Jacob Nielsen writes one of my favorite email newsletters: Alertbox: Current Issues in Web Usability. It’s not pretty, but it packs a ton of useful information into almost every issue. The March 12 issue on 10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities was no exception. What’s more, much of it is relevant to religious organizations.

Relevant to Churches

While several of his points are strictly for businesses, most apply to religious organizations too, including:

  1. Email Newsletters
  2. Simplified Text. A great religious professional is great with words. The thing is, how do we simple techies tap into these verbal powerhouses? According to Nielsen, better writing is the key to improving a site. My church’s professionals don’t have time for the web, so our solution is to have a volunteer editor who can politely nag those in the know. We know she’s a treasure and reward her the best way we know how — lots of praise and chocolate.
  3. Catering to Seniors. I hope to talk more about this soon. Suffice it to say, I agree with Nielsen that this is a critically important and often overlooked audience.
  4. Gift-Giving Support. For us, this would be building easy online donation forms.
  5. My personal favorite — User Testing. Read Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think to quickly and enjoyably learn why and how to do user testing.

Nielsen concludes that “Interface design is about making money for the company.” I conclude that interface design is about promoting ministry.