You would not serve your family the same meal week after week. Consequently, do not always serve the same content to your website and social media audiences. You need a mix of content, each with a different goal. You also serve different meals at certain times of the day. Be purposeful with the time of day you publish your content. By serving a balanced diet of content, you have better results and do not burn out your audience.
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Tag: Content Strategy
CWS Podcast – Ep. 58: Getting Your Content Out There
The primary motivation for viewing a website is to consume content. That content may exist to inform, persuade, or compare; but it should have a purpose that is aligned with an overall web strategy. Yet regardless of your intent or your audience not everyone will wish to consume this content just on your website. By providing multiple mechanisms to view it, you maximize your audience exposure and increase the odds of adding new members to your church.
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Avoiding Dead Ends
The message of this article is pretty simple. Every path on your website should have a purpose and not lead to a dead end. This may seem like a simple concept, but I imagine that many parts of your website do not accomplish this. Never give your visitor the message that it is acceptable for them to close their browser. There should always be another page with more information or a next step to take. In this article I will first explore the mechanisms and treatments that allow you keep the conversation moving. Then I will review the tools you can use to help find any gaps your website may have.
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Forced to Create a Bad Website
It is frustrating to create what you consider to be a great prototype or mock-up for your church’s website, only to have it completely changed by your approval authorities. My advice to you is to first not take it personally. Web teams around the world, both in churches and Fortune 500 businesses need to adjust their designs to suit their stakeholders. Second, realize there are preventative measures you can take to help mitigate these situations. This article will discuss why these conditions occur, and the best ways I have in thwarting them.
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CWS Podcast – Ep. 53: A Website that Deals with Sin and Shame
Forgiveness of sin by faith in Jesus is an essential foundation of Christianity. Some non-believers think they have sinned too much to be a Christian. Yet this is not the only obstacle they face. A staggering number of men and women feel they cannot have a relationship with God because of sins committed against them. Websites need to not only address how we can be cleansed of the sins we commit, but also the heavy baggage of shame for those committed against us.
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CWS Podcast – Ep. 45: Constrict Content, not Your Audience
Christianity is unique in many ways, but one that was controversial for early Jewish believers was the inclusion of the Gentiles, or non-Jews. Faith in Christ was not be restricted to any group, race, or nation. So how do you market your church website to a particular demographic if you want to welcome everyone? Instead of narrowing your market, constrict content to answer the most frequently asked questions of potential members.
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CWS Podcast – Ep. 35: Fasting and Your Church Website
We know that fasting and prayer is the discipline of doing without earthly sustenance and replacing it with God’s. How can this apply to your website? Try replacing something man-made with something that is from God. It is often hard to let go, get out of the way, and let the Lord work. So I challenge you to take a stance with a bold statement. Remove things from your site, or simply your homepage that are “of the world”. Allow people to set their eyes on the person who will ultimately change their life, Jesus.
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CWS Podcast – Ep. 32: Getting Started: From Clueless to Colors
In this episode, I walk you through some for getting started with your church website, or that next big re-design. This is good preparation regardless if you are using internal resources, or an external team to build your website. These steps do not need to be accomplished in this order, but this is what I consider to be the most efficient with the least amount of re-work.
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Church eCommerce: Storefronts and Navigation
How are your products displayed?[/caption]In the previous article I presented the idea that churches may be in the business of selling physical and digital products online. Pastors are writing books, church bands are recording CD’s, and associated groups are producing a wide array of products that customers outside of the church are interested in buying. I laid out the main points of having a good item detail page, but like any good content, how you find it is vastly important. This article outlines the key points you must consider when creating a viable eCommerce storefront and shopping navigation.
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CWS Podcast – Ep. 27: Take Something Away
In this episode, I explore the design concept that sometimes, “less is more”. That maybe your next church website redesign includes taking something away from a page rather than adding another feature or callout. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. We are often afraid that if we take a link away, we are removing a path to content. Unless you are arbitrarily cut off branches of your primary navigation, you should be fine. Perhaps when you remove that extra clutter of the ad asking members to join your choir, the button taking the visitor to the membership form becomes more obvious and enticing.
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CWS Podcast – Ep. 23: Content Strategy Document
In this episode I will briefly explain what a content strategy document is, and how it can help you craft a more effective website for your church. The definition seems fairly self-explanatory based on the name, a document that outlines the strategy you will take for your website’s content. However, I feel it is more than that. You should also be tracking who will be responsible for creating and maintaining said content, as well as other meta data that helps ensure your content is relevant and up to date. Steps I will recommend are:
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Church Mobile Web Strategy: Content Priority
Many articles ago I talked about a content strategy document, which outlines every major piece of content on your church website. Additional information such as its primary purpose, the responsible party, and how often it should be updated can be layered in as well. Yet this document is the key to truly getting a mobile website correct. Because of the constrained screen size, your navigation, branding elements, text, images, video; everything on your website will be shifted to suit these devices. In this article I will outline how to update content priority and create guides that will help you design great layouts.
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