• A Good Housewife

    Housewife This came up at Married Life tonight. I thought it was funny enough to share.

    Have things changed since 1955?

  • IMC #12: Extreme makeover website edition

    Looking at this from a internet ministry perspective.

    Criteria for evaluating websites…

    • Don’t care about data architecture
    • Content
    • Design
    • Usability
    • SEO
    • Something else you want looked at…

    Victim #1 Center for Student Missions

    • Conversion goal isn’t all that clear.
    • Probably too much navigation
    • Replace all that navigation with a paragraph explaining your conversion
    • Nice use of text link navigation at the bottom
    • Need a cue for the rollover map

    Victim #2 Intervarsity Corporate site

    • Small text is nuts
    • Calls it "one of the worst sites I’ve ever seen"
    • Limit the choices
    • Make the "find a chapter" thing bigger
    • Think about building a site map into the navigation

    Victim #3 Sports Spectrum

    • UNC colors is a nice touch, popular team colors
    • Nice design
    • Some of the boxes are tough on the eye, not offset enough
    • Great use of red for navigation

    Victim #4 Act of Grace Radio

    • Move logo and text under it to the footer
    • Swoosh design is 1995 look
    • Microphone icons are tough, maybe a little sloppy
    • Top navigation is simple, easy
    • Remove the white "welcome to actofgraceradio.net."
    • It does look, overall, very good.
    • Needs Podcast, RSS feeds, player on home page, etc

    Victim #5 Destino Community

    • Looks like a porn site
    • Red/black is "like 1984"
    • Serif fonts are bad
    • All the font sizes should match
    • Nice use of YouTube… just make sure you link back to your site from YouTube
    • Stick with colors in fonts… adding yellow/orange is a weird addition in about page

    Victim #6 Prophecy Today

    • Looks like a news site
    • Ditch the scrolling text
    • Text is packed a little too tightly
    • Create a little more white space
    • No "who is Jimmy" link even though he’s mentioned a lot

    This was actually a lot of fun. The folks who volunteered their sites were quite brave.

  • IMC #11: Online Communities

    Paul Kulp
    Online Communities

    Is anyone tired about talking about "Community" online?

    We are tired about it because we don’t have a clear definition of what it is?

    Community is a good thing:

    • People helping people
    • Connections
    • Belonging

    Every day miracles
    Online community is a miracle! God makes it happen.

    Community is all about people

    • groups, gaggles, schools, cabals, swarms, throngs & mobs
    • If you build it… installing a forum + ? = COMMUNITY
    • Phase 1 (Collect people)
    • Phase 2 (?)
    • Phase 3 (Profit)
       

    Offline community example:

    • Phase 1: build perfect worship center
    • Phase 2: ?
    • Phase 3: Filled with people!

    Easy, right?

    Soul Bucks

    • Stories are the currency of online ministry.
    • You need "soul bucks" to justify your ministry
    • How else do you know you’re doing it right?
    • Provide great info from users
    • In order to get this… practice good story collection
    • People like to tell stories…
    • Can you have too many?
    • Use it as an "umph" to launch a new feature.
    • Are you actively soliciting stories?
    • Are you keeping them?
    • Do you keep a story book?

    Show us your web face

    • How do people look at your site?
    • Is it a storefront?
    • Is it a billboard?
    • Is it a bullhorn?
    • Is it a pulpit?
    • Is it a line-up… people backed up to be served?
    • What would a community site really look like? (People helping people)
    • What would it look like as a community center? (People coming together to get fed)
    • If you want to see community on your website, start seeing your website as a community.

    A group of another kind
    Your website hosts dozens of people groups… common place… common interests…. common interaction.

    • Faces- Joe, Frank, Sally are regulars. The 37 different people subscribed to your podcast. 3500 people on your email list. 15 blogs that link to your site.
    • Outlines- 30-35 yo’s that look at your site. Mac visitors. Spanish visitors.
    • Shadows– People searching "weird terms" Show me something interesting!

