4 Questions to Improve Your Church Website's Usability

Want to improve your church website's user experience (UX) and don't know where to begin? Start with by asking yourself these four questions.

1. "Is There Too Much Stuff?"

"It's all about removing the unnecessary."
- Jonathan Ive, Senior VP of Industrial Design at Apple

We've already talked about how removing superfluous features and content can make it easier for your visitors to find what they're looking for. Help your users out by making the most-asked-for information front-and-center. You don't want your website to end up looking like the stop sign in the video below.

2. "Do Users Have To Think?"

This step, taken from Steve Krug's UX opus, Don't Make Me Think, calls you to help make the decisions users have to make as easy as possible. It only takes seconds of indecision before users become frustrated, so don't press you luck by trying to be cute with "creative" menu titles, for example.

Think like your user would think when creating your website navigation. Where would Average Joe look for your doctrinal statement? What would Jane Doe name your Contact page?

3. "Are My Users Happy?"

“Don’t lose sight of user delight.”
- Mark Pincus, founder of Zynga

Just because your website is primarily a storehouse of information doesn't mean you can't seek to make your users joyfully satisfied. Just making it easy to find the information they want can make your users pleased, but posting content that's a step above the usual will get them excited and keep them wanting more.

Why not try ...

• Posting video announcements instead of your weekly bulletin
• Adding web-only content from your pastor or church leaders
• Creating blog posts that ask engaging questions and encourage comments
• Showing your weekly service online

4. "Do I Make a Good First Impression?"

"We’re psychologically hardwired to trust beautiful people, and the same goes for websites."
- Dr. Brent Coker, University of Melbourne

In a new University of Melbourne study, Dr. Brent Coker found that users' trust in a website depends heavily on its visual appeal. This appeal starts with your home page (or other landing pages, if you have them). An attractive church website home page is clean, colorful, organized intuitively, and expresses what your church stands for.

• Check out Visual Swirl's list of 60 Best Church Website Designs for inspiration
  (iMinistries' own Harvest Oakville is on the list)

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Learn more about UX

Five Low-Hanging UX Tips - UX Magazine
6 Disciplines For Improving Church Website UX - iMinistries Blog
Your Church Website's Reservoir of Goodwill (and 3 Ways to Keep it Full) - iMinistries Blog
3 Things to Remove to Improve Church Website User Experience - iMinistries Blog
4 Questions You Should Answer on Your Church Website's Home Page - iMinistries Blog