8 Web Site Design Q&A with Plain Joe Studios’ Bruce Erickson

Next up in the Building Rockin’ Church Web Sites series is Bruce Erickson, director of PlainJoe Studios.

He was gracious enough to send me his answers to my church Web site design questions. I found PlainJoe through some rockin’ church sites I stumbled upon.

Here’s his answers:

1. What’s your company’s mission?

Our companies mission is to help churches in three ways: Brand Development and management of print media so they effectively reach out to their church and community; we create great environments for worship, fellowship, and do so in very cost effective ways with value engineering of Environment Design; Web Design and Video to meet the specific needs of a particular church.

2. Can you give me some background on how you started doing church web sites?

Our founding president is brothers with the president of Visioneering Studios, and they started PlainJoe Studios about 5 years ago. Visioneering launched about four years ago. Our Director of Design had extensive experience working in web design prior to coming on board with PJS. We have built websites for Nissan, Subaru, and Infiniti Automobiles…see (www.infiniti.ru) which launched last May.
3. What products and services do you specialize in?

Corporate Branding, Environmental Design, and Web/Media Design.
4. Any products you would like to highlight or mention that would be of specific value to churches?

We perform Corporate Brand Management for Provision Ministry Group. That means from letterhead and business cards to websites to interior design of their new corporate offices, we did it all—please see Provision’s virtual tour on their website home page.

5. What are the basic steps to designing a church site?

We build websites from scratch—no templates. We take a look at a client’s desired site map and all content for their site, then quote them based on the number of hours we project it will take to complete the site. We have a “website lifecycle” that takes us from the kickoff meeting to launch. It’s all there for clients to follow.

Once a client signs a contract, we have a kickoff presentation and assign a “field trip” for the church to go on. They tell us their favorite websites based on look, form, and function; we submit a first round of comps, along with three revisions, which the church team provides feedback on. Once we land on the home page design, we begin build out of the site. If it’s a large site, we may offer sub-home page designs as well. Build out is based on the agreed upon site map.

We also provide web hosting and maintenance. Although there are exceptions, generally we no longer design websites for churches that want to maintain their own website—it’s been our experience that churches do a very poor job of maintenance and the sites usually come back to us for repair.

6. Do you have a creative questionnaire that you would be willing to share? Or some form that clients complete or you talk them through?
The questionnaire you refer to is essentially our website kickoff once a client is under contract. All other questions are asked upfront and vary by each user.

7. Realistically, how much should a church expect to pay for a top-quality Web site?

The old saying, “you get what you pay for” is somewhat applicable here, although we do offer large discounts to churches and para-church organizations. We have contracted church websites for $4,000 to $50,000—it all depends on your Scope, Schedule, and Budget.

How serious are you about a website, and are you limited by a tight budget?

8. What church web sites have you done?

Sites we’ve created for church and para-church ministries are:

• www.crossroadschurch.com
• www.centralchristian.com
• www.thecrossingonline.com
• www.provision.org
• www.stadia.org
• www.cdfonline.org

9. What advice do you have for smaller churches who may not have the resources to pay for a full-fledge site design?

Only buy sites which are built from scratch—save your money until you have enough for a real site.
10. What purpose should Web sites accomplish for churches?

If the church has a good to great teaching pastor, then a podcast is a wonderful thing to invest in. If you don’t think most folks will take advantage of a podcast then spend your money on another area of the site.

[Thanks, Bruce, rock on creating great Web sites for the glory of God!]

[ See all the previous posts in the Building Rockin' Sites here. ]