Aiming at two groups of people
The most successful websites are those designed with their target audience
clearly in mind. Your target audience is simply those people who you hope to
attract to your site. Good church websites are hard to create because they
must reach two target audiences, not just one. The key to ensuring that your
website works well is to design according to the different needs of these two
audiences.
Your first and most important audience is those people who are not yet
Christians but who are considering coming to your church (perhaps because
they have a friend or neighbour who goes, but they want to find out more). The
church website offers them an ideal way to find out about the church and the
Christian faith in an anonymous way before taking the plunge and coming along in
person.
Your website's second audience is your existing church members. This
group is less important than the first, simply because there is probably little
which you can place on the website that they don't already know, or can't easily
find out from another source. So do provide information relevant to church
members, but not at the expense of making the site inaccessible to your main
audience of non-churchgoers.
Providing relevant content
The key to good design is to ask yourself what the members of each target
audience are looking for when they visit your website. Potential visitors to
your church probably want to know:
- Is this church weird, or do normal people go as well?
- What do Christians believe? Why do people go to church?
- Where is the church? How do I get in touch?
- What times are the services? Which service should I go to?
- Are there facilities for children?
Many church websites do not answer these sort of questions. When reviewing
church websites for the UK Church Web Awards we often come across sites which look good, but which don't rate very highly because they are not focused
on the needs of non-churchgoers. By contrast, a good church website is aimed
primarily at those who do not yet come to church.
The sort of information which church members may look for on the website is
very different. They are more likely to ask questions like:
- Who is preaching next Sunday?
- When is the next PCC/Elders meeting?
- Is the prayer meeting on Tuesday or Wednesday?
Since the questions which church members are asking is so very different from
that asked by other visitors, it is almost impossible to write one page which
is interesting to both sets of visitors. Either you end up giving church
members information they already know, in which case they won't bother looking
at the website very much, or you confuse potential church visitors.
The solution is to have different pages for different audiences. For
example, to tell people about the Sunday services create one page containing the
basic information which an enquirer might need to know (e.g. service times), and
then provide a link to a second page which contains detailed information for
church members (e.g. who is preaching). If this is done throughout the site then
you will achieve your aim of providing a website which is welcoming and
informative for both your casual visitors and your church members.
An additional audience
There is a third group of people who will visit your site, namely those people who are already Christians but who don't go to your church.
Perhaps they go to another local church and came across your website, or perhaps
they recently moved into the area and are looking for a church. Whoever they
are, there is no need to design your website to reach these people. If you have
followed the advice given above, your site will already welcome them and provide
all the information they need to know.
This article came from hosea.co.uk
(closed January 2004)
If you would like professional help
with designing/hosting etc your web
site then please feel free to contact
me at chris@browncow.co.uk
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