Earlier this year I came across two different articles:

1. Top 10 Features of an Effective Church Website by Lauren Hunter in Church Solutions magazine (Thanks Cory Miller!)
2. 10 Things an Effective Church Website Can Do For You by Mean Dean at Heal Your Church Website

These got me thinking...what is the connection between the features of an effective church website and how they can be used to make the site more effective.  Well, I decided to try to combine these lists to observe how website features can be used to make the site more effective:

• Dynamic Content
  • Save On Printing and Postage - If we no longer have to produce as many physical copies of the announcements and other paperwork used by our church, we can help save it money.
  • Communicate Across Boundaries - Dynamic content also helps to make our church website more visible to search engines, which will make the church more visible to...
  • Reach New Residents
  • Convert Seekers - Let your site be a dialogue of faith instead of a pamphlet for the church.
• Online Donations
  • Save On Printing and Postage - Reduce the need for checks and tithing envelopes!
• Online Calendars
  • Reduce Staff Support Loads - Make your scheduling easier to maintain and all kept in one place.
  • Build the Body Online - Keep everyone on the same page!
  • Save On Printing and Postage (again) - No need to print a new calendar each week to keep up with changing events.
  • Maximize Press and Ad Campaigns - Put everything in a central place that is easy to peruse.
• Event Registrations & Payments
  • Reduce Staff Support Loads - Allow people to take care of these tasks on their own when it's convenient for them.
  • Maximize Press and Ad Campaigns - Take advantage of the impulse buy since they can take care of it right where they are instead of depending on someone to make the venture to your church to take care of the same tasks.
• Online Ticketing
  • Support Lay Ministries - Instead of having someone be physically present to sell tickets, let them simply check on requests when they have time.
  • Gauge Relevant Interests - Quickly know how well your special event is being received.
• Volunteer Ministries
  • Support Lay Ministries - Allow a place for these ministries to congregate online instead of depending on physical meetings.
  • Build the Body Online - Present people with the opportunities available!
• Small Groups
  • Communicate Across Boundaries - Your small group could be people from all over the globe, or just people unable to make a session due to travel.
  • Gauge Relative Interests - Are your small groups too small or not small enough?
• E-newsletters
  • Save On Printing and Postage - Since there won't be any more!
  • Minimize Dead Ends - Help keep everyone more aware of what is going on in a more timely manner.
• Member-Only Areas
  • Reduce Staff Support Loads - Allow members to maintain their own contact information online.
• Blogs, Podcasts and More
  • Reach New Residents - Provide church seekers a venue to learn some more about your church without actually having to walk in the door.
  • Convert Seekers - Again, blogs and podcasts help to generate a dialogue, which allows seekers to find out more about their faith.

As you can see, different features can help with multiple functions.  So if you're looking at adding some new features, try to figure out which ones will benefit your church the most and prioritize them accordingly. 

With everything my family and I been dealing with regarding my mother the past few weeks, I've spent a lot of time sending out prayer requests and e-mails, as well as time on the phone, to keep everyone up to date. Normally, I'm not a big prayer request kind of person (I may ask friends to pray for certain things, but not too many "public" requests), so this experience has made me think more about the process of receiving and distriuting prayer requests.

In my church, we have a special e-mail address for incoming prayer requests that one volunteer checks, and then they send out requests to a distribution list for the congregation. It works fairly well, but does involve some manual intervention to get the requests out. If that volunteer forgets, a prayer request may not go out soon enough.

So, I guess I've had the following thoughts and questions regarding prayer requests:

• How does your church handle prayer requests?
• What's the most effective way to reach a large percentage of your congregation in a short amount of time? Typical options include e-mails, a website announcement and phone-chains.
• Should someone moderate/filter prayer requests (so that requests like "I just burned my toast and I know it's going to be a long day because of it, so please pray for me today" don't need get through), do you just let everything through, or do you trust your members to use their best judgement?
• Would you feel comforable having your prayer requests posted in a church forum or on the website for all to see, or do you keep them to an "inner circle"?
• I think that if prayer requests are very public, some people may be less likely to ask for prayer because they are more private people.
• However, this greater transparency allows congregation members to get to know one another (strengths and weaknesses) at a deeper level, which should be good for the church as a whole.

