The Internet Evangelism Coalition has tweaked and relaunched their church website assessment tool. The new and improved test is very robust with 55 questions. It also includes a free customized report designed to help each church develop strategies to better reach their community.
Each question also comes with tips explaining the importance of each area. A few of my favorite tips are:
- “Splash pages” are intensely irritating to users, and a percentage will never bother to click through. Equally annoying are websites that automatically play music when the visitor arrives at the homepage.
- Poor spelling, grammar, or punctuation will reduce the credibility of any website. And all written text should be checked and revised by someone other than the writer. It is frequently possible to reduce word-count by 25% or more.
- Interior shots will de-mystify and familiarize the church building to outsiders.
- Many people report the experience of emailing a church and never hearing back. If you can’t respond to emails quickly, maybe you should not offer email links on your website!
Web designers may have differing opinions on the importance of each of the 55 areas, but over all, it is an exceptionally useful tool.
FYI: Internet Evangelism Day is April 27th this year.
Thanks for this, I have just released a church website, so I wonder how I went against this list.
The four you have written are spot on!
Ill now look and see what the other 51 are like…
[...] Church Website Site Assessment Tool [...]
It’s a little ironic that there is an incomplete word in your second bullet point. You say “And all written text should be checked and revised by someone other than the write.” I believe you mean ‘writer’.
Thanks for catching the typo, Jon!
I guess I need to get someone to check and revise my writing, especially during late night blogging.
As the coordinator for IE Day, thanks Kent, for mentioning this.
Feedback on improving this tool will be gratefully received at any level - there’s a contact link on the page.
Blessings
Tony
[...] Every couple weeks I get an email from someone asking me to check out their new church website. Most of the time they only want to show it off and receive a pat on the back for their hard work, but sometimes they ask for feedback, too. I’m certainly no church web-design expert, but I put together a list of what I think should encompass a good church website, not that a site should overwhelm visitors with everything on this list, but that this be a reference point for new ideas. If you’d like to evaluate your church’s website, here’s a tool to help you do so (found via churchrelevance.com) [...]
[...] If you’d like to evaluate your church’s website, here’s a tool to help you do so (found via churchrelevance.com) [...]