    You gotta look around
    Offline we are good at this. Online we stink at it.

    Use tools

    • Stats analysis
    • Feedback
    • Questionnaires
    • Polls
    • Stories

    What is the shape of your web community?
    Who is visiting?

    • Repeat visitors
    • Search engines
    • Forum users
    • RSS readers
    • Mailing lists
    • IBLs (in-bound link)

    Do you know your peeps?

    • Little plastic people to play with (really! he gave us toys!

    Run with the herd

    • What do groups do? Faces go where they are served.
    • Where do they go? Where do people in a demographic go?
    • When people leave… you’ve stopped providing the thing they liked… they don’t fit. So poof they are gone.
    • Where do they go from here? (Shadows go where they are seeking)

    Keep reminders

    • Figure out a way to keep faces in front of you…

    Think with your community

    • Suppose: You are www.discipleship101.com
    • New game plan… you became www.find-jesus.com
    • Do we just forward users?
    • Do we turn it off?
    • Do we "strangle" it?

    People don’t expect an organization to just disappear.

    Describe the person you wish were finding your website…. build some content/design for that.

  • IMC #10: Impressions of the conference

    I don’t want to be critical… but there is something that hasn’t jived well with me. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of "brand new" stuff. I don’t know if I’m just way ahead of the typical Gospelcom folks… but man, I’m not getting a ton of new ideas.

    What I am getting, and the reason this is a good thing to come to for me… it’s a great networking opportunity.

  • IMC #9 Design is credibility

    Kent Shaffer
    Bombay Creative

    If people don’t know you, the only thing they can go off of is your design.

    Bob_tim_miami
    Bob vs. Tim (Which is which in the picture to the left?)
    These types of effects of category labels on lower-level perception are becoming a concern for researchers in cognitive and social psychology because their existence suggest that we may not ever be able to see what’s actually there but will always be influenced by what we expect to see.

    Potential users have perceptions about who you are based on things that you can’t control. And they way you can change perceptions is to begin a relationship. But you can’t get a relationship (with a website) without a great first impression. In comes design.

    Zours_smallThe reason people "buy" a product is 60% color. Aesthetics matter greatly. Make sure that your "product" is marketable. Make sure your site solves the question they are asking… "I have this problem, how can this church/service/ministry/product help me?"

    Judging Websites
    If you can snare people with attractive design, they are more likely to overlook minor faults. People enjoy being right…. so people will continue to use a website that gave them a good first impression. It helps "prove" that they are right.

    Potential readers decide whether or not to stay on your site in 50 milliseconds    . (Holy cow, this is crazy!)

    Yesterday’s best is today’s bad.     That’s how quickly our perceptions of things change.

    90% of sales are for an emotional reason. How does that effect your web design?

    #1 Who am I?
    Your design should be a reflection of your brand.

    1. why was your ministry created
    2. what is your ministries mission
    3. who are you called to reach?
    4. rank your taget audience in order of importance…
    5. Dang, he went too fast!

    If you could communicate a single message about your ministry, what would it be?

    A good logo is distinctive, memorable, timeless, aesthetically pleasing, scalable, simple, and looks good in color and grayscale.

    Kent’s favorite logos…
    See his list on his blog…all have a clean look, are 2D etc. Easy to work with.

    #2 Who are they?
    "Go out to your customers first and design from that." Scott Cook, founder of Intuit

    #3 Am I serious?
    Your design needs to be taken seriously. Goofy is no fun in ministry sites. Don’t try to be too humorous.

    #4 Can I deliver?
    You can’t be something you’re not.
    Don’t project an image you can’t deliver.

    Be careful how you use copy to build up your church, ministry, or event. Use descriptive terms and not circus quality descriptions. That negatively effects trust. It’s better to under-promise and over-deliver than visa versa.

