Even if you haven’t read the latest writings of Steve Krug, Jakob Nielsen or Luke Wroblewski, it doesn’t take a ‘Jesus Christ Rubber Duck’ to understand that church speak and clique-chat only help relegate your site into the realms search engine obscurity.
Posts Tagged ‘usability’
12 Days of Jesus Junk – Day 4 – Unreadable at 11:23
If conversion rates are the metric by which we measure successful web page adoption, then the antithesis of that is product abandonment. Today’s example shows how something as intuitive as a wall clock was made unreadable at 11:23.
12 Days of Jesus Junk – Day 2 – Think Globally!
As once again the TSA reminds us that Christmas Snow Globes a threat to National Security, I thought it might be a good time to talk about the wide-World of bad-guys and some simple things you can do to guard your site from a potentially explosive situation.
12 Days of Jesus Junk – Day 1 – Hallway Testing
Learn how to cheaply and quickly avoid ‘accidental-message-myopia’ syndrome – like inadvertently creating a design that asserts an Aryan baby Jesus.
Bad idea design poster #10 – Feature Creep
The misguided notion that somehow more is always better.
Main Entry: Feature Creep
Pronunciation: \ˈfē-chər ˈkrēp\
Function: intransitive verb
Etymology: Middle English feture crepen, from the act of over-building something
Date: July 24, 2009
Remember folks, flee from temptation to ‘gizmo’ up your site.
Instead, focus on workflow – that is the things your users want/need to do/learn from visiting your [...]
5 Things that heal your church website
What actually heals a church website? Here are 5 remedies I have to offer based on some of the many excellent comments in response to last Friday’s open comment post on the same topic.
weekend open thread: What Heals your Church Website?
I want comments on the following question: what actually heals your church website? Is it using WordPress over Joomla? Is it adding a Twitter widget to your sidebar? Or is it adding more spinning animated gifs of gold lamé crosses? I want your input – so leave a comment.
Working with the Wordpress theme Vigilance 1.16
I’ve been a bit dissatisfied with the HealYourChurchWebsite look-n-feel since early this summer. After a lengthy search of various WordPress themes, I’ve settled on Vigilance 1.16. Here are some of the reasons why along with some of the things I discovered and/or did to make it more suitable to my tastes.
What I was looking for:
I [...]
A Conference Apart – where Dean gets to meet Zeldman, Meyer & Fried!
You bet I’m stoked! This coming October 13–14, 2008, I’ll get to rub usability elbows with Eric Meyer, Jason Fried, Jeffrey Zeldman, along with several other web standards rock stars at the An Event Apart 2008 conference held at the at the Sheraton Chicago.
Facebook facelift – 5 things I like vs. 5 things I dislike
The new.facebook.com is out, and with it comes a cleaner and leaner interface that is not only more configurable, but addresses the growing needs of its of an audience that is stretching well past the niche of the college students. Here are 5 things I like, and 5 things I dislike about the upgrade based on what I see on my own Facebook page.
5 things we can learn from the Winston-Salem Hampton-Inn Toaster Czar
This weekend, I ran into an elderly gentleman whom appointed himself the ‘Toaster Czar’ in a fashion similar to the infamous ‘Soup Nazi’ of Jerry Seinfeld fame. I made the mistake leaving my bagel momentary unattended to go get coffee while trying to enjoy the complimentary breakfast at the Hampton Inn Winston-Salem-I-40/Hanes Mall. Here are 5 things your church and/or charity webmaster can learn from this experience:
Is Church marketing dead? Nope, just stuck on stupid!
There’s no getting around it, despite the efforts of many to teach, rebuke, correct & train in righteous web design, there still exists a great cloud of witlessness when it comes to the Church’s presence online. A fact painfully corroborated by the persistent body of ‘kitsch‘ out there that distracts, annoys and otherwise drives-away people seeking and/or serving the Lord.
