Media Outreach

Although it seems like I start every one of my blog posts these days with some commentary about the weather in Austin, yesterday’s  events were so momentous that I would rather be labeled as a formulaic writer than not disclose what occurred to you, my ever so loyal reader(s). According to the National Weather Service, Austin sustained 6/10 of an inch of snow on the ground yesterday. For those playing along at home, this is the most snow we’ve gotten in 6 years. Judging by the level of, let’s call it, mass hysteria I witnessed on the roads yesterday, it is abundantly clear that if confronted with an actual snowstorm, the good people of Austin, Texas would not survive more than 2-3 hours. On a completely unrelated note, I’d like to thank my grandparents in North Carolina for the Barnes and Noble Gift Card they gave me for Christmas, which doubled as an ice scraper this morning.

Now that I’ve wasted yet another paragraph talking about something completely unrelated to best practices, a thought occurs to me. I’ve now written 26 articles for Media Outreach on the topic of best practices, whereas you, dear reader(s), have written zero. How is that fair? Why should I have to do all the work here? According to this guy, in order for a relationship to work, both parties must have a vested interest. In the interest of fair play, I think that today I shall let you guys do the work for me.  During my 2 years 11 months 5 days 4 hours and 23 seconds with faithHighway, I’ve had the privilege of seeing some incredible people do incredible things with their websites.  Therefore, on the heels of that nice bit of segue, here are a few of our sites who are complementing their excellent design with excellent content.

1. http://www.meetgrace.org/ – When you arrive at the home page for Grace Church, the first thing you’ll notice is, by design, the flash events area. At the time I was writing this, the very first graphic in this piece is for their sermon series entitled Love: Go for the Gold. This is an excellent use of space for several reasons. It relates to an event that currently has much of the world’s attention (The Winter Olympics), the graphic is extremely well done, and most of all, the dates on the event card are current. One of the biggest fouls one can commit when doing website content is having outdated information on their home page. Doing so will give the impression that the entire website is outdated, or in extreme cases, no longer an active site… neither of which being the first impression you’d want to make on a visitor. In looking at the inside pages of this site, you can see how Grace Church is utilizing a very clean look to great effect. As an example, their men’s page utilizes an excellent looking title graphic to enhance their written content. Furthermore, each inside page on Grace Church’s site contains 2 separate content areas… the main area and a side bar. While this can be something of a large undertaking as it affectively doubles the amount of content areas that need to be populated on the site, it creates both a well organized and good looking inside page. Coupled with the fact that Grace Church features some of the cooler custom toys that we’ve created in the recent past, Grace Church has fast become one of the most shown sites in our portfolio.
2. http://www.coastalchurch.org/ – The home page for Coastal Church is filled with client controlled user folder graphic areas. As you can see, the artists at Coastal Church are extremely gifted in their mediums. However, my favorite part of the home page is their welcome video, which is quite possibly the best custom video I’ve ever seen created by a church.  On the inside pages, Coastal Church has taken user control to a new level by creating their own tertiary navigation at the top of each page. The site utilizes a consistent style through the different pages that is both clean and attractive. As Coastal Church is located in Vancouver, they are currently very much involved in volunteering for Olympic activities, which is evidenced all over the website.  Overall, the high quality of the images, excellent written content, and overall appeal of this website ensures that, although they may not be able to stop American slap shots in Vancouver, they will certainly stop website visitors in their tracks.

Once again I’ve managed to vault past my self-imposed 1 page limit, so I’ll cut it off here for today. These are just 2 of the many churches that I’ve had pleasure of working with who are knocking their content out of the proverbial box. Perhaps you’re reading this and thinking, “Hey… I worked with Andy… why didn’t he talk about my site?” Alas, I am allotted only so much time each week in which to ramble on in this blog. Fear not though, for just because I didn’t talk about your site here, doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re doing a good job. I didn’t even talk about my own parent’s website this week, which I’m sure will entitle me to an, “oh that’s ok Andy, don’t worry about it,” and will entitle my brother to a large share of the inheritance. Until next week then, enjoy the remainder of the Olympics and remember… even though we didn’t medal in curling, life will undoubtedly go on.

Photo By: greg westfall