Website Essentials: the key ingredients and getting started
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The document outlines essential elements for creating a successful website, emphasizing design, usability, and understanding the audience. Key factors include visual appeal, content relevance, search engine optimization (SEO), and fostering conversation. It also provides guidance on getting started with selecting domain names, hosting, and website platforms.
Website Essentials: the key ingredients and getting started
- 1. Website Essentials: Key ingredients and getting started
- 4. The history of the world wide web in three minutes! Macintosh 128 vector: http://vector.me/browse/214898/apple_macintosh_128k
- 6. Web 2.0 (2004 onwards)
- 7. Web 3.0 (as we speak)
- 9. What ingredients make a good website?
- 10. Design Usability and functionality Understanding your audience Visual appeal Less is more Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- 11. Content • • • • • Understanding your audience Open to conversation Tone Less is more SEO
- 12. Design DESIGN
- 13. “Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works.” – Steve Jobs
- 14. 1. Usability and functionality Source: http://www.usability.gov/what-and-why/user-experience.html
- 18. Understanding your audience Site owner Site user • Who are we building the • Who is actually using the site for? site? • What do we think the • What are they using the site is for? site for? • What do we want to tell • What do they want to them? find out?
- 20. Visual appeal • Make use of white space to draw the eye • Avoid unneccesary gimmicks and widgets • Use colours & typography wisely: either harmonise or contrast • Prefer clarity over cleverness • Make the layout and the look logical • Consistent: build your own box
- 23. Less is more
- 24. Search Engine Optimisation Intro to SEO: http://youtu.be/hF515-0Tduk
- 25. Content
- 26. Understanding your audience • Use language that resonates with them • Make your content relevant to them • Targeting to ensure maximum receptivity and engagement
- 27. Their top 5 priorities (probably): • • • • • “Where do you meet?” “When do you meet?” “What happens to my kids?” “Are you weird?” “What are you really like?” Source: http://www.churchinsight.com/Articles/356675/5_Things_stopping_visitors_coming.aspx
- 30. Tone • • • • Don’t be afraid! Writing for the web is a different genre Make space for conversation Prefer shorter words and shorter sentences
- 32. Less is more • • • • • Keep content relevant Avoid bloat Archive things that are out of date Conversation space vs. library “Be church, online” – create spaces for God
- 34. SEO • Be authentic • Search engines now read ‘human speak’ • If your content is engaging, and is active (eg people are clicking on things) search engines will recognise this and rank your site higher
- 36. Getting Started
- 37. Free Options
- 38. Pay Options • • • • • • iChurch Church Edit Church123 Church Insight Local companies Large commercial companies
- 39. Choosing a Package: 1. A domain name (eg http://yourchurch.com) 2. A web host 3. A website platform and template (ie the programme you use to build the site and the site template you use to display the site) 4. Support
- 40. Website Essentials: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Easy to maintain and update Easy to navigate Provides a good user experience Responsive (can be displayed on different sized devices) Customisable Interactive Search Engine friendly Attractive
- 41. Website Essentials (Lawrence Moore and Rebecca Gudgeon) http://www.slideshare.net/TheWindermereCentre/website-essentialsthe-key-ingredients-and-getting-started-presentation-for-cnmac13 http://ichurch.urc.org.uk
Editor's Notes
- #6: A ‘noticeboard in cyberspace’ Read-only‘Look but don’t touch’Expanding the ‘broadcasting range’
- #7: Playtime!Interactive CollaborativeSocialUser-driven
- #8: Connections and relationshipsThe Semantic Web (Tim Berners-Lee)Recognises connections (eg my email, FaceBook, Twitter, website)Recognises connections to other usersFocus on building relationshipsSee in R’s facebook feed: Facebook no longer just lets me stay in touch with my friends – it can predict who I might like to be friends with, and make a good guess at where I went to university etc, based on the info it’s collected on me – and target ads it thinks I might like egweebly, cos I talk a lot about websites! And markeing software – oh, and it thinks I might like to play farmville ;)
- #10: Important not to try to separate them out – design and content are symbiotic
- #15: User Experience: Peter Morville’s User Experience Honeycomb – relates to design AND to content as the two are symbiotic“Being human online”MOBILE: please keep up to date – so many people access sites via mobile devices (currently almost 20% globally and rising rapidly), it’s essential to have a responsive site these days – otherwise will lose a lot of traffic
- #16: NavigationEtiquette and expectations (The Box)Weird vs. innovative
- #17: Navigation as you would expect – relatively easy to work out where to look for things
- #18: Navigation not as you would expect – “Home” is at the right hand side of the nav bar – why?
