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: Evanston, IL

User Profile:

• Male
• 25 to 29 years old
• Caucasian
• Area Resident 3 to 5 years
• Attends Church 5 or more times per year

Final Grade: While the visitor liked the site overall, he was overwhelmed by the amount of content on the homepage and was disappointed at not finding a church blog.

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“I didn’t find any information about a blog. I think a church that has a podcast needs a blog as well. That text helps people find the church through better search engine listings and read about it if they prefer not to listen to a sermon.”
The visitor found all links and pages to be working and images loaded quickly.
“The information is good, the layout is clever and most of my questions about the church were answered right away. The sites home page could use a little less text and perhaps a more welcome layout, I just felt presented with a little too much information all at once. Big blocks of text turn me off of websites.”
“The visual vibe of the site was simple, but welcoming over all. The small boxes with lots of text in them on the front of the site was a bit of a turn off. There should have been less information there and more of a simple welcome line and invitation to explore the rest of the site.”

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What is your overall first impression of this site?

“First impressions of the site were that it was simple, but pleasant to look at. The red and white colors along with photos of people’s happy faces were nice. Not 100% professional photos, but it sort of adds to the charm of a church that seems to be real and authentic.”

What would make this site better?

” I don’t like flash based sites that are not accessible by iphones. I live on my iphone and so does my wife. If we were out on a Sunday or Saturday night looking for a place to worship with our phones (as we do regularly) we would have skipped this church because of not being able to see the site on our phones.

Also a few pages seemed to be very wordy. Not my style. Short and sweet are the best way to go for church websites.”

Would you visit this church based on the site?

“I would love to visit this church in person actually now after seeing the site.”

faithHighway Tips for improvement…
…from a design expert:

“Using images of your congregation can provide a nice touch, but they still need to make sense with the content. The images on the inside pages are much more compelling than the one on the homepage. The homepage is the first thing a visitor sees, and should serve to draw people into the site. Without a great image in the top banner, this site would be easy to pass on. Also, they’re using blue text on a blue background in places, which can be very hard to read.”

…from a programming expert:

“The content area is kind of small; it’s hard to read when you have to scroll such a small area.”

…from a web outreach expert:

“I would recommend having a custom designed site with more clear navigation. Being restricted by a template navigation structure makes this flash template clunky and difficult to use.”

Photo by Schlusselbein2007