I'd be interested to hear from you all on this subject if you have the time...

I got an e-mail a recently from Justin Carboneau who runs a site called ShareMyTestimony.org, which gives people a place to "share their temoimony about how they came to have faith in Christ". What's very nice about their site is that they offer a customizable widget that you can place on your site.

So, on your church website, you could place this widget somewhere to allow congregation members to share their testimonies with each other and the world. They only have to put up as much information as they feel comfortable (and aliases can be used instead of real names),so it's not a security risk either. The "Report as Inappropriate" feature is also nice in case the feature is abused as well.

What's nice about it is that it get's people involved and invested in the church website when they get to share a bit of themselves. While giving a visitor some insert into the makeup of the congregation, it also alows members to get to know one another on a deeper level. Very useful and powerful stuff!

Kudos to Justin, for putting together such a convenient and useful widget. This is a great way to start getting that community feel into your church website if you haven't already.

And if you'd like to know a little more about Justin, here is his testimony!

You've probably been down the road before, trying to get your pastor to contribute to the church website. However, you've probably gotten the typical response that they're either not comfortable with computers/technology, they don't have the time, or they'd rather "leave it to those who know what they're doing". Most of these variations mean about the same thing: they just really don't see the benefit that could come from it. The irony is that we're working to make more community-based websites that get people involved and talking, and we can't get the church leaders to be a part of it.

However, there are a few pastors that are bucking the trent, like Gary Lamb and Scott Aughtmon, and they're doing it in different ways. Gary's writing has all the energy you'd find in a 6-year-old who just ate a one-pound bag of sugar, and his passion and excitement for the Lord just leap from the pages of his blog. Scott shares random thoughts on things both in the church and in the world that give you a view of his personal interests, but then scatters in "heavy" entries where he really digs deeper into how we live our lives or persue Christ. Both are on my regular reading list, and, even though I live nowhere near their churches, I like keeping up with their writings.

Hypothetically, let's say I just moved down to the Canton, Georgia area, and was looking for a church. And let's say that I did not read or come across Gary's blog because he didn't have one. Then, I might come across the website for Ridge Stone Church, and see their contemporary style and make a visit eventually...at least put it on my list. Or I might not, if I wanted a church with a permanent home, and not one that met in a movie theatre.

Now, let's say I moved down there and again was looking for a church. While looking through church websites, I come across Ridge Stone, leading to Gary's blog. If I liked Gary's high-energy approach, I'd probably put Ridge Stone as one of the first, if not the first, church to check out in the area. However, if I found Gary's exuberance overwhelming, I might cross it off my list.

I want to be clear that there is nothing wrong if some people cross your church off their list. If you're a contemplative and somber individual, you probably wounldn't appreciate Gary's approach very much. That's not saying anything bad about Gary, but as people, we're typically searching for a place where we're most comfortable. And that's comfortable as in "I like it here, where I can make friends with people similar to me, and I want to get involved", not comfortable as in "well, this church won't make me deal with my sins, so that makes things easier". And finding that good fit benefits the church, the congregation and the individuals.

While our church websites can give a lot of basic information about our church and it's approaches (traditional or contemporary, youth or adult focused, key values, etc.), it typically doesn't give you a good impression of the people that make up the church. However, the addition of a pastor's blog (either as a part of the site, or on another service, like Gary and Scott use) can provide insight about the people who make up the church, from the pastor himself directly, to the members of the congregation in the way he referrs to them. It's a personal glimpse into a place that you've never set foot in, and for many people that may be enough to make them comfortable to walk into a building full of strangers.

