1. User Understanding

• In Practice
  If your ministry members are voracious readers, start writing a blog with "inside information" on what your ministry is up to. If they skew more young and tech-savvy, post some videos and integrate your social media feeds to keep them connected.

2. Measurement

• In Practice
  Set up a simple user test in your church lobby and grab some volunteers on Sunday morning. Give them a few tasks to complete on your website, then record the process. Was it easy or difficult? Did they get frustrated or give up? Fix the issues that several people came across.

3. Governance

• In practice
  Establish your authority over web content. Create a Web Standards Guide and use it to keep your website's content at a high quality level. Hold regular content audits to make sure content is up-to-date and relevant.

4. Strategy

• In Practice
  Write down your ministry's goals and distinctives. How will your website meet these goals? Formulate your content strategy and only post content that follows it.

5. Design

• In practice
  Use banners, ads, images, and quicklinks on your home page to direct users to the pages they are most interested in.

6. Culture

• In practice
  Make these disciplines fun, interactive, and with the user in the forefront of your mind. Have quarterly "Web Summits" where you brainstorm new ideas, re-emphasize your disciplines, hold user testing, and audit content together.

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Learn more about UX

I read a lot of blogs and books on how to create great websites, but few have been so immediately impactful to me as Steve Krug's usability tome, Don't Make Me Think. It is often regarded as THE book on making websites easy for users to find what they want. Below is a nugget of truth from this book.

Three downsides to asking for more than you need

1. It tends to keep you from getting real data.

"As soon as people realize you're asking for more than you need, they feel completely justified in lying to you. I often tell my clients that e-mail addresses are like heroin to marketing people, so addictive that it doesn't strike them as odd that 10% of their subscribers happen to be named 'Barney Rubble.'" - Krug

2. You get fewer completed forms.

"The formula is simple: the less data you ask for, the more submissions you'll get. People tend to be in an enormous hurry on the web, and if the form looks even a little bit longer than they expect, many just won't bother." - Krug

3. It makes you look bad.

"People who really want your newsletter may just through hoops to get it, but make no mistake, it will diminish their impression of you while they're doing it. On the other hand, if you only ask for the info you need, you've established a relationship with them you can get more data later in subsequent exchanges." - Krug

Three guidelines for your online forms

1. Only make me provide what you need to complete this transaction.

You only need my name and e-mail address to send me a newsletter. So only ask for that.

2. Don't ask for a lot of optional information.

The sight of a lot of empty fields can be overwhelming. The less you ask me to fill in, the more I actually will.

3. Show me the value of giving you my info.

Tell me exactly what I'll get by registering. Show me a sample newsletter. Answer your Contact Us inquiries quickly. Explain where your user's donations are going.

LEARN MORE ABOUT UX