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Church Website Best Practices - Entries from December 2009

MonMondayDecDecember21st2009

Better Web Writing, Part 3: I Like Your Style

Posted Monday, December 21 2009 @ 9 AM byBryan Young Tagged Best Practices for Church Websites Web Writing 0 comments Add comment

Now that you have found your voice and learned how to beautify your text, it's important to set some rules for your content. You wouldn't teach your child to speak, dress them in their Sunday best, and then let them run amok. You shouldn't do the same to your content.

Creating rules for yourself (and others who create content) helps to guide your content in the right direction. Like bumpers on a bowling lane, content rules help keep you from throwing gutter balls. Take the steps below to set up your guidelines.

Incorporate links into the text.

Avoid making links out of just "click here." Instead, build the links into a sentence. So, if I wanted you to check out a previous blog entry, I would add a link to the underlined text in this sentence.

Be consistent.

Pick a style and go with it. Not only will this promote a clean, uniform feel on your site, but it also improves its look.

There are many established styles (AP, Chicago, MLA, APA). But you don't have to use one of these. You can create your own by making stylistic choices and utilizing that style throughout your content. What will you capitalize or abbreviate? What will you call reoccurring events? What will you name your ministries?

Here are a few decisions to get you started:

9:00 A.M. or 9 a.m. or 9am?

Colorado or Colo. or CO?

October 25 or Oct. 25th

5th Graders or fifth grade students?

Children's Ministry: Jesus and Me or Kid's Club?

small groups or Small Groups?

address your visitors as "loved ones" or "friends"?

New Believers Class or First Steps or Theology 101?

Avoid Churchisms.

Keep your articles free of overused, ambiguous words and phrases that have become like Christian jargon. Think of something fresh that visitors, churched and un-churched, easily understand. A good rule of thumb to use: if you have to explain it, get rid of it.

Start by purging your content of the following:

"food, friends, and fellowship"

"come alongside"

"lift up" as "in prayer" or "in song"

"God put it on my heart"

big theological words like: "dispensationalism," "parousia," and "transubstantiation"

SOURCES FOR THIS BLOG/FURTHER READING ON WRITING FOR THE WEB

The 10 Commandments of Internet Writing: Web Pro News
Better Writing for the Internet: Ask Oxford
50 Free Resources That Will Improve Your Writing Skills: Smashing Magazine
Copywriting 101: Copyblogger

MonMondayDecDecember14th2009

Harvest Bible Chapel - London

Posted Monday, December 14 2009 @ 9 AM byTravis Hickox Tagged Harvest Bible Chapel Harvest Skin Semi-Custom 0 comments Add comment

Harvest London has been a long standing partner in ministry with iMinistries. Immediately after creating our new Harvest Plant Package option, London contacted us and wanted to make the change. We certainly love getting to work with them every year.

MonMondayDecDecember7th2009

Better Web Writing, Part 2: Words As Pictures

Posted Monday, December 07 2009 @ 9 AM byBryan Young Tagged Best Practices for Church Websites Web Writing 0 comments Add comment

Writing Compelling Content for Your Church Website.

There's a saying that "pictures are worth a thousand words." On the Web, because attention spans are so brief and space is so important, words have to be pictures. Confused? Use the advice below to start crafting your text into word-pictures.

Care how it looks.

Web content is a visual medium. Visitors like text that looks good on the page. If a page is not attractive, why would someone stay on that page, let alone read its content? If the text is distracting, visitors move on without reading what you have to say.

Use white space to break up chunks of text to allow the reader to scan the content. Use lists, bullet points, and tables to organize your blocks of text. Use bold and italics to make important words, phrases, and headings stand out. Limit the use of all caps and exclamation points. Include images whenever possible.

Instead of this...

Help us serve those in our community by providing for their needs and DONATE TO OUR FOOD PANTRY!!
Our current needs include: cereal, instant potatoes, canned vegetables, baby formula, and pasta.
Please help us by dropping off your boxes or bags of NON-PERISHABLE foods in the Food Pantry bins in the lobby!

Do this...

Help us serve those in our community by providing for their needs. Donate to our Food Pantry.

Our current needs include:

cereal

instant potatoes

canned vegetables

baby formula

pasta

Drop off your boxes or bags of non-perishable foods in the Food Pantry bins in the lobby.

Shorter the better.

Use short, choppy sentences. Chunk these sentences together into brief paragraphs of 2-3 sentences so as not to intimidate the reader with long blocks of text.

Like a newspaper article, answer all the important questions at the beginning (who, what, when, where, why, and how) and explain in more detail as the article continues. Cut out unnecessary information, adjectives, and adverbs. Adhere to the "Keep it Simple" attitude.

Example of short and choppy:

Calvary Baptist Student Ministries:

Impact is our ministry for students in High School. Impact students are committed to a single purpose: living for the glory of God. They meet three times a month in home groups and at a large group meeting twice per month.

Xtreme for Christ is our ministry for students in Junior High. They meet each Thursday at 7:00 P.M. in the Youth Room. Each week is filled with small discussion groups, worship, and hang out time.

Jesus And Me (JAM) is our Children's Ministry. JAM meets every Sunday morning and evening during our main worship services. Each child is given a Bible-based lesson, activity, and memory verse every week.

TueTuesdayDecDecember1st2009

Harvest Bible Chapel - Calgary

Posted Tuesday, December 01 2009 @ 3 PM byTravis Hickox Tagged Harvest Bible Chapel Harvest Skin Semi-Custom 0 comments Add comment

For new Harvest Bible Chapel church plants, continuing the look and feel of founding Harvest is important to them. One easy way they can accomplish this on their church website is by customizing the Harvest skin to their ministry. Plants in Austin, Texas and Durham, Canada chose new colors, the images of their city's skyline, their pastors, and other themes, and a customized Harvest logo in their skin to give a fresh feel to an existing look.

The Harvest plant in Calgary, Alberta, chose to capitalize on its city's (and country's) love of hockey and incorporate it in its skin. Pastor Trevor Peacock selected the deep red of his city's hockey team, the Calgary Flames, and used it as his website's background color and the team's arena home as its header image. The result is a site that pops off the screen and immediately relates to its city's people.

With Peacock posting regular updates in his blog and with his Twitter feed embedded on his homepage, Calgary locals are sure to keep coming back.