Should You Pay Thousands of Dollars for a Website?
ByIs it time to stop paying thousands of dollars for a website? It depends on the purpose and goal of your website but I believe the answer is yes! Over the last two months I have fought to learn more about the whole Web 2.0 and try to make sense of this blogosphere stuff. Here are a few things to consider.
- The Web 2.0 is here to stay and will continue to rapidly change and redefine the way we communicate. BTW – these fast changes could make your investment obsolete in six months.
- There are great tools like SquareSpace or WordPress that allow you to build a website or blog with just about every feature/plug-in a church will need for being effective on the web – in less than an hour!
- Many of the tools available are free or include small monthly fee.
- One of the best ways to be found on the Internet is by blogging that uses RSS (Really Simple Syndication) because most search engines find updated and new content faster.
- You can manage your content without spending thousands of dollars for custom Content Management Software (CMS) plus these new tools are extremely quick to learn and easy to use.
When I helped launch and market Church Plant Media a few years ago, it was simply the best web design platform for church planters (and still is) but one of the common things I heard from planters was that they couldn’t afford the price-tag right now and that they needed an easy to use platform so any one on their team could update the site. Some of these new options such as SquareSpace, WordPress, Turnkey Blog Design, and TypePad totally eliminate those problems…and while I don’t think that it’s time to fire all the web design companies, I do feel that there are other options worth checking out that would be equally or better serving for churches.
If you’re goal is to make money with the web then investing thousands of dollars might pay off, but if you’re goal is to just keep your congregation or community informed about your church and what’s going on, save some dough and go another route – at least for now.
As a web designer, you are correct that churches do not need to pay thousands for a church web site. In fact, I contend that few churches are capable of maintaining more than five page web site.
I think most churches would be better off hiring a copy-writer rather than a designer.
However, basic site should cost a church anywhere from $800 to $8500 depending on what’s involved, what’s expected, how many stakeholders there are, how complicated the project is to manage and frankly what their budget allows.
Setting up WP or using the templates on TypePad is still beyond most church staff.
And really, they have other more important things to do than noodle around with CSS or a WP plug-in. Don’t they? Even savvy church staff, have a hard time learning how to create a MySQL database or adding a new emaill address.
And using a volunteer is double-edged sword. I know I’ve been the busy volunteer, and I’ve taken over for volunteers.
If a church pays for a site, they should get more than just a pretty design, but expertise in web standards, work flow and search engine optimization included. Plus, that designer, ought to provide consulting pretty much for free for the lifetime of the relationship.
I try to help churches not only with the design of a site; but also how to manage the on-going quality of a site. I also make sure that a good analytics tools is used to analyze traffic; I also try to help them track their goals/conversions.
Turnkey solutions I think should be the last option for a church; because most churches do not maintain the sites they create and end up simply paying for very expensive hosting of outdated church sites. But you are right there are some good ones, the best one is…
http://www.ekklesia360.com/
I recommend finding a good designer that knows WordPress or TextPattern, can design quickly and professionally. A great start is:
http://www.godbit.com/
Where this subject has been discussed more than once.
For example, I can develop/code a basic church web site in about 8-12 hours (if I use TextPattern). But from pre-production, design, development, quality assurance testing and project management my hours are at least 25/hrs+ for quality job.
Sorry for rambling…
Great insight Tim!
You hit on a lot of important points and ideas. There are a lot of possibilities to consider and some which will drastically change the investment price of a website but now more than ever, churches can actually get a professional and functional website or blog for $2000 or less.
On the other side, as I always preach – you will usually get what you pay for so church leaders should do their homework first and make sure that bargain doesn’t become a fiasco.
Thanks for the feedback Tim!
-James
I think that a church web site should consist of relevant functions for it’s members. If your audience is to get new visitors, then gear it toward that. If it’s actually to interact with church members, then do that instead. Research is really the key, and setting clear and concise goals on how to reach your audience. Otherwise, it’s not good stewardship of your time and money (or God’s) for that matter.
A church website should consist of relevant functions for visitors and members on all sites. I wrote a post about Entry Points the other day and I believe that will be extremely beneficial for churches because you will always have those two audiences interacting with your website.
I absolutely agree with setting clear and concise goals. Just throwing something against the wall and hoping it sticks won’t work anymore.