I'm going to finish up with things that are more personal - the content on your site and what appears to be the next step for a website visitor (new or returning).
Images and their messages
Knowing that images can have a large impact on viewers, So, what did our survey of sites reveal? Here are the most prominent images on the front page of the site, without scrolling down the page at all -
| A photo of a building | 32.14% |
| A photo of an object | 25% |
| A photo of a group of people | 17.86% |
| Clipart | 14.29% |
| A photo of a person | 10.71% |
Is the most prominent image on your web site truly representative of your ministry? Are buildings at the top of your list and people somewhere in the middle, or lower?
Selecting images that appeal to people and represent the message you are trying to communicate requires some thought. Look at the image and its position on the page from the perspective of a total stranger, one who doesn't know the context of the image.
Another perspective to understand is that of a visually impaired person - you can usually turn off images in your browser settings, Try viewing your site as text only. Is there something in the place of the images that are now hidden? Turn the images back on and hover over one of them - do you get a little 'tool tip' with a caption or description of the image? Screen readers for visually impaired visitors rely on image descriptions and captions to assist them with the page content. Do you use images for navigation buttons? How well can you navigate without them? When you add images to your site, you should be able to add 'alt' text and 'title' text for the image - add both of them. The WYSIWYG editors available for XOOPS and ImpressCMS (FCKeditor, Koivi, TinyMCE) allow you to do this. Be sure you do - only 1 of 28 in our survey did.
Making Connections and User Contributions
The sites in the survey did very well in providing a method for visitors to their church website to contact the church - 27 of 28 had at least 1 method of contact, the most popular method being a form that could be completed and sent. The percentages add up to more than 100% because many sites had more than 1 method of contact - this is good! One thing to check for your site - is your address displayed somewhere? About 1/3 of the sites did not list their address (and I counted maps as addresses) - it makes it difficult for people to visit your church after visiting your website if they don't know where you're located.
| Contact Form | 75% |
| Address | 64.29% |
| Phone Number | 60.71% |
| Email Link | 42.86% |
| None | 3.57% |
Also checked were the presence of comments (29%), forums (29%) and recommendations (11%) - signs of interest in listening to your visitors. The sites in the survey were much lower on these features. These are tough areas to get started and having a core group of users to keep the discussions going does help. I wouldn't recommend them to a startup site, but as traffic grew, they are definitely worth exploring.
Freshness
Internet time is different than offline time - time is compressed, people expect short response times and immediacy. Facebook and Twitter are pushing content out to people within seconds of a thought or idea or event. Unless I already know what is happening at your church or in your ministry, I cannot determine the age of a post or its relevancy simply by reading the content. Visitors will look for dates an article was posted to make a decision about the value of the content. If you do have dates listed - how long has it been? Less than 30 days ago? 7 days? If you don't have dates - why not? People need to find information of interest to them and an indication that more information will be available the next time they visit.
