Wow, this commuter plane to JFK is freezing cold – as are attitudes by some church web masters to the needs of their congregation … and staff.

What am I talking about? Usability and utility.

I get quite a bit of search engine traffic along the phrase ‘coolest church website’ – a meme that bugs me a bit as I’d take useful and informative over cool anyday.

Not so though with many sites I are cited on various compendiums of church website coolness.

Without naming names, there I often find enumerations of sites that are more set project than a communications tool that either bestows knowledge on the local members of the body and/or drive persons into the pews, Bible studies and/or other ministries whose benefits have more permanent impact than a pretty Flash presentation.

Mind you, this is not to suggest mediocre manifestations of HTML uglieness – we should always attempt to field high quality work – but rather the work should be geared and focused around ‘conversion’ goals. And I mean that in both the marketing and evangelical sense as both are far more measurable than cool.

Anyway, something to consider when discussing the direction of one’s church and/or charity website.

Bah – I hate it when these dinky commuter planes land – my ears!!!

UPDATE – I couldn’t get this message out from my BlackBerry while at JFK, not due to anything geek, but rather because I was in a constant state of ‘sprint’ as timing between planes didn’t go exactly as planned.

All that said, I’m now in a Malaysian Starbucks. The coffee isn’t so good – but the bandwidth is free. Tomorrow I’ll switch to tea!