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: Birmingham, AL

User Profile:

• Female
• 60 or more years old
• Caucasian
• Area Resident 3 to 5 years
• Attends Church 2 or more times per month

Final Grade: Site fails for missing key navigation elements, poor functionality and incomplete content.

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“Easy to find info about programs of the church. Site was pretty easy to navigate.” While the visitor found overall navigation easy, she was unable to locate directions or a map, and she had a hard time finding service time information.
The visitor found broken links and error messages in the site.
“I couldn’t find directions to the church on the church site. A map is provided if you search for the church on Google. When I did that, I was led to a map page. Had to go back to the Google page and found the words “web site” on the listing and was then led to the web page. I could not find a way to get from one page to another without going back to the previous page–very annoying.”
“It’s very friendly. Nice graphics on home page. Black background with colorful pictures for links.” Despite liking the graphics overall, the repeated flash piece on the inside pages made finding useful information challenging for the visitor.

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What is your overall first impression of this site?

“I felt that it could have been done more professionally. I don’t think it provides the full flavor of what the church may be all about and what it offers. I thought that the church must be fairly small to have a site like this. The flashing words were annoying and, I felt, inappropriate. I did not understand some of the graphics, such as the Outflow. (I had to Google it to learn more.)”

What would make this site better?

• Some of the pages, like the one noted above, are bare, with not much information on it. More could be added in terms of text and graphics.
• Get rid of the flashing words.
• There should be more of an explanation of what Outflow is.
• There isn’t any biographical information on the minister, nor are examples of previous sermons posted. There is no listing of what upcoming sermons will be.
• The church is on a major road, but there should still be directions/a map.

Would you visit this church based on the site?

“Definitely not.”

faithHighway Tips for improvement…
…from a design expert:

“Include more large images in their content, and a lot of the stuff in the about us section could be eliminated or combined with other pages.”

…from a programming expert:

“This site is missing “Keyword” and “Description” Meta Tags, which can increase visibility in search engines.”

…from a web outreach expert:

“I would recommend giving each staff member their own page where the personality of each person can really shine through. This would help visitors really connect with someone through the website.”

Photo By: TooFarNorth