pmcleanj
3rd February 2005, 09:00 PM
Last night was Candlemas, and as neither our Anglican parish nor our Lutheran parish had a Candlemas service, I spent some time digging around on the internet trying to find what parishes *did* have such a service. There's a tremendous variety in church website quality!
As a result of my explorations, I came up with the following good advice, which I wish heartily to share with as many church webmasters and webmistresses as possible:
1) Most of your regular parishioners either took home a bulletin, or know someone they can phone for information. The people using your site who *don't* have that alternative are first-time visitors, so *that's* the demographic you should cater to. They may be first-time visitors with a special need and limited energy for research, like agnostics whose devout Great Aunt Helen is dying, so keep pastoral care particularly in mind.
2) Put the primary information first-time visitors want, on your very front page -- your "intro" page if you have one. At a minimum, that should be:
- your address (and a maplet!)
- regular service times
- the date
- any special services or events this week
- name and phone number of the pastor on call
3) I found some sites that met the above standard (except for the date) but the special services they listed were for Christmas week. So, have a staff member whose first job on Monday morning, is to update the intro page with the coming week's services.
Everything else is gravy. Pastoral letters, choice sermons, descriptions of your ministries, pictures of your stained glass or banners -- beautiful! But first, *be* there for the people who are reaching out to you for help!
So ... do any of you have any advice to add?
As a result of my explorations, I came up with the following good advice, which I wish heartily to share with as many church webmasters and webmistresses as possible:
1) Most of your regular parishioners either took home a bulletin, or know someone they can phone for information. The people using your site who *don't* have that alternative are first-time visitors, so *that's* the demographic you should cater to. They may be first-time visitors with a special need and limited energy for research, like agnostics whose devout Great Aunt Helen is dying, so keep pastoral care particularly in mind.
2) Put the primary information first-time visitors want, on your very front page -- your "intro" page if you have one. At a minimum, that should be:
- your address (and a maplet!)
- regular service times
- the date
- any special services or events this week
- name and phone number of the pastor on call
3) I found some sites that met the above standard (except for the date) but the special services they listed were for Christmas week. So, have a staff member whose first job on Monday morning, is to update the intro page with the coming week's services.
Everything else is gravy. Pastoral letters, choice sermons, descriptions of your ministries, pictures of your stained glass or banners -- beautiful! But first, *be* there for the people who are reaching out to you for help!
So ... do any of you have any advice to add?