Faith and Web

My church’s website redesign moves on apace. Yesterday I met with the person who volunteered to do our content audit. I didn’t even have to pull a Tom Sawyer to get her to help. We’re both librarians by training and adore digging into information and then organizing it.

Even more tantalizing – you can do it using 3×5s – the weapon of choice for any self-respecting librarian. (Some day I should write an ode to the 3×5. Or maybe not. It would be dreadful.)

Here’s my favorite procedure for an audit:

1. Inventory. Go through the current site link-by-link, writing a card for each page or each natural group of pages. The groups are for things like old newsletters, where you don’t need a card for each issue; instead you would write a card saying something like, “PDFs of newsletters for 2004: missing 4/1/04 issue.” Include the URL of the page and the topic on the card, and make notes about the content, e.g. “needs to be updated” or “delete this.” You can, if you wish, color code, perhaps using green for the most important pages. For a larger site, you might want to work out a rating scale. Whatever suits your fancy.
2. Double check. After the inventory is done, have one of the webmasters compare it with the files on the server or a list of database-generated pages (depending on how your current site is set up). If there are any pages missing from the inventory, do cards for them too.
3. Categorize. This is the most fun of all. Sort the cards into various groups, looking for both an optimal navigation and an optimal file structure (which will probably differ somewhat). Take notes on the best breakdowns to share with others later, and for usability tests.
4. Identify gaps. As you go through the first three steps, chances are you’re going to notice some things that are missing. Make 3×5s of these items too.
5. Draft the content delivery plan. Put all the chunks of information into an outline. You could use the outline feature of Word for this, but I think a spreadsheet is more versatile. That’s because you will be adding columns indicating who is responsible for these pieces of content and when that content is due. Here’s an old version of our Content Delivery Plan.

Once it’s done, the Content Delivery Plan is likely to become the most important tool in your webmaster toolbox. It not only can keep you on task, it will also delineate expectations for others who have content responsibilities, whether they realize it or not. In other words, all of this effort is worth it, even if you aren’t a librarian.

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Are you considering a redesign of your congregation’s website? Chances are it’s a good idea. Most sites I’ve seen lately could use some retooling, if not a complete overhaul. The catch is it’s daunting. Either you don’t know enough about building websites to design one, or you do know – and are all too aware of just how much is involved. In the words of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, it’s a “gumption trap.”

In my experience, the best way out of this trap is to make a plan, organizing discreet tasks into understandable groups in a logical sequence. Naming the various jobs is a release, since it’s no longer an amorphous blob hanging over you. And the jobs themselves can be open-ended. You don’t have to fully understand everything that needs to be done at the front end. Figuring out the particulars is actually much of the process.

What happens to me as I start to get organized, and talk to other congregants about their ideas and even dreams for the site, is that my enthusiasm builds and theirs does too. When you share written plans with others, it gives them not only an opportunity to give you feedback, but also to appreciate what’s involved. It’s community at its best.

To Get Organized, Draft a Redesign Roadmap

Over the years, I’ve developed a master “roadmap” to adapt as needed for redesigns I’m managing. It’s based on one of my favorite books: Web Redesign: Workflow that Works, by Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler. For those serious about redesigning a site, you would do well to invest in a copy. It’s full of practical advice and strategies for conquering the beast, and never fails to inspire me.

Here is a version of the roadmap that I drafted for our church, which should be easy to modify for other congregations:

• Website Redesign Roadmap (PDF)
• Website Redesign Roadmap (Excel)

The list may seem long, but that’s because I included virtually everything that might need attention. Chances are you won’t have to do all of these steps. Moreover, most church websites aren’t that big or complicated. Most important of all, if you take the time and make the effort to do it right, the end product will be incredibly rewarding.

Holding My Feet To the Fire

In case it’s not obvious, I’m not talking in theory. My church is starting this process right now, and my intention is to walk you through what happens to us and share what might be useful.

We’ve been toying with the idea of a redesign for about two years, and yesterday we got down to business. I presented this Redesign Roadmap to our Communications Committee, the group that oversees the website.

Their response was both enthusiastic and constructive. Among other things, we started to divvy up the work. One person volunteered to do a content audit. Another agreed to help with programming as needed. We reprioritized technologies to focus on, and talked frankly about some of the bigger issues with the site.

So… our redesign is now officially underway. I will keep you posted as we work our way through this process.  If you have feedback, please don’t hesitate to share it.   The more we hear, the better the site will be.

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At times I hear people say that having the congregation’s mission statement on the home page is a waste of space. My inclination is to agree. Mission statements appeal to me about as much stale toast. But this Monday I had one of those ah-ha moments.

Our church is redoing its mission and vision statements, and I went to one of the sessions on Sunday. To my amazement, it turned out to be pivotal, and 24 hours later its relevance to the website hit me. The smart people in charge of this process elicited what we valued most, and then distilled those values into one or two feeling words, such as….

• Acceptance
• Sanctuary
• Gratitude

Powerful stuff. A day later, I realized how visual these words could be – how they could translate into photos and images on our home page.

From a more pragmatic standpoint, mission statements and the like can help in search engine rankings. They’re typically full of keywords – hopefully the kind of keywords people are searching for. The thing to do is put such text high in the code where search engines will give it more weight, and then use CSS so on a monitor the same text falls in a less important place — either “below the fold” or outside the “hot zones” of eye-tracking studies.

Four days later I’m itching to do a redesign. But I must be patient, and wait for our mission statement to be finalized.

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Need some inspiration for your design?  Check out Tutorialblog’s Top 10 Church & Religious Websites.  The featured sites are even standards compliant.

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Have you seen the new Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) website? After five long years of hard work, it was released into the Web this afternoon. You can still see its predecessor at archive.uua.org, where the UUA has cleverly stashed all of the now old pages in case of need.

Were the hundreds of thousands of hours put into this effort worth it? While it’s still too early to be certain, I’d be willing to bet the family farm on it – and I’m not a betting sort. Until today the Greek Orthodoxs had my favorite denominational site. But now the UUA has raised the bar for large faith-based websites. It’s elegant, it’s easy to navigate (especially for a site of 20,000+ pages) and it gives an instant sense of the spirit behind the faith.

Then there are the little touches – the things that make all the difference. Embedded throughout the site you will find quotes. Many inspire. All are thought-provoking and say something about this faith. But most amazing of all, they are contextual.

My favorite examples of the quotes-in-context are the pages about the site itself – in the section only geeks like me will care about. See, for instance, the Web Project Implementation Plan page.

Do you notice that blue box on the right near the top of the content? Hit refresh a few times, and see quotes by webmaster-favorites like webstyleguide.com go by.

On this page too, you can see at the bottom the project starting date of April, 2002. Mention is made of participants being “Unitarian Universalists but not employees of the UUA.” I was one of those participants. A year or so ago, I decided we must have set goals so lofty they were the undoing of any progress at all. Today, to my delight, I’m proved completely wrong.

But really, what’s most important about this page and section of the site, is how very professional they are – how cognizant the staff has been of all the many challenges of designing a great website – from empowering content stakeholders to complying with W3C standards. I wasn’t mistaken in thinking the goals were lofty. My mistake was in thinking they were impossibly high for a site so large.

Of course, it’s not perfect. I notice, for example, the Site Map is a bit limited, and I’ve no doubt there are other things to iron out. But this wonderful team (Julie Albanese, Kasey Melski, Deb Weiner, Mark Steinwinter and a host of others) has built a five-star foundation. I predict that not only will the site grow and thrive, it will help Unitarian Universalism grow and thrive.

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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.

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