Back to the Basics
by John Feister

(If you don’t have time to read this now, please take note of the buttons on the right. They are free for the taking, for you to use on your Web site. Click on a button to pick up the html code.)

Q U I C K S C A N

Parish Site of the Month
Worth a Click

I recently had the honor of being asked to serve on our parish Web-site team. Our parish, which for now will go unnamed, has had a site for some years, but traffic has been scant. The site just never took off, even though it featured some nice content. I’m going to work with some parishioners to redevelop the site and make it more present in the life of our parish. So I hope to keep you abreast of what happens as the site develops anew, as a practical example for you to compare with your own experience.

My first challenge was finding the house of the fellow parishioner-volunteer who is chairing our committee (our parishioners are spread over several communities). He had not been able to pin down a meeting room at the parish and was generous enough to volunteer his own space. In the future, though, we agreed to meet at the parish. Having the meeting at the parish will improve attendance and keep the program better connected to the rest of the parish. I mention this here because, as you will see, the process of planning will be key in bringing parishioners to the Web site.

There was a laptop with a high-speed Internet connection for the meeting, which is a great idea. There was a projector close by, which is another good idea if the group will be more than a few people. We spent part of the meeting looking at other Web sites, a useful idea for any Web planner, and especially for Web-ministry teams. A team member agreed to get the projectors and laptop up and working on the Internet at the parish before our next meeting. This one was borrowed, with permission, from someone’s workplace for the evening.

For several years the Web planning at our parish had been done by a parish deacon and two volunteers, both of whom had good experience in Web-site creation. The deacon, newly ordained, soon became too busy to devote much time to the site. The other two were very good with computers, and very devoted to the cause, but not very clear about what the parish wanted from a Web site. It was a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. Which comes first, the Web site or the parishioner traffic? As we talked about the hard experience of building an attractive site that few people ever used, we decided to try a different approach: We would reduce the site’s size and start building smarter.

One thing that was critical in our discussion that night was site statistics. Our parish’s current hosting company had some sort of technical problem with statistics that was unresolved. But, based on the site's history before the problem, it looked like only a few people had actually used the site. Yes, there were lots of hits, but I reminded my partners that a hit was logged for each item on a page: one for each picture, each graphic, etc. Maybe dividing hits by 10 gives one a better sense of traffic. But then you also have to consider all of the automated visits to your site by search engines and so on that count as “hits.” I recommend using “unique visits” or “page views” as benchmark numbers. Then, whichever you choose, keep track of it from one month to the next so you can mark your progress. Having good, regular statistics, we decided, would be important.

From our discussion, we agreed that there wasn’t as much traffic to the site as it seemed. We decided, in a sense, to start from scratch. We would reduce the site to a “bare bones” presentation of name and address of the parish, Mass schedule, staff names and photos. We would find a better URL (Web address)—one that parishioners could remember more easily. Meanwhile, we would seek to expand the Web ministry team from the three of us to a group of at least five parishioners from various walks of life. Then we would add one or two interactive features to the bare-bones site. Perhaps a prayer board would work. Or maybe something with Catholic Greetings. The new committee will have to consider these ideas, and how we might best promote them within our parish. As St. Francis told his followers, “Let us begin again, for up until now we have done almost nothing!” Of course, he had done plenty, but he faced the future with an open mind and heart.

I’ll keep you posted as we progress.

John Feister is Director of Electronic Media for St. Anthony Messenger Press.

Parish Site of the Month

St. Joseph Parish (Diocese of Madison)
The Web site for St. Joseph Parish not only provides the basics on Mass times, volunteer programs and registration, but also acts as an online time capsule, informing visitors of the church’s rich past in the small city of Waterloo, Wisconsin. Click “Our History” to browse an illustrated timeline of pastors since St. Joseph’s founding in 1868, complete with biographical information as well as each pastor’s contributions to the church community. In addition to attracting visitors with its content, this eye-catching site demonstrates the versatility of frame sets, which serve to organize content and maintain the site’s clean look, and utilizes a tidy JavaScript navigation menu to aid users’ search for material. An excellent example of well-planned content and style.

Worth a Click

Great Church Web Sites
The founder of this valuable Web resource has reviewed over 10,000 sites associated Catholic, Protestant and nondenominational churches and has compiled a list of “the very best.” Learn good Web site design through these examples as well as design tips (things you should and shouldn’t do) and site “makeover” stories. Also, take time to browse the forum for webmasters, and learn the importance of making sites accessible and how to improve your existing church site so that it is more user friendly for visitors with vision, motion or hearing impairment.

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