    #5 Am I professional?
    People’s perceptions of your ministry are affected by the quality of your delivery. You need to stand out in your simplicity instead of trying to be something that you aren’t.

    #6 Am I contemporary
    Unless intentional, your design should never date you.

    #7 Am I clear?
    The only time it’s ok to be unclear in designing a site is to design for other graphic designers.

    Referenced Designing Brand Identity. Check it out

  • IMC #8 Relationship blogging

    Rich_tatum
    Rich Tatum (Blog Rodent)
    Consultant

    Our ministry blogs are about relationships.

    Example of evotional.com (Mark Batterson) Form’s community with a local church.
    Example of Out of Ur (Christianity Today) Trying to turn a company into a relationship.
    Example of Church Marketing Sucks– Creates relationship..

    Relationship blogs are about:

    • transparency (can’t be afraid of comments)
    • authenticity
    • conversation
    • connecting
    • personal
    • intimate

    Why are blogs different?

    • Personally written, rarely edited
    • Often raw, emotional, and assertive (gotta have the guts to write stuff people want to read)
    • More like letters than articles
    • Occasional and timely
    • Controversy-friendly

    Why do we blog?

    • We do all things for Christ Jesus, who loves us.
    • Therefore, we blog because we love Jesus

    Conclusions

    • A blog with a "why" trumps one with merely a "how."
    • Transparency and authenticity matter more than traffic and subscribers.
    • Don’t "leverage" your blog for evangelism, let it become an experience for relationship.

  • IMC #7 Hits, pageview, and other lies

    Brian_tol
    Brian Tol     (Gospel Communications Staff member)
    Stats and stuff…

    Ritchie
    I sat next to Josiah Ritchie for this session, check out his notes on the IMC blog.

    How do you judge effectiveness of what you are doing?

    How do you connect statistics to people?

    Traditional statistics are optimized for selling ads, sales optimization, and other marketing data.

    What about ministry though?     How can you go beyond statistics and get to effect.

    Types of statistical information collected
    Hit = any individual file that goes from your web server to a users web browser. In the day of CSS, etc a hit is meaningless now.

    Pageview = All the hits put together… when someone loads a page, it’s a pageview.

    Visit = All of the pages a user look at in a session (each time on your site)

    Unique visitor = How many times the same user goes to the site.

    Visitor behavior = the action a user takes as a result of visiting your site.


    Analytics1
    Statistical analysis    :
    How is AJAX counted statistically? Every time someone takes an AJAX action, that counts as a pageview.

    How does spiders/bots count? It’s logged, but not always as a pageview.

    How do RSS/aggregators count? Right now that won’t show up on your stats… but it’s coming. (Google bought Feedburner, it’ll show up soon.)

    How do "window shoppers" count? People who come to the site for 5 seconds or less. That will show up as a bounce rate.

    Changing the length of a visit changes the number of visits
    You can change the visit length to increase statistical response. (You need to ask that Q when looking at people’s stat packages)

    With the influx of proxy’s, statistical information is getting harder to gather. Now one "household" can actually be 100 different people because of a proxy. So all of that traffic is actually seen as a single IP address.

    Javascript collection: Historically 10% of people have Javascript disabled. (Christians are much higher as we are a suspicious tribe.)

    There is always over/under reporting due to network errors. The internet has millions of redundancies because of the wild nature of the net.

    Don’t give up on stats!

    • We’re better off than radio and television
    • Look at stats as estimates, not hard and fast numbers
    • Try to put stats in the right context.

    What are things more important than stats? What are techniques to get you important feedback.

    • Feedback. web 2.0 stuff like comments. (more coming on this bigtime) email, publish it. (make a contest based on feedback)
    • Customer service. Use a ticket system.
    • Blog search. Technorati, Google Blog search, MyBlogLog
    • Surveys. SurveyMonkey.com, SurveyGizmo.com,
    • Chat. Having a regular chat session for feedback works great.
    • Social Networking sites. Facebook, etc… don’t invest cash in it since it’s fickle, but is cool to have groups.
    • Crowdsourcing. getsatisfaction.com (get customer service types of help from your community.)
    • Meet-up with people. meetup.com or other utilities help get people together.

