Media Outreach

First Impressions is facilitated through Guest Reflections. People are asked to pick a website from a church in their area at random and review it. These sites may or may not be powered by faithHighway. ______________________________________________________________________________________

Church Location: Plainville, GA

User Profile

• Male
• 30 to 39 years old                                                                
• Caucasian                                                                                 
• Area resident for more than eleven years
• Attends church two or more times per month

Final Grade:

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“Some of the things were pretty easy to find, but weren’t laid out very well.”

Our visitor found that all the pages and links were working properly.

Our visitor found that the content on the site was not updated regularly and the information that was there was not thorough. He also came across typos and other errors/mistakes.

“It looked like it was designed in 1999. There was no visual flavor or vibe. The whole layout and design was really unappealing to me.”

What is your overall first impression of the site?

“Looks like an amateur made it. The pictures aren’t very good. I can’t stand a website that was created with frames! The website also doesn’t have a preset size so it stretches to fill the whole screen which makes it look even worse.”

What would make this site better?

If I were designing the site I would start with creating a visual theme that would identify with my target audience. Since the photos I saw on the site tend to show young people in a more traditional church I would certainly try to target a younger audience. I would think that a dark background would be better, and also force the page width to say 1024 pixels. Also, I am not sure if that emblem thing on the right is a logo or not, but in my opinion it needs a makeover.

Then I would probably think that a simple front page is best. Maybe just a flash slider (NOT a flash intro) or perhaps an embeded flv welcome video, which they could do easily enough via youtube or if the want to get a little fancier they could use something like this: http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Media_Player

I also didn’t see clean meta tags, which aren’t ultra critical, but certainly would be easy to fix and well worth the effort.

On the front page I would suggest nice web 2.0 styled icons that would like to the more important things on the site such as viewing a sermon online, podcast, and service times.

On the directions page…I would make it more interactive. That is very easy to do with google maps. That way someone could enter their address and get instant directions.

I also like the idea of blogs and forums…HOWEVER I would suggest that they NOT put them on the site unless they really plan to use them. There is nothing more unprofessional than a blog or forum that isn’t used…the same goes for calendars.

On their audio sermons page, I would suggest that they embed a player there so people could listen to it right there, or better yet turn it into a podcast.

There are of course a bunch of other “cool” things to do, but I am more of the simplistic mentality and I think it is best to keep a site simple. I don’t think a site should be designed completely in flash, for instance. Also, they should keep any amateurish features out of the site such as their little RockYou slide show. Fortunately they don’t have music or those crazy webpage transitions.

Would you visit the church based on this website?

No