Quick: what is the size of your technology budget? You do have one, don’t you? If you’re like most ministries, setting money aside for technology is way down the list (probably at the bottom). So how do you still afford to have a nice website when you’re strapped for cash? With planning, strategy, and knowing your budget.
First, Get Key Input from Influencer’s
Talk to key people that will be a part of using the website or supporting the site once it is finished. Get their opinions on what their expectations are, overall goal of the site, and possibly even design preferences. Different people will have different opinions on what purpose it will serve and ideas on how it will benefit the ministry. It helps to get all of their input even if you don’t use it all; maybe they will bring up an idea that you hadn’t thought of?
Second, Set Definable Goals
Most web designers will start off by asking you what your goal(s) are for the website. This question should be one of the first ones you tackle as well. You’ll save yourself valuable consulting time by having a list of goals defined and ready for the designer. This will help them better determine the web design and strategy needed for your site.
Here are some examples of website goals I thought of off the top of my head:
- Upcoming Events
- Podcasting
- Event Registration
- Downloadable Forms
- First-time Visiting Information
- Contact Forms
- Statistics Tracking
Once your goals are defined (or at least a decent-sized list), start prioritizing the items. In this list, organize everything from “Must Have’s” to “would be nice”. I find it best to number from 1 being the most important then 2, then 3…you get the idea. This will help in visualizing importance to be placed when building out the page design and, overall structure on your ministries website.
Now You’re Ready to Start the Process
At this point you should have a good starting point for your website project. To recap, you listed the goals of your website and gathered input from key influencers; now what do you do? In most cases, this is the point where you most likely contact a company specializing in website design for ministry and churches like MinistryCMS. This is point where your budget starts coming into play in knowing what you can afford. Begin by looking over the design offerings and see which plans align with your needs. Depending on the size of your budget, you might decide on using a template solution. If you have a bit more available in your budget, choose a custom design solution. The large benefit to custom design solutions is that they are crafted specifically to your needs which can help yield better site conversions – that and the design is uniquely yours and not used by other websites.
This is only a starting point for the process of building a beautiful yet functional website for your ministry. Have you gone through these steps yourself before contacting a company like MinistryCMS? If not, what has been your experience with doing it differently? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.