Logos asks: How do you manage your church web site?
If you have any involvement with your church web site, I'd appreciate your taking our survey:
https://www.logos.com/usersurvey/churchwebsites
I'm particularly interested to know if you think of the site as just a place for 'about us' information, directions and service times, or if you'd like to see more integration of Bible content, study guides, etc. into the site.
Please feel free to comment here -- and please take the short survey!
Thanks!
-- Bob
Comments
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I took the survey. It made me realize how poor our website actually was. [:$] but at least we have one. Primarily it currently is more of a glorified on-line brochure although it could be so much more.
Is Logos considering getting into hosting church websites or just to gather information about how Logos could support existing websites?
Using adventure and community to challenge young people to continually say "yes" to God
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As pastor of our church & web master of its website, there's a constant tension between desire to share & desire to protect our member families.
Church members would like to see pictures, especially of the kids. But we also want to protect the kids from predators who also use the internet.
Members would like to communicate with other members, but we also want to shield the church from those who by "insider knowledge of the membership" would represent themselves as insiders to others outside the membership, to the detriment of individual members or the body.
We want to attract visitors via an "open" feel (no login), but don't want to expose our membership to marketing or worse.
In the end, we've incorporated info from only the top half of potential services in your survey.
I'm not happy with the result, but short of having a member login area (which members don't want)I don't think there's a way to make it a lot better.
Grace & Peace,
Bill
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Thanks for the feedback (and to those who took the survey!).
BillS said:I'm not happy with the result, but short of having a member login area (which members don't want)I don't think there's a way to make it a lot better.
Why don't you want a member login area? is it the hassle and 'one more account' problem?
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Bob Pritchett said:
Why don't you want a member login area? is it the hassle and 'one more account' problem?
From my perspective...
For visitors: I want an extremely low barrier to entry. I want them to get all the info they need quickly and contact a real human being rather than stay on a website.
For the congregation: I'm doing everything I can to pry the smart phone out of my congregation's collective hand so they look up and interact for real. I want my congregation's time and energy focused on the works of ministry. Anything that isn't real-world ministry or relationship-building is time wasted. I want my church website to be a resource (download sermons, look at the calendar, give, sign up to volunteer, etc) but I want it to be quickly navigated and quickly left for real-world ministry.
Both of these user bases are served best by a very simple web platform.
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I've answered the survey, but there wasn't any room for comments.
We use our website for three main things: to communicate info for prospective visitors, to provide upcoming service info and sermon recordings/summaries for members/congregants (and others across the globe listen to our sermons), and to manage our volunteer schedule. We could do more with it, we just haven't yet. I'd like to see us have discussions online there, as an extension of the discussions we have during the service after the sermon. We have tried that before, but people in our congregation are not that into engaging online. (We already have both a Facebook group and a Google+ group and even though a number of people joined them, nobody posts anything except me and our webmaster, and nobody comments on our posts.) We also have a blog where we post sermon summaries, and we tried to get people interested in commenting on the blog posts as a way of continuing the discussions after Sundays, but that went over like a lead balloon.
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Bruce Dunning said:
It made me realize how poor our website actually was.
but at least we have one. Primarily it currently is more of a glorified on-line brochure although it could be so much more.When I was a pastor, I wanted a great web site. Now that I write web software for a living, I'm frustrated with most web sites churches put up. I know it can be an expensive thing, but even if churches just put up a "brochure", they should at least keep information up to date. Service times that haven't been current in years (or that are temporarily suspended for Father's Day -- yes, I ran in to this one after getting the family ready and driving all the way out there) can really, really alienate potential visitors. Sometimes, therefore, they can do more harm than good.
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Lew Worthington said:
I know it can be an expensive thing, but even if churches just put up a "brochure", they should at least keep information up to date.
I fully agree with you. If churches want to reach out to new people they must have up-to-date information.
Using adventure and community to challenge young people to continually say "yes" to God
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We currently have a very basic website aimed at providing potential visitors with key information about us: service times, address, phone numbers, etc.
The only part of our website that a regular attender would really find much value in is our sermon audio, where they can listen to past recordings.
I would love to see us find other ways to use the site to make it more valuable as a tool for our current attenders. Your mention of integrated Bible study tools sounds interesting. I can see how integrating some of the features that can be accessed through a Faithlife group directly into our website could be a great thing. As it is, trying to get our folks to join a Faithlife group is not too easy because it means one more page and one more user account, etc.
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