Church Website Design Q&A with Radiant Church

Radiant Church’s Director of Marketing Carrie Fay Amaro and Web Developer Charlie Stout answered my questions for the Building Rockin’ Church Websites series.

Radiant has a rockin’ cool and functional site. Here’s the Q&A:

1. How did your current web design come about?

Our current design is the result of compound frustrations with the CMS system used on the previous version of our website prior to my arrival. We overhauled the entire site from a proprietary CMS solution to another proprietary, mostly ASP/IIS system created in Macromedia Studio – but Studio gave us a lot more agility than the previous system would allow.

2. Who was involved in the design?

One web developer, two graphic designers (minimally), and one creative director.

3. Who manages it now? How?

It’s a collaborative effort between the web developer, a secondary web maintenance person, and those with vested interest in the content on the site (receptionists, department representatives, etc.)

4. What is your goal or purpose for your web site?

We have two distinct audiences – those who want to know what they’re doing, and turn to the website for information – such as service times, upcoming events, etc. And those who want to know what WE as a church are doing – typically pastors, etc who watch us from afar. We want to accommodate those two segments of visitors as efficiently as possible.

5. What should web sites accomplish or do for churches?

The website should be the next best thing to actually being there. That means every department or event should be accurately represented online. It should be a way to check out the church from afar, but also a way to become more integrated into the church.

6. What do you see the future holding for church web sites?

I see a convergence coming between realtime distribution of content on the web, the television, and handheld mobile devices such as ipods, phones, etc. The church web site of the future will transcend the device of delivery and essentially “get out of the way” of people trying to connect with God and with each other. It will accomplish this by seamlessly spanning these various venues as bandwidth and delivery systems open further.

7. Any advice for other churches seeking to design/redesign their sites?

Never stop learning. The more I read about web technology, especially with regards to web standards and the wonderful illusion that is Web 2.0, the more I realize that change, while not always easy, is necessary. If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance a lot less.

With regards to spending money on tech, the poor man pays twice! So cry once.

[Thanks Carrie and Charlie! Rock on!]

See all the Q&As in the Building Rockin’ Church Websites series here.