feb. 10, titled "Cure for the Common Website: Using Personas to Boost Site Performance."

https://www.marketingprofs.com/marketing/online-seminars/343?adref=adsem343

Here's what I would like to see on my church's website:

1. Your church is a community of believers, so be sure to present your church as PEOPLE, not an institution. Tell me who you are and what you do in the same way you would if you were talking to me. Warm, not cold.

2, Show me your FACES, and make it easy for me to contact you by email. (Yes, your church leaders will get spam, but that's the price of doing business on the web, I think.)

3, CHANGE your content every week, too -- just the way you change your church service every Sunday. (You don't sing the same songs and repeat the same sermon, do you?) New content gives me a reason to come back to your site, whether I'm a member or a prospective visitor. One pastor publishes his sermon on the site each week for those who visit.

4, Look at the discussion of RESTAURANT WEBSITES on the MarketingProfs Know-How Exchange, and learn from their mistakes. Many of those sites have spent big money to offer appetizing food photos and fancy background music -- but their customers complain that they come to find basic information on the site, like the restaurant's hours and its reservations policy.

In the same way, find out what your members want to USE on your site. Not the content that they think should be there, but what they themselves will actually USE. I'll bet one thing they'll want is a simple calendar of events and a listing of who to contact if you want to participate in the church supper or the choir. Focus on USE, USE, USE!

5, Again, please include PHOTOS of people and their NAMES. After I visit a church, I want to be able to identify people I've met -- the pastor, the music director, the education director, and so on. And if members are willing to be photographed and identified, too, then people considering a visit to your church will see that "hey, my neighbor goes there."

6. Finally, show me GOOD EXAMPLES of church websites from other cities and towns. Perhaps your regional church body can help you identify those exemplary sites.

But don't be afraid to show BAD EXAMPLES, too -- from other places, I hope. Not to ridicule, but to point out how sites can repel if they don't attract. I sometimes learn more when I see others' mistakes then when I see the "best examples."

You can't preach "open door," for example, and then refuse to give the email addresses of your pastor or other leaders. That's very cold. And creating a password-protected area of your site -- members only -- may make your members more comfortable posting photos and listings, but it will make newcomers feel very much like outsiders if there's an area of the website where they're not welcome.

Hope this helps!

Help them understand the importance of SEO and that a church or non-profit is like any business. They have to think like a marketer and get inside the minds of answering their audience's needs.

Three takeaways anyone with non-technical knowledge can implement together with their webmasters:

1. Put their city and or area in their home page title tag. For example, most people look to find a church by typing "cityname church" into a search engine. Make sure they have content on the home page with cities/areas they serve.

2. Cover the basics of local SEO: Claim their Google Places listing at https://places.google.com/business and using a service like Get Listed https://getlisted.org/.

3. No home pages with large image that take forever to download. This is a common issue for the "home-grown" look of websites by many non-profits. They have only a few seconds to capture their audience's attention, and speed matters. Throw away those big ugly photos.