Site Longevity: Putting It To Work

We've already identified design and useability as important factors in site longevity, but one of the other major areas we can look at to help increase the longevity of our sites is it's utility. Whereas useability refers to the ease of use, utility refers to what is available to use. It's also a factor that has two extremes that we need to be aware of when we put together or revamp a site.

The first extreme of utility is absence, meaning that there is nothing on the site that is useful to a visitor. While there are not many sites that fall into this category, there are some. For example, there are sites that put together sets of popular search keywords and then place tons of advertisements on the page. The idea of these pages is to deceive people to visit their pages in hopes that enough will click on the ads for them to make money. For the average visitor, these pages provide no utility at all.

In a church website example, a site that comes awfully close to absence is a page that just gives a picture of the church, a little blurb about the church, maybe a photo and paragraph about the pastor, and an address and phone number. While this kind of page does provide basic information about the church, it's overall utility to the average visitor is very low. It's likely that a visitor would not come back to the church's website because they can see that there isn't much of a chance of new information being available if they do return.

However, at the other extreme of utility is inundation, meaning that there are too many tools available for a user or community of users to make use of. Again, there are not many sites that fall into this category, but one example of a page that comes close is Netvibes. Nothing against Netvibes, since I make use of it as my browser's start page, but there are so many different modules available that many have little utility, are never found by users who may utilize them amongs all the features available, or they quickly become outdated as the Netvibes infrastructure gets upgraded.

Applying this to church websites, an inundation of utility may be as simple as adding forums to a church website. Now, in many cases, the addition of forums may be a great opportunity for communication and outreach, but in the case of a small church (around 30-50 members, and let's assume only 50-60% use the internet regularly) forums are likely to be vastly underutilized as there are just not the numbers of users available to maintain a healthy set of forums.

The overall lesson is that utilization is a balancing act. We want to avoid having a site that is devoid of useable features, while at the same time avoid providing too many features that go to waste. If we can find that midpoint that best fits our church website and situation, then we only have to worry about redoing the site as the church situation changes (growth, decline, technology usage, etc.), and that will help to increase our site's longevity.