Enhancing BHPC’s Web Presence: Goals, Objectives, Features, & Church Issues to Resolve
4/4/11 version
Overall goals:
A Beacon on a Hill, the Bradley Hills community has Christ’s Good News to share. We hope to improve our website and use of social media to meet
the following overall goals:
1. To increase web visitors’ ability to learn about BHPC and how becoming part of our church could enhance their lives.
2. To enhance the ability of members and regular visitors to get and feel connected to the life of the church.
3. To increase the church’s membership.
Objectives:
1. Restructure the website so it’s easy to use
for both visitors and members (so
everything doesn’t have to be in bulletin)
2. Make site easy to use for users with
different viewing platforms and
disabilities
3. Make it easy for members and visitors to
see & learn what is going on in the life of
the church (adult & youth)
4. Impress visitors/ new members by the
spirit of BHPC coming through the website
(adult & youth)
5. Make it easy for visitors & members to
join, fit in, find community, serve at BHPC
(adult & youth)
Priority Features
 Simple, visitor-focused intuitive architecture (e.g. 5-7 main
sections)
 Information in sections chunked into logical categories
 Fast loading –even on older browsers
 Easy to use with mobile platforms (trimmed website content)
 Meet standards for universal accessibility/ adaptability, e.g. site
works with speech readers (incl. image alt tags on photos)
 Comprehensive and current
 Mimeo video support for sermon and worship features
 Possible sermon podcasting capability
 Easy to post photos (& resize), photo galleries
 Rotating photo slides (quick loading) on home & menu pages
 Pastor blog easy to find, follow, comment on (RSS feed capability)
 Website link to BHPC Facebook page with up-to-date photos
 Future twitter link
 Look and feel of the website reflects most important BHPC
attributes (branding)
 Clear front page look
 Enable site visitors to sign up for email updates, newsletters,
contact (with indication of what it means to sign up)
 Enable people to contact project sponsors to indicate interest &/or
sign up on line
 Specific event registration
 Enable event / group sponsors to find people to contact (database
of people’s areas of interest)
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Make it easy for visitors & members to join etc
CONTINUED
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11. Make it easy to keep the site current, easy
for multiple staff and LM people to make
changes directly
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ACS Access
Capability to email any page
Blast text messaging (for youth)
Calendaring function—change in one place is reflected on master
calendar
Calendaring for repeat functions
Calendaring for individual LM’s within site, integrated with master
calendar
Resource planning (room signups)
ACS Access data management (members only section)
Database of interested visitors?
Audio visual distribution of services to those who cannot come to
church ( see #3 above)
Group discussions easy to use—within three clicks and don’t have
to back out to go to another discussion
Managed Facebook page(s) with website link
Enable easy on-line sharing of information/ discussions among
educators, lay ministries, sub-committees, other groups.
Member’s only conversation/ group capabilities
Web-based (forums) vs email based
E-commerce capability for minimum one-time donations
Enable pledge donations
Enable event payment along with registration
Content and headers written for internal and external search
engines
Pastor blogging, podcasting;
Consider linking with other sites
Attention to other SEO techniques, e.g. url’s, metatags, feed site
map
User-friendly contact management system that supports photo
and AV uploads
Allows LM authorized people to manage their section of the site
12. Identify website issues, keep website
maintained technically
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Page archiving as well as back up
Plenty of storage capacity to put videotaping of talks, other
Easy to use site stats and analytics
6. Integrate calendar items
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7. Enable members to update own contact
info and find other people
8. Create virtual community
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9. Enable on-line donations and allow people
to check status of pledge giving
10. Help people find our site & search for info
on our site
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Web/ CMS software upgrades
24/7 host support
Use of HTML5. Flash and Java (Apple devices can’t use flash)
Church issues that need to be addressed re website objectives and features to consider:
1. Overall website ownership/ responsibility
a. Who will own the website?
b. How will we track what’s working and what isn’t (need measures of success early on) and who will lead the fixing
c. Who will take overall responsibility for content: maintain consistent “voice” on website and ensure images fit our branding
2. Promotion of events and meetings:
a. Need decision making policy /procedures on what goes on home page vs 2nd tier menu pages vs individual pages.
3. LM responsibility for portions of website:
a. Need organizational policies to enable LM’s to take responsibility for their portions of the site. Probably need annual identification
of:
i. Who’s responsible for every page,
ii. What, if anything, prevents them from fulfilling the responsibilities, and
iii. Training or other support needed
b. Idea of having young people on lay ministries who can serve as LM webmasters
4. Photographs:
a. Need an easily accessible file of photographs by church function and event/ season;
b. Someone who will write text alt tags for all photos put onto website to make our site accessible to speech readers (to meet
minimum website accessibility standards –408;
c. Need to resolve issues of whether we need waivers to show photographs of individuals/ groups/ youth/ children and resolve how to
obtain
i. Members only sections vs rest of site
d. Need to decide how to handle photo galleries of events going forward—#’s to put on whole church website vs Facebook site vs
church member only site. Editing of galleries images or whatever anybody wants to put up Facebook style?
5. On-line donation capability
a. Need to address and resolve theological issues of collecting via the plate vs collecting on- line (younger adults use on-line payment
for everything vs. using checks)
Church/church website/4-4-11 website objectives and features.docx