Our church’s website recently needed an overhaul. Here are 5 things I learned when I set it back up.
1. Using the Thesis Theme for WordPress is the way to go
At first, the Thesis Theme seems a bit bland, but its power is understated. It is a framework designed for easy customization, professional layout, and incredible SEO. I formerly used professional themes that were ready-made, but they were expensive and difficult to customize, especially when the website needed a refresh.
Thesis is incredibly simple to use with its power lying in the simplicity of just two files, custom.css and custom_functions.php. There is no modifying of core files, ever. This is an incredible time saver. It also allows the website to be extremely flexible.
I have also sped up the site itself by using Thesis. Packing my site with large amount of plugins wasn’t necessarily bad, but the need for many has been eliminated with Thesis, which allows for far faster load times.
Speaking of speed, I’m not sure you can change a layout any faster than you can with Thesis while keeping consistency. Select how many columns, their width, click the save button and you are done. There is no digging through endless CSS code trying to get everything to line up perfectly. It just works.
The only thing that I don’t like about Thesis is the name of the “Save button.” The first thing I do when using it on a new site is to change its name to something more appropriate. That is the one caveat I can think of.
I would also like to give a small disclaimer. If you decide to purchase Thesis and do so by clicking on one of the links above or here, I receive a small portion that will go towards fees for this website.
2. Analytics are important
Using Google Analytics takes less than a minute to start and provides all of the nitty-gritty details of how visitors interact with your website. What page they go to first; how long they stay on each page; where they came from; and what they are looking for are just some of the things that you can see.
After you have tracked user habits for a good amount of time, it becomes obvious what areas of your site need to be adjusted. For example, if most people are looking for the church calendar and it is currently buried beneath other pages in your site, make sure that you put a link on the front page.
Analytics can also help make sure that your website is targeting the correct keywords. That is, make sure the words you use on your site are the words that people looking for your site are using to get there. This is all shown clearly and simply in the analytics.
3. Good images show professionalism
There are a few options here. You can take the pictures yourself, find someone who can, or search for good stock photos. I highly recommend investing in stock photography. There are plenty of good, free and inexpensive sites available such as EveryStockPhoto, flickr, Google image search, stock.xchng, iStockphoto, and gettyimages. Make sure that you only use images you have permission to use. Remember that a picture is worth a thousand words – so make sure the pictures on your website speak thousands of good words.
Another reason that I especially like to use stock photos on a church website instead of actual photos of church members is that they will last. What happens if a family moves or you take a great picture of a child, but the parents don’t want it published on the web? Pictures of actual pastoral staff would be appropriate, as would a gallery of pictures from a church event that was maybe only available to church members. Discretion is key.
4. A good design is wonderful, but not as important as good information
The first impression a visitor to a site will have is that of design. Make sure your design is appropriate for your site. More importantly, have some good information. Google, Facebook, Twitter, et. al. did not make it to the top because of their fancy graphics, but because of their content. Sure there is a certain design element to each of those sites, but people do not stop going to Facebook because of the new designs that are rolled out.
5. Easy navigation is crucial
Sometimes I forget that not everyone in the world thinks the way I do. When designing a site, I know where all of the information is located and how to get there because I put it there. The problem is that the site visitors don’t know where the information is unless it is in a place that makes sense to them. Yes, there is a search box, but my goal is that people never have to use it because it is clear where to find the information they are looking for. Think about navigation like a site visitor, not a web developer.
Bonus Tip – Make sure you have a good hosting service
We had been using a cheap service for over five years. But, you get what you pay for. There were many times when the server was down and our sites were unreachable. I know that this can happen from time to time, but the service provider was unreachable and eventually became rather unhelpful. I looked at the competition and realized that we were also paying far too much for our service.
So the quest was on to find a new hosting service that was reliable, affordable, ran on linux and supported open-source. I found that Dreamhost was the best option for us. I was able to find a coupon that gave a good discount, and am now able to make my own coupon codes to pass on to others. If you decide to go with Dreamhost, hopefully these can be of help to you. The promo codes are in bold.
FIFTY0FF – use this for $50 off 2 year registration
FREE4LIFEDOMAIN – use this for free lifetime domain registration
I am also considering doing some freelance work to setup a website for you or your ministry. I would be able to give a much larger discount off of your hosting. If this is of interest to you, you can contact me and we can work out any details.
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