My turn :-)

[Megra]

After a couple of months of work, I have finally finished our redesign. Still getting a couple of little things done, but it is up and ready for viewing. I would love feedback from everyone, if you would be so kind. I've been looking at it for so long that it all just blends together :)

www.coloradocommunity.org

By the way, does anyone know of a good company that handles streaming of sermons? We are shopping around for a new one.

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Megra,

Congratulations on your redesign. I'll look at the re-designed site in a few days and give you my impressions.

By the way, does anyone know of a good company that handles streaming of sermons? We are shopping around for a new one.Mmmm. It seems to me that most any hosting company enables customers to stream media these days, so it might be helpful if you would provide a little more detail to help us to answer the question. Please understand, I'm not being critical when I write that. I write it in light of the fact that your current streaming provider is apparently not up to par. So it might be helpful to know what capabilities you are looking for that you don't get with your current provider.

Are you wanting to stream audio only or video+audio? Do you need a company to not only stream the media but do the compression for you? Which format(s) do you want to provide? (Quicktime, Real, Windows Media, or Flash, etc.) Do you need the ability for a lot of people to view the stream at the same time? Have you considered using SMIL to synch sermon notes with the audio? Etc.

Here's one company that I've been in touch with about streaming video for a church I want to start (sometime in the future):

http://www.playstream.com/

which is the division of

http://www.vitalstream.com/

that handles smaller accounts of which churches would be an example.

Also, I've seen several church websites that use the Flash-based media player available from

http://www.sovrenti.com/

(No more worries about users having the right media player, since Flash is ubiquitous.)

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[Megra]

Thanks David, did'nt take that at all as a criticism, just good advice. We primarily stream our sermons in audio, although we are looking at branching out some and adding some video on our site. Since we have two sites, we usually need a larger hard drive space for both sermons to get up weekly. We normally have 400-500 people listen a week, sometimes up to 20 at a time, so we would need to go with an outside company who has a pretty capabilities.

We are pretty unhappy with who we have, but are locked into it for a few more months.

I'll check out your links and see what I can come up with.

Thanks!
Pam

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Pam,

I finally found time in my schedule to look at your redesigned site.

I like the design. It's a good, solid design, with information packaged in the various shadowed boxes. The colors are pleasing: blues, oranges, and browns. I like the initial letters design treatment on the home page. (The letters in small boxes.)

I plan to add your site to my database of well-designed church home pages in a few weeks, when I do my next update of the database.

Still, I would encourage you to find a way to get pictures of people on the home page. That's because a "church" is a body of people. Use Flash or some other technique to make the photo(s) of people rotate or swap out, either each time the home page is loaded, or before the user's eyes after the home page is loaded. A number of church websites use this technique effectively. (See my Seen and Noted page for examples.)

To be sure, photos of people appear in the banner (to the right side) as the user browses various areas of the site. But the general lack of photos of people on the site is a noticeable weakness. Do you not have any photographers in your church?

Since you already have service times right on the home page (a good thing to do, for sure), the link to Service Times in the Welcome Center box seems at first to be redundant. Actually, as you know, it's not. This link takes you to a page with more detailed information about your service, such as which services are interpreted for the deaf. So, this being the case, you might want to change the Service Times link in the Welcome Center box to something like "More information about service times."

I looked at the home page as if I were a "seeker". I had a hard time finding anything that would apply to me. Note that "Are you looking for a church..." in the Welcome Center box doesn't apply to me (in this role playing that I'm doing, pretending to be a seeker). On my spiritual journey, at this point in my life, I'm not even sure there is a God, much less interested in a church. So ? back to my true self now (a believer) ? I would encourage you to add features to your home page for seekers just beginning their spiritual journey to God. For example, you might add a welcome video from the pastor at top left, right above the service times. Now a welcome video can be aimed at people in different places on their spiritual journey. So a welcome video in itself doesn't solve the problem. I'm saying make and post on the home page a welcome video that specifically targets people just beginning their spiritual journey.

I really like the way the links throughout the site gain a background color on mouse-over, and the type itself changes to white. Quite effective, I think. I don't recall seeing that done anywhere else.

You need to add a "webmaster" link to the bottom of the home page. I know there is a general link to contact the church there already, but as a visitor to the site, I would feel less than confident that if I reported a problem with the website, it would be communicated to the webmaster. With a "webmaster" link, as I user I have full confidence.

