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: Detroit, MI

User Profile:

• Female
• 30 to 39 years old
• African-American
• Area Resident for 11 or more years
• Attends Church 2 or more times per month

Final Grade: While the visitor found the information she was looking for, the website graphics were not appealing.

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“I didn’t like the online giving on the welcome page. I felt that online giving should be under its own tab. I also think too many items were under the About Us tab.”
The visitor found that all the pages loaded quickly, and there were not broken links or error messages.
“I liked that all the service and sermon information was available. The online giving was a plus too, but I think it was in the wrong area of the site.”
“The website was not flashy and seemed to just be a general template that is updated weekly.”

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What is your overall first impression of this site?

“The first thing that caught my eye when I arrived at the church’s website was the ‘Donate’ button. I did not expect to see anything about money or giving as a first time visitor of the website. I did like that the updated weekly schedule was on the front page and I didn’t have to search for it. I was not able to make out the Pastor’s name at the top of the screen because it font color was gray and it was typed through a picture. The sermon of the month clip on the welcome page gave me a sense of how the Pastor was during service.

After the first 2 options under the ‘About Us’ tab, I got bored. It was to much to read. I was expecting a vision statement, a brief summary of the Pastor, and the address. I was also thrown off again about the ‘Donation’ topic being in the About Us Section.”

What would make this site better?

“More flashy graphics and a church blog would improve the site.”

Would you visit this church based on the site?

“There was nothing catchy about the site that would make me want to visit again.”

faithHighway Tips for improvement…
…from a design expert:

“There is a whole lot of movement on this homepage. I would suggest making most of the graphics static images and picking just one graphic to have movement… maybe just the rotating images on the top left.”

…from a programming expert:

“This site is built using frames, which is a poor way to build a website.  Building with frames can cause display issues in some browsers, and is essentially, multiple web pages put together on the screen.”

…from a web outreach expert:

“There is way too much ‘happening’ on the homepage. Remove a few of the image rotations/animations to simplify…”

Photo By: toofarnorth