Build a Website – Part Three
Posted on September 19, 2009
Part 3 is all about Content Creation. Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here.
As project lead I was quite happy that this burden wasn’t on me. However it was down to me to drive the provision of it and to keep advising, suggesting, etc. Of course the type of site and target audience really drives the content. In our case the site I documented this process for was (another story for another time) our main church website.
The boss man wanted to effectively transplant our monthly newsletter; notices; calendar and his monthly message to the web. He also wanted it to be a place to publicly place our Church history along with items about why we believe what we believe and other associated, relevant to our Church information. The trouble with most of the documents produced is that they were full of what I’d call “Christianeese” and to a non-Church person they were dry and very boring.
So with some trepidation I set out, along with a contact, to de-mystify the documents. Along with this was a need to categorise the data so that it could be placed on the website. When first we started the project I spoke at some length with my pastor about the need to ‘categorise’ the data he wanted on the site and to have an idea of what headings it should come under. I pointed him at resources such as menu layout study and Layout Cookbook so that he could see what was normal and what was acceptable. Little did I realise my error at the time but it was fortunately easily fixed. Within a few weeks I had been provided with raw data and no less than 14 main menu headings, along with many more sub headings – a potential nightmare for any designer, let alone the visual impact.
Thankfully we whittled this down to 6 major headings that we now have. We did this by a process of categorising the data and identifying where it could be placed.
Along with creating the content, you have to consider at whom it is aimed. This was a lot easier to argue the case that any (and yes I believe this should hold true for all) church site should target three distinct demographics. These are:
- The church membership / attendees
- Other Christians visiting or moving into the area
- Seekers
How one does this is not easy but a lot of it has to be driven by talk. In our case it was easy to persuade the pastor that just doing a website for the church would make it a relatively static site and would defeat the main object of the web (as I see it) to be interactive. And here, interactivity doesn’t mean lots of buttons to press or things to do – simply that it draws in the attention of the reader and persuades them to return. Add to this the fact that we’ve had visitors over the years that told the pastor by email / chat / etc that they had found it really difficult to know when / where our services were and that our website was dreadful (I confess, this last was my fault) but I did it so that we had something and to show the pastor how bad a static content site can be.
Anyway, this talk from outsiders finally persuaded the pastor that we needed to do something about our online presence.
Now that this hurdle was over I hammered home the need to ensure the site was not static. Now you may have an easier time of this than I, but whilst my pastor is a happy user of the internet (surfing and emails) and despite being a few years younger than I; he has publically stated on more than one occasion that you’ll “never find him on facebook, myspace or similar locales”.
Thankfully a few web searches produced lots of articles and ideas that I was able to forward to him to get his thought processes running. Little things like telling him the stuffy (they’re not, but it served a purpose) old CofE use twitter to run their annual ‘Love Life Live Lent‘ event and suddenly he’s thinking perhaps I should involve my self more.
For our part, interactive is going to come down to regular and changing content especially on the homepage. So transplanting his monthly magazine article to the web is one; persuading him to write more often is another; remembering to get any flyers designed for events into a web based graphic to go on our front page; to ensure that (as an example) the children’s page has regular updates and with content suitable to all ages; add pictures and graphics where appropriate and change them oin a regular basis. In fact anything that makes me, you or someone else keep returning.
I’m going to stop now as I could keep driving the nail home but want to leave you still breathing. In the final part of this series I intend to cover dealing with leadership issues; employing third parties and find some form of conclusion.
In the meantime – should you have any questions or wnat to continue discussing this then do pop over to the CTM Forum and have your say.
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