- #19: Audiencing is all about asking the right questions - important to be aware of the difference between what WE think and what our potential site users think (and of the difference between the site users we write for vs. the site users who actually visit our site)
- #20: Big site with lots of different types of users – hard to please all (best to try not to?)Here, “Healing Ministry” is listed under “Mission” rather than under “Ministry” – this probably makes no sense to anyone outside of the URC (and little sense to many in the URC too!)
- #21: White space attracts far more than noise doesKeep distractions to a minimum – the more noise the lower the engagement levels, as people tend to ‘zone out’If in doubt, harmonise colour & type – it’s much safer. Many site templates will set this up for you, but try not to ‘break’ the look!People respond much more directly to things that they understand clearly. Web attention span is VV short (Google reckon a) anything over 3 seconds load time is way too long, and b) shaving just 0.1 seconds off load time will noticeably increase engagement) – think – just 0.1 of a second to grab someone’s attention!Logical layout – look to chime with content (eg no swirly writing or floral images on a space site; no robot writing or neon colours on a site about victorians)Whatever you do – keep it consistent: once people ‘learn’ your site, how to read your home page, don’t make them lost again on the next page
- #22: Hillsong – bottom of homepage (v attractive site, a lot of which doesn’t work in a screen grab – need to be able to scroll)Makes use of lots of white spaceColour picks out highlightsAttractive and appealingFonts unobtrusiveNavigation present and visible (despite having scrolled down to bottom) but still not in the way of either look or content
- #23: Works ‘bettter’ live than in grab too – has a widget that plays country music to you while you lookHas scrolling slider of pictures which seem to be entirely unrelated to anythingNavigation(s!) make little senseWhat does this tell you? Does it make you want to look at the site longer (regardless of how you think you might feel about the content)?
- #24: Zen and the art of website buidingSeth Godin talks about the “connection economy”: scarcity creates value. Abundant now (in ways they never have been before): information, technology. Scarce now (in ways they never have been before): human connection; time SO value is in respecting the pulls on people’s time and on helping to find them a way through the clutter to what they want/crave – the humanity in it all; the relationshipBaptist site has clear, stripped back navigation and overall look – making it easier for at least two of their audiences: 1) new visitors – no ‘in’ stuff or jargon to distract, and 2) existing users – who know where to look for what they want, will be glad they don’t need to fight their way through lots of ‘tourist’ stuff to get there
- #25: “Findability” – a site’s value; credibility; desirability; usefulness etc (as per Morville’s honeycomb) grows with its findability. If no-one’s looking at it, it’s silent (tree falling in the woods)The power of Google – almost all traffic gets to sites through search engines now, very few people actually type in the URL (which is why address bars are search bars now) so SEO does matter BUT it isn’t a mysterious dark art with secret rules – it’s common sense; it’s “being human online” There is no need to set up online vs. “Real Life” dichotomy – the internet is built on connection and on ‘being human’ these days. Please let churches be part of growing that rather than left behind ignoring it!Crucial to think about SEO right at the beginning of the design process: though will cover it more in “Content”, SEO strategy is going to inform design decisions eg navigation labels; audience targeting; link building. It’s part of pitching a site correctly.
- #27: This is when it becomes important to have asked the right questions earlier and worked out exactly who will be using your site and what they will want from itWhy are you not online yet? What’s been holding you back?
- #29: Anglican site ‘Our Faith’ page – does what it says on the tin (and doesn’t try to do lots of other things at the same time)Answers the questions ‘what are you really like?’, ‘are you weird?’ in clear and non-offensive ways
- #30: Where human connection is of the highest value, then conversation becomes the currency of the connection economyInteraction is the new paradigm: engagement vs. broadcastLetting go of control: stop trying to dictate how people receive your content (that’s impossible anyway), and then trust God – creating online spaces where God can show up (“being church online”)
- #33: Relevant to what you are doing and to your audienceLess is still more!Activity on site = happy Google-botsGod-space vs. full text of Bible in every language
- #34: This is the “E” section of the historical church membership roll for this church, showing members from 1924…..(filed under ‘about this church’)Point out that it’s one of our sites, and we’re currently working with them to strip it back a bit!
- #36: Very small amount of text – written in real English humanspeak – targeted to relevant audience – naturally packed full of relevant keywords (green highlights)What would you be Googling if you were looking to organise a team training event? How relevant are the keywords? Also useful to have some cross-fertilising keywords in there eg “accommodation”; “Carver United Reformed Church” – pick up people not looking for this aspect of our work but can bring them into our site to then be redirected to the relevant page – esp. as navigation is direct and is always present
- #38: Free is usually the option that requires the most expertise – or willingness to learn:Push Wordpress.com – explain why WP is so great –other blogging platform (use stdavidsuniting as example?)- Specific ones for building limited free websites egWix?- The space between websites & social media egSquidoo?
- #40: Re support – common issues in churches are around not having a resident expert – check the level of support included in a package