Comments on: What to do when your homepage becomes an splash page

By: Top 10 Church Website Design Mistakes of 2007 » Heal Your Church WebSite

Top 10 Church Website Design Mistakes of 2007 » Heal Your Church WebSite — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:06:00 +0000

[...] Turning your Homepage into a Splash Page [...]

By: salguod

salguod — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 13:26:12 +0000

“… you do realize I’m in my mid-40’s …”

Well, I hadn’t put that 2+2 together quite yet, but I guess I knew you were around the same age as me (I’ll be 40 this year).

When I said “over 45″ I was thinking “well over 45″. Actually I had my Dad in mind and he’s approaching 70! I’m actually the closer to the age that he is in my mind than he is. (Read it again, it’ll make sense)

He lamented the other day that, because we have no home phone only cell phones, no one could find us in the white pages. White pages? Do people still use those?

By: MeanDean

MeanDean — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:42:27 +0000

Frank … for a sec, I was reminded of the following Scripture verse after visiting your link: John 11:35

By: framage

framage — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 14:43:18 +0000

For a sec, I thought I’d sent you the link to this (rather impressive, actually) website: http://www.empowermenttemple.org/

Guess I haven’t .

By: MeanDean

MeanDean — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 01:41:22 +0000

Doug… you do realize I’m in my mid-40’s (the hint was that I’ve been doing this work for 25 years) …
… and yes, most if not all my peers use the Internet instead of the yellow pages.

Only because of our advanced career positions, most of us are doing it on smart phones …

… which usually render better not being forced to display 800×332 sized images & Flash animations.

By: salguod

salguod — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 00:09:19 +0000

Dean – you make some solid points. I understand your point on accessibility for older readers, but I will play, uh, devil’s advocate here on that. I suspect that most folks over their mid 40s aren’t going to be searching the web for info. They’re more likely to use the yellow pages, ask their neighbor or just stop by one Sunday.

So, having a more young oriented web site isn’t so bad, as long as the basic info – service times and location – is easy to find.

Now, in 20 years when this web generation is moving into trifocals, I suspect that web sites (in whatever form they take then!) will be more accessable to old eyes.

By: MeanDean

MeanDean — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 17:18:49 +0000

Dave, as always – we’re thinking similarly – as the thought about how this would be translated in terms of an effective printed brochure came to mind – hence the inspiration for my ‘graphic design versus web development’ section slug.

And considering some of the real ‘bombs’ we’ve seen in the ‘Jesus Wept’ category – I’d say this site really does perform at a much higher level.

I mean when you think about it, in essence all we’re actually talking at a minimum about putting graphics on a diet and re-positioning and perhaps relabeling some key content that already exists.

That’s buckets more than I can say for other sites that are still struggling with bloated, 60-second-to-load displays of their empty parking lot!

By: b2blog

b2blog — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 17:04:48 +0000

Dean, an interesting challenge…once you actually get to a church website with someone who is actively managing it.

I suspect a lot of the visual effect here is carry-over from having the web done by someone primarily focused on paper content. You can get the staff to multi-task, but their skill and focus will still lean one way or the other.

I find the two-column lists (see volunteer page, for example) to be the most interesting to ponder. I understand the desire to do this, and it is okay…but it is unusual on the web and makes you wonder if there a better way? Dunno.

At the very least, the discussion of this site as less-than it should be just shows how high the bar really is. Websites aren’t easy!