In the previous episode, I talked about who should be part of your church website team meetings. Yet what should you do once you all get in the same room together? The first few meetings will probably involve creating the church’s overall web strategy, connecting business goals with how the website will obtain them. Subsequent meetings will involve more tactical objectives, including breaking out your larger strategy into individual projects. But the key to obtaining and eventually measuring success will based on how disciplined you are with both your discussions and documentation.
Continue reading “CWS Podcast – Ep. 20: Web Team Meetings (Part 2): What to Do”
Category: Podcasts
A (currently) inactive podcast that explores various topics and perspectives of church web strategies. Each revisits an article on the website with some updated content and ideas.
CWS Podcast – Ep. 19: Web Team Meetings (Part 1): Who to Invite
In this episode I will outline the various church roles that should be involved in your regular website meetings; ensuring you keep the right people informed, as well as the proper authority to make those crucial decisions to guide the direction of your website. Unfortunately, most sites often start with one person who knows a little HTML, and the guidance of “go make us a website”. However as more people in the church get involved and interested in what the website can do, decisions become very complicated. So how do you form that winning team? A few key players in your church can meet and help your website exceed the expectations of everyone at your church.
Continue reading “CWS Podcast – Ep. 19: Web Team Meetings (Part 1): Who to Invite”
CWS Podcast – Ep. 18: Creating a Great Contact Us Page
Most service organization have two main conversion points, request for information and donations. I have articles on both, but this episode will deal with the first and undoubtedly easier problem. I believe that the majority of information funnels on your website ultimately lead to a conversion point where you ask the visitor to contact someone. From church events to membership; you want that personal contact to ensure they get all of their questions answered and hopefully move them on to that next step. I will outline the various contact methods, and provide tips on properly presenting each.
Continue reading “CWS Podcast – Ep. 18: Creating a Great Contact Us Page”
CWS Podcast – Ep. 17: Do Not Force Identities on Users
In this episode I will explore the dangers of creating navigation and sections of your site built around the visitor’s identity. While it may seem like a good idea, important parts of your site may seem invisible if the visitor does not identify with it. The best example is how the Dell computer website used to be organized; Home, Work, and Students. Where would a part time student that lives at home while running their own small business click? Similar situations may exist at your church, and I will examine how to identify and avoid those pitfalls.
Continue reading “CWS Podcast – Ep. 17: Do Not Force Identities on Users”
CWS Podcast – Ep. 16: Not Everyone is a Designer
In this episode I explain how to provide web design feedback, and dispel the rumor that not everyone is a designer. Unlike many other activities, such as tuning a piano, baking a killer crème brûlée, or running an enterprise data center; website users try their hand at designing websites just because they have used one in the past. Later in the podcast, I will explain how designs can be successfully altered with the right types of questions, and hopefully without offending the designer.
Continue reading “CWS Podcast – Ep. 16: Not Everyone is a Designer”
CWS Podcast – Ep. 15: Writing for the Web
In this episode I will outline some basic guidelines for writing content on your church website. The first thing you need to understand is that you read a brochure, book, newspaper, or almost any other sort of printed medium. However we scan websites. Instead of hanging on every word you write, users are often searching for information or trying to accomplish a specific task. This episode examines why when writing for the web, you need to keep things short, use good document structures, and utilize lists to help focus users’ efforts.
Continue reading “CWS Podcast – Ep. 15: Writing for the Web”
CWS Podcast – Ep. 14: Merging Church Strategy with Website Strategy
This episode is a crash course in creating a website strategy; however I am going out of my comfort zone and am asking that it merges with your overall church strategy. Afterall, your website is a tool that supports your church, not the other way around. Thus the first order of business is determining what your church goals are; then how your website can support them. While I am no pastor or church strategist, I do know common church goals and have plenty of professional experience in tying business goals to website features.
Continue reading “CWS Podcast – Ep. 14: Merging Church Strategy with Website Strategy”
CWS Podcast – Ep. 13: Determining ROI (Part 4): From Analytics to Project
This week’s episode will finalize our journey into analytics as I settle on one method to turn analytics data into an actionable projects. It should be a relief that you can finally do something other than collect data and then make a few educated guesses. It is time for some deeper analysis and the creation of test projects. The end result is hopefully a successful project that was initiated because of solid data rather than shaky conjecture.
Continue reading “CWS Podcast – Ep. 13: Determining ROI (Part 4): From Analytics to Project”
CWS Podcast – Ep. 12: Determining ROI (Part 3): Measuring Returns
This week’s episode will explore how you can use an analytics package to measure the success of your web properties. I hope to brush away some of the mystery and provide some ideas on how to interpret various statistics, and eventually use them to fuel and prioritize future web projects. After last week’s episode I feel safer delving into measuring returns on your website. This is mostly because we should now be on the same page in terms of vocabulary, which is often a huge barrier when it comes to discussing technical topics.
Continue reading “CWS Podcast – Ep. 12: Determining ROI (Part 3): Measuring Returns”
CWS Podcast – Ep. 11: Determining ROI (Part 2): An Unexpected Analytics Vocabulary Lesson
I this episode I originally wanted to delve into how you can more easily measure returns. The primary means of website tracking and measuring is an analytics package installed on your website. However I realized that I first needed to step back and give a short analytics vocabulary lesson to provide an overview of terms, jargon, and lingo. I apologize if you already know these terms, but I bear with me as not everyone is at the same level of familiarity with the web and its many technologies and niches.
Continue reading “CWS Podcast – Ep. 11: Determining ROI (Part 2): An Unexpected Analytics Vocabulary Lesson”
CWS Podcast – Ep. 10: Determining ROI (Part 1): Comparing Cost
This episode deals with an important factor when considering what to spend on your church website; return on investment. I wrote about this in a previous article about this subject, but I want to incorporate some ideas and techniques more recently covered; most noteworthy, the use of personas. This is hopefully a way to not only determine what your ROI is for your investment, but how you can target specific groups to help your church grow more easily.
Continue reading “CWS Podcast – Ep. 10: Determining ROI (Part 1): Comparing Cost”
CWS Podcast – Ep. 9: Documenting Your Church History on the Web
In this episode I delve into how your church web properties can serve as an archive of interesting and useful historical data. This podcast is based on my article “Documenting Your Church’s History“. I updated and restructured it to further explore the content you wish to archive, some of the associated costs, and finally the many benefits of documenting church history on the web.
Continue reading “CWS Podcast – Ep. 9: Documenting Your Church History on the Web”