Is this a fair Statement?
It's amazing how many Web sites use an information architecture based on how the church that owns the site is structured. That's not helpful to anyone, even (in most cases) to congregation members. Your site's pages should be defined in terms of what users want when they come to your site, not how your organization is structured.
First impressions
On Page 2 I invited you to visit many church sites, and to make lists, and look at how background and text colours interact.
Make sure that people with special needs - colour-blind men, and the many other groups, are included in your group of advisers.
What puts you off?
We are happy to list items we want to copy. I wonder if the factors that put me off, like a mistake in centering a page, also irritate others (but the number of pages which do not begin their tables with the tag <CENTER> suggests this is a minor factor).
Book and magazine publishers long ago learned that blocks of text are easier to read if they're limited to around 65 characters per line. This isn't a firm rule; in practice print publishers may use anywhere from 50 to 80 characters per line, with 65 being about the average.
I have just counted, and find I have a line length of 100 characters. Ugh!
The List
Now give the list to your Programmer to play with. Make sure she has the text you want included. Remember that it may take a month to get the look right. Changing content is also very time consuming, so think of a durable look that will not get out of date.
Navigation to other pages
The menu listing your other pages may be formatted in several ways. Older methods are a straight forward list, like I use, a drop-down or 'Combo' box, or even a floating item in Javascript.
A well-designed site helps users find their way home. Every navigation bar in such a site has a link back to the site's home page. Even better, the site's logo acts as a link back to the home page, like this:
<A HREF="/"><IMG SRC="logo.gif"></A>
This convention is nearly universal among commercial Web sites. Name ten commercial sites, visit their pages, and try clicking on their logos. Odds are you'll see this convention followed on every site.
Yet it's surprising how rarely this convention is followed by small Web sites and personal Web pages. We recently reviewed a sample of personal sites tested with NetMechanic. The result? Only about a quarter of the sites followed this rule.
Geocities counts visitors
Many sites have Counters telling me I am the 5619th Visitor. Sometimes I feel the number is faked (I know one way to do the faking - that makes me disillusioned!). Geocities has set up a Site Record Keeping system which Webmasters can use. This tells me how many visitors I get on a daily basis, and the referring URL they used to find me, without bothering my Visitor when she discovers she is the third person to see my site.
How did they find you?
Anglicans Online is one place where you can ask to be included.
The Geocities members Search Engine will add your site to a list. They use your Title and Description contained in the <HEAD>. I see no reason why the same text may not also be used in your Greetings of Welcome.
'Come back' calls
Some people farewell their visitors with a 'Come Back' screen, or offer a Bookmark service. We all want our visitors to come again. Does your List include some ideas of how other Sites did this?
On speaking terms
Visitors may be asked to send an Email, to fill in a Form, to Sign the Guest Book, or to take part in a Forum. What did I miss naming?
At the moment, I only provide Email addresses. (I dislike being asked to fill in forms).
Baiting the hook
There are many presentations of the Gospel on different web-sites. If all you put up on your web-page is an explanation of
the Gospel, very few non-Christians will find it! The reason is: most people are not doing word searches on search engines using
keywords like "God", "salvation", "Jesus", "Bible", etc. Jim Daniels of the secular market JDD Publishing says, "The number one reason people are online in the first place is to find
information. Specifically, FREE information." People do not generally stumble accidentally across web-sites that they are not looking for!
'SearchEngineWatch' has a section with links
to pages which will show you (some in real time) what search words people
are using online. As you might expect, Christian words are not among them, but everything else is.
Central foundational conclusion
"Bait the hook according to what the fish likes, not what the fisherman likes." (Hemingway)
We must therefore pull people in to our web-sites on other topics and then feed them through to web-pages which can create a sense of need,
and show the Gospel as the answer to that need. If people are searching for 'everything else', then we must offer them pages on 'everything else'!
There is virtually no topic under the sun on which you cannot write a short, informed, well-researched web-page, and
then progress to highlight some part of the Gospel. It is worth commenting that pages should really be about their apparent subject
and not just pretend to be. This is a major key to using the Web for evangelism, yet is not often exploited!
Read more in the feature Communicating the Gospel in a secular culture from a major evangelistic literature agency. (For other sites, use the title in a search engine, or look at Searchenginewatch)
Some of those top keywords may give you ideas, but of course there are likely to be many sites already available for those subjects.
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