Archive for October, 2006
5 Reasons Websites Don't Work: Part 5
Posted by: | CommentsLack of Planning
Many web-sites are unsuccessful due to a lack of planning. This goes back to the question in the functionality section – What is the purpose or function of your web-site? Is it to provide your audience with a wonderful experience, to generate sales leads, show pictures of your Chinese Pug, or build your organization’s brand? How will you determine if your on-line venture is a success? What are the goals you want to achieve? Do you have all of your ducks in a row to start? Thinking out the process takes time but it will prepare you and keep you from making unnecessary mistakes in the future. Failure to plan is planning to fail.
You must have a road map and plan of where you want to go before you can get there.
Thinking through and implementing these five posted suggestions will greatly help you to stay on track when developing a website and increase the chances for a successful outcome.
5 Reasons Websites Don't Work: Part 4
Posted by: | CommentsToo Much Fluff
So many people try to say so many things in a day and age where nobody has the time to stop and listen. Websites that fill up space with needless information and useless hyperbole are just wasting time…theirs and ours. Include information that benefits your audience and that helps them to make the decision to choose your church, product, or service over others. Don’t bog people down with long content when you can keep it short and sweet. This advice also applies to ALL of your marketing materials – no fluff just the important stuff!
Give them short and sweet information that draws them in and makes them want to come back for more!
5 Reasons Websites Don't Work: Part 3
Posted by: | CommentsDesign and Layout
Have you ever gone to a web-site and been so overwhelmed by the hodge-podge of information or graphics on a homepage that it just makes your head spin? The result is usually a rapid exit. Unfortunately 90% of the web-sites on the Internet fall in this category. Many websites are designed absolutely horribly! The days of letting Johnnie’s cousin who knows Web Design Pro 3000 are over…unless you want to turn people off.
Here are a couple of thoughts:
- Hire a professional designer that knows how to build and design great websites. I have heard the quote, “you can pay now or you can pay later, but either way you’re going to pay!” Pay the money upfront to hire a professional or you may pay later by losing your audience.
- Keep your website simple. Don’t overwhelm your visitor with so much information or flashing graphics that it confuses them. While newspapers are decreasing in readership they do have proven layouts of how people like to read. Follow their example.
Ineffective design and layout for any web-site kills sales, usage, retention, functionality, and any hopes of connecting with your audience!
5 Reasons Websites Don't Work: Part 2
Posted by: | CommentsNot Functional
I have visited thousands of web-sites that provide no function other than frustration to the viewer. Some examples of this are broken or non-working links, wading through 200 pages to get contact information, not having relevant information listed, excessive use of Flash files and intros, files that are a gazillion megabytes, and so on. What is the function of your web-site? Is it to give timely information, make a sale, to draw people in, or to merely entertain? Will it work for its intended purpose? These questions must be answered! It is very important to test and retest your website to ensure it is functioning properly. And please remember that your potential visitor must always be kept in mind when developing a site.
Developing a focused and functional website is absolutely essential for success!
On Blogging Goals and Strategies for Pastors
Posted by: | Comments[ Read all the posts in the Blogging 101 for Pastors series here. ]
OK, here’s a big, hairy question for prospective blogging pastors:
What is your goal for your blog site?
What do you hope to accomplish through it?
- Do you want to use it as an internal communication tool with your congregation?
- Do you hope to reach those in your community with the Gospel?
- Do you want to share the ideas and experiences from your ministry with others in ministry?
- Do you want to just use it as a spiritual journal?
[All these are pretty good reasons to blog in my opinion.]
But again, I ask … what is your goal or goals in blogging?
This is a really important question. You know this already. It is important to have goals and objectives for the things you do. It’s a part of stewardship or management of God’s resources, which includes your life and blog, right?
And the answer to that question will greatly affect your blog site. [Duh!]
The reason I’m pointing you back to this question is because it affects your blogging strategy. It affects how you write, what bells and whistles you include on your site, the amount of time you put into it … it affects a lot of things.
For instance, if you want to equip your people and facilitate better communication, you’ll want to use your blog like National Community Church does with their Gathering Zone blog site. An EXCELLENT, rockin’ use of blog technology!
I think some people do it because they’re awesome writers and if they don’t write, they’ll explode and waste their God-given talent. That push-button publishing thing (aka blogs) is a like a writer’s heaven on earth!
Or if you want to have a forum for your ideas, make a little money to pay off your student loans, and in the process try to help pastors and churches, you might be a crazy lunatic and start a church communications site!
Other guys want to show History being made.
Whatever you do … have an objective for your blog. It keeps you on the right track.
Now … on to strategies.
For example, here are some of my strategies that support my goals for this site:
- The email newsletter — Almost every post contains this tagline: “If you enjoyed this post, Subscribe to Cory Miller’s Church Communications Pro email newsletter.” [Thanks, Darren, for that great insight!] Why do I include this tagline? Because I want this blog to be sticky and I want you to return. And the way I want to help you do that is through advanced posts and other special offers with my email newsletter. I even try to entice you to subscribe by offering a free stuff for downloading. Plus, unlike my site feed where you check it, I’m not relying on you to come back, but I’m making the effort to invite you back.
- The feed — I’ve been blogging quite a bit lately. And because I’ve blogged so much, there’s a danger that all my blog posts could easily get buried in my site’s archives (master story list here) and you would miss them probably. The way to combat that is by getting you to subscribe to my blog via this fancy button
. Then you can surf the headlines easily. Your feedreader will tell you how many new posts have been uploaded. I’ve said this over and over, but it’s the best way to keep track of a lot of blogs (right now, I’m tracking about 30 through Bloglines.)
- I teach — I try to do a lot of teaching here. I try to offer simple ways to do things … for instance, if you’ll remember, I tried real hard and even mentioned kitties to get you to do that. Teaching is at the heart of who I am anyway. I am a learner. And if I don’t share what I’m learning it’ll just benefit me and not the Kingdom. Thus, I teach.
- I want to earn a little money for my time — So I offer the CCP bookstore through Amazon and Web site hosting and domain name registration.
- I promote other bloggers and their Web sites (see sidebar links) — Why? Because I believe in using this technology for ministry, for the church, for the Gospel, for Christ. And I’m ALL about promoting the work and efforts of others who love Jesus.
- I try to write good, quality content that helps others — Ask the Search Engine Optimization experts and they’ll tell you even if you get people coming to your site, if you don’t have good content, they’ll just keep driving past and won’t return. Write super-duper, sticky content. The kind of content that people link to, talk about, email about, are searching for, and adore. I try to write content like that here.
- I tweak and tinker and fiddle with my site — a lot! Probably about three times a week I mess with my template and side links. This site has gone through probably a thousand changes and refinements since it was born in July 2006. And it’ll always be an evolving thing. [Ain't blogging awesome?!] I find out what works and do more of it. I find out what doesn’t and kill it off.
Knowing all this, it’s relatively easy to design this site because my goals, objectives and strategies are clear to me. It’s about designing persuasive Web sites that accomplish your goals.
Get it?
Good. 
Get a goal. Have a strategy. Refine it constantly. And make a difference.
[ Read all the posts in the Blogging 101 for Pastors series here. ]
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