Now I'll list my impressions as I explore the rest of the site:

In the "About CCC" section, all the links in dropdown menu for it under the banner exactly match (in wording) the links in the column of navigation links (at bottom left) for that section. That's a small but I think important detail. It helps to avoid confusing visitors. But I notice there's a "What to Expect" link in the dropdown menu that's not in the column of links for that section.

Reiterating what I said above, in the About CCC => Welcome section, the introductory text says,

Are you looking for a church that encourages members to grow?so they can be a blessing to others? Would you like to be part of a congregation that supports other churches and ministries ? instead of competing with them? Can you picture yourself in a fellowship that celebrates cultural and denominational differences?Again, that speaks only to people well along a spiritual path to God. That doesn't speak to unchurched people.

I like that your church has a huge focus on ministry to the deaf and hard of hearing (but see below).

You've done a really nice job with the staff listing and bios. However, I found the links (in the lefthand column) to be a little confusing. The main link (Meet the staff) takes the user to a list of the entire staff but shows only name, position, and email. The submenu links under this, e.g. Executive, Pastor, Children, etc., take the user to the bios. When I clicked on "Meet the staff" and was presented with just the list of names (in the space at bottom right), I immediately wondered what the other links are for. They're for the bios, of course. But I first thought they must be anchor links that take me to the appropriate place on the full staff listing page. So, I would encourage you to find a way to make it clear to users that the "Meet the Staff" link goes to a staff directory and the other links under it take the user to bios. In fact, I would have to say that the "Meet the Staff" link is a misnomer to begin with. I think most people would assume this link goes to bios. It would be more correct to call it "Staff directory".

The link "Upper Room" is "insider's language". Consider changing the words in this link to something that would make sense to someone who has no knowledge of your church, that is, an outsider.

Connect = > Community Groups => Aurora. Why do you make the list of groups available as a downloadable pdf? It's a one-page list of names and phone numbers. Seems like this could as easily be posted right on the website.

Resources => Listen to sermons. Several things surprise and disappoint me about this section. First, if the user wants to listen to a sermon, he or she ends up in a new browser window that looks like the rest of your site, but is absent the navigation links under the banner. That's probably because your downloads are handled by an outside vendor (Christianity.com). Let me encourage you to make this clear upfront to users, the fact that users are being taken offsite. (Imagine how confused a blind person would be, tabbing through the site ? after clicking the "Listen to sermons" link ? trying to find the non-existent navigation bar so as to browse the rest of the site.)

Further, while I've seen other churches charge for CD copies of sermons (to cover cost of the media and shipping), I don't think I've seen any other church charge for MP3s of sermons. I'm curious to know the reasoning behind that, and if you get a lot of buyers. Now to be sure, visitors to your site can listen to sermons for free in Real or Windows Media formats, but since software such as Cleaner Pro can output files in multiple compressed formats (with no additional work on the part of the user), it's not like it cost you any more to make the MP3s. It seems to me that as part of attracting unchurched people to your church, you would want to make the highest quality files (MP3s) available to them without the barrier of having to purchase them. (In fact, why not take the next step and podcast the sermons?)

Further, for a church with a great emphasis on ministry to the deaf and hard of hearing, I'm surprised that (as far as I can tell) text versions of sermons are not available. Many churches provide both audio and text versions of sermons on their website.

All the dropdown menus under the banner have submenus (of course; that's what a dropdown menu is). However, I see a few instances of sub-submenus. That's OK, per se, but I am left curious as to why only a few of the submenus were given the sub-submenu treatment, when in fact just about all of submenus (that is, different areas of the site) could be given this treatment.

Summing up: you've achieved a well-design site with well-organized structure (in light of the many many ministries available). However, the lack of photos of people is disappointing. Finally, and I think most serious of all, your site is a believer's site with very little to offer someone who's just starting their spiritual journey toward God. It could be that that's exactly what you set out to do, in which case you've succeeded well. However, my belief (which not everybody shares) is that church websites should be evangelistic in nature.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[Megra]

Thank you SO MUCH for such a detailed analysis - I love to get feedback! So many good points that are helping tremendously.

Thanks are a bit crazy right now, so I haven't had a chance to really analysis everything you mentioned, but I am going to in the next week. Just wanted to say thanks, it is much appreciated!

[David Gillaspey]

Thank you SO MUCH for such a detailed analysis - I love to get feedback!You're welcome!

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites