A customer-centered theology for your digital ministries helps all aspects of your church. When you put the organization first, you put your customers second. I know you need resources to function. Yet, when you put your customers first, you will succeed in maturing your existing congregation as well as adding to it. The best part is that your digital ministries can help create a customer-centered theology. This is because digital assets, once created, can be copied and shared indefinitely. But that is just the beginning of all the ways you can better serve your audiences.
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Category: UX and Design
A user experience is all aspects of someone’s interaction with your digital ministries. UX tools are things we do to help better understand what users want. Design is how we take action on research. That understanding can be used for every aspect of your ministry. These articles outline those various research methods and applications.
Experience A New Church
The fastest way to understand your target audience, is to become them. If you want to reach church visitors, take a Sunday and be one. Do not just attend a friend’s church service. Begin your search with online research. Explore their social media presence. Then attend a service and see how well they integrate digital media. As you form your opinions, document your thoughts. Take these notes with you and see where you can improve your own church.
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Remembering the Details
Some projects dictate that you look at every detail. Are you building a house? You need to know where every light switch and electrical outlet will be. They may seem like trivial when figuring out the arrangements of the rooms, but it needs to happen. You may have a kitchen window that lets in the first rays of morning sunlight. Yet your toaster, blender, microwave, and mixer all share one outlet. Please realize that getting the big idea is the first step. Next is digging into the details that will make using your church website a truly pleasurable experience.
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Find Your Church Website Voice and Tone
The message your website gives has two components, the voice and the tone. The tone of your content will change depending on what is happening. However, the voice of your website is always the same. This singular direction guides all the text on your website. In contrast, different scenarios call for a unique tone. Your unified voice and empathetic tone reduces confusion and helps users feel at ease.
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Preparing for Wearable Technology
When we think of mobile technology, our minds go to phones and tablets. Yet the wearable technology market is growing. How do devices such as watches and glasses impact how we use technology? More important, how will it impact how churchgoers consume content? The announcement of the Apple Watch has pushed these questions to the forefront of our minds. So what are you going to do today to prepare for tomorrow?
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Strategic Partners for Online Ministries
Is your church trying to reach a particular demographic? I would surprised if you did not just think “yes, in fact we are trying to reach several”. There are several ways you can test how well your website is reaching those people groups. User interviews, surveys, and usability testing are just a few tools you can use. Yet, the major obstacle is not failing to use those tools. It is finding volunteers. Instead of always looking for volunteers, create partners for your digital ministries.
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Using Libraries to Speed Up Website Creation
When dealing with limited resources such as time and personnel, you need to work smarter as well as harder. One key to gaining this efficiency is to not duplicate work. By creating a digital asset once and reusing it, you not only gain speed, but also consistency. This article will discuss several areas of website creation where libraries can be utilized to greatly increase how quickly you conceptualize and create websites.
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Conducting Stakeholder Interviews
To properly support your church, your website needs to support its high-level strategic goals. If you want to know where your church is going, you will need to ask your leadership. The best way to accomplish this is through stakeholder interviews. This will not only include your primary or lead pastor, but also your various ministry leaders. By gathering input from all areas, you can not only ensure your church is aligned on its long-range goals, but also that your website is crafted to most successfully support it.
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Why Your Church Needs UX
User Experience, and it is a growing field in the digital world. While many aspects of websites focus on the amazing technologies that support it, UX turns the lens back on the people using them. UX attempts to tie your church’s strategic goals to the people you are trying to reach. A practitioner attempts to not only make those connections work, but making them meaningful. This is the key reason why your church needs UX.
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Experience a Disability and Change Your Website
The best way to understand how someone with a disability experiences your website is to step into their bodies for a few minutes. I wrote a few articles about tactical ways to create websites for more disability-friendly interfaces and features. Yet while major companies acknowledge that accessibility is a good thing, they often refuse to build in accessibility features due to budget and timeline constraints. The best way to convince someone of their error is to allow them to experience a disability for themselves first hand.
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A Friendly Competitive Analysis
Churches often have more contention with popular culture than other churches. Yet there is something to be gained from looking at other church websites for sources of inspiration and encouragement. Corporate America often conducts regular competitive analysis studies on their largest competitors’ websites, using it as both a benchmark and management’s encouragement to fund projects. This practice can be utilized by the church to help assess where their strengths and weaknesses lie, as well as aid in illustrating the need for future projects.
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Harness Natural Instincts for Better Online Reactions
People gravitate toward other people, it is just how we are wired. In a podcast I recently listened to, Susan Weinchenk talked about how to use natural physiological and psychological mechanisms to drive clicks and conversions on your website. I want to reiterate that these are not intended to trick people. We are merely using what we know about our brains to more easily engage with our website visitors. This article will cover three content types, and how you can make them more engaging by harnessing our natural instincts as humans.
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