Breakout 1
Web Strategy
Kem Meyer
Kem draws from more that 14 years experience in corporate communications to help increase the competitive edge of the church today. She uses a non-nonsense approach to lead a team of communications and technology professionals at Granger Community Church. Using best practices, they live to find ways to remove barriers that keep people from connecting.
With more than 5,000 in weekly attendance, Granger Community Church was recently identified by Outreach Magazine as one of the 100 fastest growing churches of the 21st century.
Kem’s blog.
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Kem began the session asking people to tell about their current website situation. Some people shared about how they lacked content or the ability to get a website going. Some expressed challenges of creating a site for a multi-site church, another person was in the process of creating a bilingual website. There are many challenges when it comes to creating a web strategy.
Not having a web presence is better than having a bad website.
What’s fun about a website is its bells and whistles, the stuff that you see… but 70% of it is the work behind it, planning and creating a web strategy.
Kem talked about the three phases to a web strategy: DISCOVER, PROPOSE and DELIVER.
Discovering and proposing will be 70% of your work – it’s conversations, research and meetings.
One of the age old problems in developing a website or a web strategy is knowing who really is in charge… is it IT or communications? It can be neither or it can be both.
Your website is drive by communications and your message.
DISCOVER
In the Discover phase, you don’t even talk about the website, you talk to your stake holders: your elders, your senior management team, etc – anyone that represents the entire church.
Ask questions. Try to identify gaps. Try to get an audience with all of the key people all at once. Find one ‘champion’ or one project manager to keep the energy going.
Questions you need to ask in the discover phase are:
1 – What does your church do?
Shawn Wood from Seacost Chuch shared about how at Seacost they needed to nail down their DNA as a church and focus on what they did well.
You can do everything, but you can’t do everything all at once. You need to focus on what you do best. Where does most of your energy, resources go – where to connections happen? What do you do? What’s your mission?
What’s your brand? It’s not who you think you are, it’s who people think you are. It’s knowing how you are perceived, knowing how you want that perception to change/what you want to change.
2 – How does communication happen?
Look at your database, how you do promotions, how you manage your calendar, how you track member info – identify what tech platform you are on.
You need a central database. Your website is least important on your priority list if you don’t have all of your information in synch. You need centralized calendars, a centralized communications strategy and streamlined communication.
Your infrastructure needs to be in place before you go to the web. You can’t build the house when you’re living in it.
Don’t show up with problems, show up with solutions when you are having conversations with your senior leadership team.
PROPOSE
In the propose stage, you ask what’s working. What’s not working? Don’t take your current website into consideration as you ask these questions. Instead, focus on where you want to be five years from now, that helps you so you don’t ‘design yourself into a corner.’
You need to know your goal and let every decision you make guide you in that direction.
It’s better to have nothing at all than to have out-of-date, irrelevant information. Keep it current and manageable. Get down to bare minimums. Ask who is in charge. The project manager needs to support senior leadership.
Phase 1, Discover, is your map, it helps you identify what doesn’t match your overall vision and what matters.
We aren’t supposed to put the smack down on our ministry partners, our responsibility is to communicate to your lead person and tell them the cause and effect. Take it out of the emotional side and take out ‘what you have always had’ and ‘what you’ve always done.’
Who is going to develop it?
When developing a website keep in mind that when your church builds anything, you hire a contractor. Contractors build and volunteers and staff maintain. When building a website it’s vital you hire a contractor. Granger’s site was developed by AspireOne.
Who is going to maintain it?
What problem is your website going to solve? What question will it answer? How will people find it? Are the ‘googling’ it or are you driving them there?
How do you measure effectiveness? What do you need to know? What do you not care about?
PROPOSAL
This is where you present all your answers. Present your documented answers, give your ideas, find out your budget, etc.
Remember the overall mission of your website is to support every ministry of your church.
Your website is a first impression. People will visit your website before they visit your church.
Develop your site to match your target audience and build functionality for your regular attendees.