  • IMC #6 Communicating without words

    Kent_shaffer
    Kent Shaffer of Bombay Creative and Church Relevance
    Communication Without Words

    We live in a culture where actions speak louder than words. (ala St. Francis of Assisi)

    "Let all the brothers preach with deeds."

    Every touch point of your organization communicates a message. Physical property. (landscaping, building appearance)

    People can hear in 15 seconds what it takes us 2 minutes to say.
    So if you want to effectively communicate to an audience, our preaching
    and teaching needs to always use multiple channels of communication. –
    Lyle Schaller- Church Consultant

    Since more than 50% of US households now have high-speed internet…
    people are used to "clicking and going." Think about a browser on your
    site… you used to have the first paragraph. Now you have .7 seconds.

    3 ways to communicate your message without words.

    1. The power of art. First, it communicates subject matter. Second, the WOW factor. (asthetics, impressing people.. even though this doesn’t make a lasting impression, it is an important impression) People see about 5,000 ad messages today. In order to make your message stick out, you have to use art.  First things people can recognize in a logo… shapes, then colors, the content. Never forget the power of color. In a culture, colors communicate a lot subconsciously. Shapes, like on the FedEx logo, can communicate your message without words. Type… the font… is magical. It not only communicates a word’s information, but it conveys a subliminal message. (Erik Spiekerman) Your design steers the eyes of your viewer. On a website, people use an "F" format for reading. Put your highest impact content at the top… below #1, their eyes will naturally not be drawn to that. With photo placement, putting it on the right vs. left makes a difference as well. Be careful with how many elements of "attracting the eye" you use as it can overwhelm. Warm colors (sidebar colors) tend to draw attention to "add to" something.
    2. The power of environment: It effects how people interact about it. (ala the Tipping Point and Blink) Uses sight, hearing, touch, taste, small. (Atmospherics is the marketing term for this) This is why copying effective methods doesn’t work because the environment is more important than the method. (ala pulling something from culture for a church) Design your site and physical building to control the psychology of what you are trying to do. (Like a mall building a confusing building in order to get you to stay longer) If you want to put something on your website… make sure you consider it as part of the whole site and not just where it is convenient… where will that location on the site be optimized? Check out Clicktale.com for this. Things like flooring can direct people. On a website, you can use a web environment to dictate people’s response. (Interesting theory) Music in a physical location effects how long people stay/leave a physical place based on speed of music. Touch doesn’t effect websites, but it dramatically effects how people perceive your message in your church. Taste… Psalm 103 says that God’s Words are "sweeter than honey." Make an effort to use taste to communicate God’s message clearly. Smells… get your people at the church thinking about your message as they enter the building. Such as in the retail marketplace… Bloomingdale’s puts a coconut smell in the swimsuit area to put people in the mood to buy for the beach.
    3. The Power of Behavior: If you learn people’s behaviors online, you can optimize your site to match users behavior. "Christian life itself should be our greatest work of art." (Francis Schaeffer) Your website/ministry must be friendly. (Surprising Insights from the Unchurched) Conducted a survey on "come back people" at a church… this is what they listed as reasons they came back. #1 is friendliness of a church. #2 is doctrine. #3 is the pastors and their preaching. You need influence to reach people. This is what really matters in a ministry! Your online ministry is about reaching actual, real life people. The best way to create influence with your online ministry is to create relationships. Build a human contact with your online users… the human factor. Do some personalization… allow and encourage people to build some "welcome ____." Social networking creates relationships around your organization. (Which is why forums and facebook and other stuff works well.) In an online world you can never force a users to do anything… but you can move them, motivate them, and become a change agent for good.

    Art & Environment online go together. They are inseparable. The artwork becomes your environment. "If you build it, they will come…. maybe."

