Build a ministry website
Build a ministry website checklist for success
The internet plays an important role in ministry development. The net is a place for donor development, branding, and marketing your organization. Many organizations simply do not realize the power of having a professional image until they miss funding opportunities because their marketing is unprofessional.
If you place yourself in the socks of an executive in charge of dispersing funds to charity, or even just an everyday Joe who only has $50.00 to donate this month, a professional image will go a long way as a convincer. The number of scams in every community that focus on ripping off potential donors, is staggering. People give money voluntarily to charity, so naturally criminals will pose as charities.
Your organization’s first line of defense against skeptical donors is your reputation. By doing your work well, you will build a good reputation. However, that is only one side of the reputation coin. When investors and others are introduced to your organization it may be a business card or a website doing the introduction. The first impression that person forms will be based, in part, by the image presented by your marketing.
To make the most of first impressions and further facilitate relationship building, make sure your organization is represented well in all of your marketing. Especially your website, because an internet visitor may only give you 3- 5 seconds before they decide you are not worth the next 30 seconds of time it will take to read the web page. Keep the following in mind to take your 3 second interview and turn it into a lifetime relationship:
- Is every page of your site organizing the information in such a way that it is easy to identify what your organization does? (For instance, a church web site should identify the fact that it is a church in the title and logo of the site)
- Is the information easy to read and well organized? If your site looks cluttered or the text is hard to read most visitors are going to favor the “back” button over further investigation.
- Does your site look as professional as other sites in the same industry? When you compare your site to your competition how does it stack up? If your site does not look as professional, you are likely to loose potential relationships to your competition. Likewise, if you look more professional you are likely to draw new relationships away from your competition.
If your site does not meet the standards it should, then it is time for a re-design. If you don’t have a site yet, the following should be helpful in preparing to create a ministry website.
Checklist for creating a ministry website
- Find an experienced design team. Do not put your image in the hands of a college student who builds websites in his spare time. Likewise do not allow a “technical” person working for you to create a website unless they have the necessary experience. Now that rule does not apply if the college student is an intern at amazon.com and the technical person used to work for a web design firm. But a good rule of thumb is that those who have little experience in developing websites will have little success in professionally presenting your vision to the web.
- He who creates his own site, has a fool for a client. Now this is not always true. I of course create my own site, but as a professional developer who has been building sites since 1996, I should be expected to do so. But even with my experience in writing xhtml, css, xml, and many others, I still have to learn new tricks and techniques weekly. The web design field is simply too broad for one person to successfully know or learn everything. It takes a team to create a successful ministry website. In 1998, developing your own website using a “for dummies” book was not only acceptable, but common. Today’s internet is not a D-I-Y environment. The rate at which the technology of web design is changing is blistering. Hire someone who does this for a living, and prides himself on keeping up with the trends.
- Who will update your content? Now just because you should not develop your own site does not mean you cannot edit its content. With today’s technology managing pages and content is in the realm of the non-technical. Enterprise level sites are often updated by people without technical skill beyond Microsoft Office. Ask your developer about Content Management capability for your site. It may cost you more up front, but in the long run you can save time and money by having interns and secretaries update the content on your site.
- Don’t get ripped off: know how much should you be paying. The price for a professional design studio to design a website will vary depending on what technology you require and how experienced the team is. Current rates for web development teams are right around $1000.00 per day of work the studio performs. This should average out around $80 - $100 per hour. Every task will not require more than one person during development, thus any price less than $75 per hour is a good deal. If the design studio is charging you on a per-contract basis and does not offer to break down the contract on a per-hour basis, you are getting ripped off. The design studio is offering to create a “cookie-cutter” website that will likely take them only a few hours to launch. Your design company should be able to show you what they accomplished hour-hour. This is the current standard.
- It is all about your goals A design team worth their oats should be asking questions about your ministry’s goals. Without a solid understanding of your goals and your vision, the website will not be able to contribute to them. When shopping for a web site you will find many offers for a site with 5 - 10 pages of content, and a slick layout. You pay for quality and experience. A good design team should be attempting to create an internet extension of your current ministry. If you cannot easily identify the ministry goals being accomplished by the proposed site, you will only end up with an e-business card. While this is easy to refer people to, it serves little purpose, and is likely not worth the amount of effort a website requires, or the money needed to develop it.
