One of my favorite TV shows is Kitchen Nightmares, where world-renowned chef Gordon Ramsay visits failing restaurants and helps them turn their businesses around.
He always uses the same steps to eliminate their weaknesses, highlight their strengths, and streamline their processes. The same steps can be followed to improve your website ... without all the screaming or colorful language.
Step 1: Simplify Your Menu
Most of the restaurants on Kitchen Nightmares have one thing in common: large, cluttered menus. Ramsay strips the menu down to the basics and concentrates on preparing a handful of signature dishes. The less dishes chefs have to know, the better they can prepare those dishes. Instead of 40 mediocre dishes, the restaurant focuses on 10 fantastic dishes.
Your website menu is no different. The less choices your website visitor has to make, the better they can find and use the information they want.
Start by stripping down your menu (and your site's content) to what's absolutely necessary. Build upon the foundation of these pages:
- About
- Contact
- Location
- What We Believe/Our Mission
- News and Events
Step 2: Identify With Your Customers
In the restaurant's new menu dishes, Ramsay always includes meals that identify with the neighboring community. In ocean-side Massachusetts, this included locally caught seafood. In hip Los Angeles, he recommended brick oven pizzas (a real crowd-pleaser). And in a New York community aching for a steakhouse, Ramsey made one out of a bankrupt bistro.
The lesson here is simple. Give your website visitors what they want.
- If they come to your site wanting to know how they can get involved in your ministry, tell them.
- If they want a way to give to your ministry, let them.
- If they want to interact with your ministry, provide a way for them to do so through a blog or other media.
Step 3: Highlight Your Strengths
Gordon Ramsay has a knack for figuring out what the restaurant is best at and finding a way to bring it to the forefront. Some restaurants have excellent chefs who are stuck making uninspired dishes. Others have managers who relate well with people, but are assigned to menial tasks by themselves. Instead of spending all his time harping on the bad, Ramsey is a master at shifting things so the good shines through.
If your ministry has powerful teaching, you should be promoting it through podcasts and videos and through banners and ads on your home page. If instead your strength is connecting people with volunteer opportunities, this should be front and center. Your website visitors shouldn't have to wonder what your ministry is all about.
Step 4: Keep it Clean
A clean restaurant is a successful restaurant. And we're not just talking about shiny ovens and mopped floors. Efficiency is required for any business to be successful, but this is more true for food service. Waiters must be able to juggle multiple tables. Chefs have to make delicious meals to order, and quickly. And managers must support both so that everything runs smoothly.
The same can be said for your website. What good is information if your visitors can't find it?
A tightened, simplified menu will help organize your content. But what about pages that don't fall directly under your menu headings? Links can act as a "restaurant manager" for your content. Embed links to other pages in your main pages, and add ads or banners that entice your visitors to explore your website, easily and without frustration.
Step 5: Listen to Criticism and Seek Advice
Gordon Ramsay is probably most well-known for the way in which he interacts with the participants of Kitchen Nightmares and his other show, Hell's Kitchen. He doesn't back down from confrontation. He yells, uses obscenities liberally, and tells it like it is. He can get away with this, of course, because he knows what he's talking about. He's done it before, and it works. For those who take his harsh criticism and implement his advice, their businesses are improved dramatically.
Most of us don't like to hear when we fall short. But website administrators should invite criticism from their website visitors. Your site is for them, after all. Set up a feedback form on your website and listen to what your users have to say. What if they have different views as to what's most important than you do?
You should also welcome advice from experts who have built effective websites. Make it a goal to read books and blogs (like this one) that help you make your website better. Then take their advice and put it into practice.
More resources for improving your ministry website
Better Web Writing - iMinistries Blog
Your About Us Page: Beginning the Conversation - iMinistries Blog