    3 areas to focus on:

    1. Create a WOW! (ala Seth Godin?)
    2. Use branding. (Al Reis?)
    3. Create a good user experience. (Make sure your navigation makes sense to users)

    Think of your website as having limited real estate. Each thing you add takes away some of the attention of your users. Narrow, narrow, narrow the focus. Look at the big picture.

    7 steps for a community site

    1. Define your purpose. (Guard it with all you’ve got.)
    2. Define the user experience you want. (Maybe limit options?)
    3. Evaluate your system. (Is it working? Are your users using the community for your intended experience? But also allow for users to move things too.)
    4. Tweak it. (Figure out how to get users to help your site reach the site’s purpose. Maybe create a new format to reach your purpose.)
    5. Observe it.
    6. Tweak it.
    7. Observe it.

    A community site can offer tremendous value, and it can also become pointless and dissolve if you don’t constantly evolve… re-casting the vision ala Nehemiah.

    Protect the online community and its culture like a pastor protects his flock. Protect your people from wolves… corruption or unintented uses of your community.

  • IMC #5 Friday Morning Devotions

    Begins by looking at Hebrews 2:1, lets do the opposite of drifting in our ministries; lets focus on abiding in Him

    Vine
    John 15: We in professional ministry must hold on intentionally to the Vine. We cannot get disconnected by focusing on the fruit we produce. Instead, we must create systems in our lives to hold onto the Vine for that vital connection to the source of life.

    How do we do ministry online in such a way that... not  only are we, the producers of material, abiding to the Vine.. but also connects end users to the Vine through us?

    1 John 2:28 "so that when he appears, we may have confidence." Do your online ministry in such a way that you wouldn’t be ashamed to do it before the Lord. Stop concentrating on methods but instead focus on abiding in the Vine. (Jesus is not just a message on a screen; He is a person.)

    • Where does your vitality come from in ministry?
    • What systems do you currently have in place to ensure that you are connected to Jesus?
    • If we were to ask others about your ministry, "How is that person abiding in Jesus?" what evidence would they provide?

  • Please pray with Bishop Love today

    BishopbillEarlier this summer you may recall that I had the pleasure of serving as the youth speaker at the annual convention of the Diocese of Albany. I found the people of that diocese to be both longing for the truth’s found only in Scripture and hugely worried about the future of the Episcopal Church’s membership in the worldwide Anglican communion.

    I read on Patti’s blog that Bishop Bill, the head guy in Albany, is asking people to pray and fast with him as today is the most critical day. (news story) Essentially, today’s meeting with the Archbishop (head guy in all of the Anglican communion) will determine the course of action for the American church.

    I invite you to join me in praying that the Holy Spirit will come
    mightily upon this House, touching and transforming the hearts and
    souls and minds of every Bishop here, helping us to discern and carry
    out the will of God. May His will and only His will be done. Just as
    Paul encountered the risen Lord on the road to Damascus, may we too
    have a Damascus road experience in which we, the House of Bishops, are
    convicted of that which is not of God, repenting and asking His
    forgiveness of our sins, and then be given the grace to be faithful and
    obedient in exercising our ministry as bishops in God’s holy Church,
    keeping Jesus Christ at the center of all that we do.     (click here to read more)

    Why should I care enough to pray?
    Do you believe in the inerrancy of Scripture? (Is the Bible literally true?) Do you believe that people, in the name of Christ, should be encouraging, edifying, and blessing homosexual couples?

    Clearly, the Bible teaches us to hate sin but love the sinner. It’s my prayer that today some people take a stand to guide their people back to what the Bible actually says instead of what pop culture has determined is acceptable. As my former pastor, Ray Pritchard, often said… "O, that we would be a people of the Book." Truly let us be like those in 2 Kings 22-23 and not only be people of the book, but stand with and pray for our brethren who also stand up as people of the Book. Will you battle with Bishop Love today?