So, take the time to sit down with your pastor and show them the examples above (or any other pastor blogs that my be more in line with your church's approaches...they're out there if you look for them), and explain the benefits that such a blog can provide. Chances are, once they see the benefit and figure out what they're doing, you're going to have to pry them away from their keyboards.

Today I've got a question on my mind:

What Do Your Wish Your Church Website Could Do?

We've spent a lot of the last year or so discussing what should and shouldn't be done with your church website, but I've been wondering lately what some of you would include if you could. I'd like to hear from you whether you do work directly on your church's site, or if you've just been visiting your church's website and found something lacking. Also, it can be anything; from something more complex, such as secure online tithing, to something that you may have seen on another site, like a church photo album or a message board.

For me, I'd love to be able to offer secure online tithing on my church's site (hence the example) because it's more convenient. My wife and I barely use our checks because we pay most of our bills either online or by AutoPay scheduling. Right now, from time to time we forget the checkbook at home on a Sunday, so if we could pay our church tithe online, then we could still pay it instead of having to wait a week. Plus, the church would get the money immediately, instead of having to wait until the next bank run by the treasurer.

Now it's your turn! What other features would you like to see on your church's website?

I have to thank Frank Johnson over at Strategic Digital Outreach for pointing me in the direction of an article from Gadgetopia entitled What Content Management Won't Do. As you've probably read before, I'm a semi-advocate of the CMS. I am strongly in favor of the ease of use and plug-in capabilities of most CMS software, but then there is the problem of cookie cutter websites where they can all begin to look the same.

The above article also lists some other potential pitfalls of CMS, and it could have easily been titled Content Management Won't Save You From Yourself. It points out that a CMS cannot write for you, edit for you, format your text, prevent you from writing something, or force you to update your site. These human errors are outside the realm of Content Management, so they must be addressed by other means, such as human editors, screening processes, or some other management structure to make sure only appropriate content appears on your website.

Like the name suggests, a CMS simply manages content. Controlling what that content consists of is up to you.

Last year, I wrote an article about the problems of making too much information available on your church web site. It all still applies today, but one safeguard I failed to include is the idea of a Photo Policy.

What brought this to mind was the Worthington Christian Church Photograph Policy, which is an exellent policy for the presentation of photos on it's website. It's clear, specific, and isn't filled with "lawyer speak" (though there is a touch of it):

Worthington Christian Church Respects Your Right to Privacy

All photos used on the site are property of Worthington Christian Church unless otherwise noted. Professional photos are used only with written permission from the copyright holder. All other photos were taken by, and belong to, Worthington Christian Church.

Including the images of our church family on our website can be a great way to motivate and encourage individuals to become more involved. It is also an excellent outreach tool to the visitor who may be curious about what our events and activities are like. It is for these reasons that we feature personal photographs on the Worthington Christian Church website.

However, we realize the importance of maintaining the privacy of the individual(s) pictured on this site. To this end, the Worthington Christian Church website ensures:

• The last name of a pictured individual is never published alongside a photograph
• Anyone listed as a contact will be an adult (21-years-old or older)
• No identifying information will be posted on the internet (see our privacy policy)
• In the case of a group photo, first names may be mentioned, but we will not disclose which individuals are standing where in said photo

Worthington Christian Church reserves the right to amend this policy at any time.

Questions or concerns regarding this policy should be addressed to the site webmaster or site maintainer.

Excellent work there guys! I'd encourage anyone who was looking to develop a similar policy on their site (and if you're not looking to and using photos on your site, you should probably look into it) to take a look at this one as a template for doing so, and then enforce that policy across your site. It'll be worth your time, will help to protect the members of your congregation, and it shows a professional approach to your church website when you have your act together as well as they do there in Worthington, OH.

 

Piggybacking on my last post, I wanted to spend a little time looking at some other ways that we can cause our church website to be less effective. After all, it's better that we learn from the mistakes of others than have to make them all ourselves.

• Full Frontal Assault - Also known as overwhelming your visitors with information on your homepage. We need to make sure that we plan our site layouts not only in terms of where information appears on a page, but hierarchically (where links to more detailed information are located and lead to). Sometimes we need to ask ourselves if everything really needs to go on the first page, or can it be better placed elsewhere.
• Hide & Seek - We need to make sure that information is not only available, but easily and logically reachable. If they can't get to key information in 2-3 clicks, then your visitors may just stop trying.
• A Little Bit Of Everything - I know we all like to think of our church websites as important (and they are), but sometimes we lose site of how important they are in peoples' daily lives. I've seen a few webmasters try to make their websites a portal/startpage with local weather reports, sports scores and news headlines on their homepage. While it works for a general audience, like Yahoo, there's a very good chance that those aren't the things that most visitors to your church website are looking for.
• Now That's Flashy - Don't get me wrong, Flash and Javascript functionality can help make a website very inviting. However, let's not forget that not everyone has Flash installed, nor does everyone have Javascript enabled. Make sure your website is still useable to these folks. And you'll need to check it yourself, because it's highly unlikely that they'll let you know they had trouble with your site.

As always, there's lots to consider when working on our church websites. When working, try to get feedback from a range of people, including other webmasters and general web users. Chances are, if you ask their opinion, they'll be more than happy to share it.

Most of the time here at IJHAW, we spend our time examining how we can make our web sites more effective. However, there are things we can do which, despite all the bells and whistles we can add, can make a church website completely useless. Pardon my tongu-in-cheek humor.

• Don't Post Your Service Times - After all, why would anyone want to know when the service started?
• Don't Post Your Location/Address - This is especially ineffective for churches that do not have their own buildings.
• Don't Post Any Contact Information - If they really want to get a hold of you, they can just use the phone book, right? No chance they'd just move on to the next church website.
• Use A "My First Website" Design - No, this doesn't make it look like we're not even trying, or that we're completely behind the times.
• Write About What Your Church Won't Stand For - Nothing oozes love like singling out all the things your church hates.
• Have Broken Links - Because people can just look at the Status Bar and figure out where the link was supposed to go.
• Have Music Playing In The Background - If they don't like the same music you do, then you don't want them at your church anyway.
• Don't Keep Your Website Content Up-to-Date - Surely, visitors will realize that you just don't have the time to get them information.
• Don't Even Bother Having A Website - We like our members like we like our Senators, over 30!

Remember all the little things that you look for in a website when putting your site together. While the above list was meant to be funny, I have seen real cases of each! Making sure you take care of all the details will help to ensure that your website is a more effective tool for your church.

Back in May, I wrote an article on Utilization as part of my Key Site Concepts series, and while I am still a big proponent of taking advantages of services provided by other sites, I learned a rough lesson this week.

I maintain a personal blog called Further Up and Further In (it's a Chronicles of Narnia reference from The Last Battle in case you were interested). One of the features I have on there is my weekly "most listened" lists for my music. These lists are populated by XML documents provided by Last.FM, and this week they did a major upgrade of their systems and services.

And guess what happened? There was an error with one of the XML documents, and my script that was carefully crafted around them choked. Since I did not build in any way to catch such an exception (nor had I needed one in nearly six months), my site came to a screeching halt when it tried to read from the XML. After more than two days with my blog out of commission (I would have fixed it sooner, but I was busy with work and helping a friend move), Last.FM fixed the XML and my site was back in business.

However, it made me realize the cascading nature of errors when it comes to utilizing the services of those sites. If that service goes down, so does everything that uses it. Because of this, we should always try to build our sites to deal with these failures if at all possible. If you're using a maps service for your church's website, make sure your site can have a map image (or at least just load without the map) if that service goes down or makes an upgrade where the service location changes.

If there's anything worse than out-of-date websites, it's broken websites. Don't let what happened to me happen to you too!