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Only Your Mama Can Stand Sifting Through All the Clutter on Your Missionary Website
By chris | March 11, 2008
Your Mama used to pick up your socks after you, so she doesn’t mind rummaging around your site trying to find information about what you are doing. People who are not your mother won’t be as generous! You need to clean up the clutter on your website and take a little extra time planning how your site is organized. Do you organize the material on your site logically. Do you answer the basic questions, “Who? What? Where? When? Why? And How? “ Do you spell everything correctly and include all the important details that are needed?
Many missionary websites are too disorganized to make sense of by people who are visiting them. Everything on your site may make sense in your head, but the surfer is scratching her head wondering, “What is the navigation structure on this site?” They wonder, “What does he mean by that term?” and “What is that a picture of?”
Okay, so you know how to speak other languages and reach out to people in very remote locations, but make sure to spell-check your site since your audience will not give you the same benefit of the doubt your mother does. You want to write your mother tongue correctly.
One surfer of missionary sites says,
“… glaring grammatical errors, these only take away from the site to the extent that it makes the organization seem less valid because of the lack of care in tending to minor details.”
Here are a few tips for making your site better organized.
- Write out the content of your site and email the copy to someone you know who is not on your missionary team. Ask them to read your content and help you make it easy for others to understand. Find out what is clear and what is not clear to them.
- While you are at it, get an outside person to spell check and edit your content. Usually you will discover details you omitted in your content that you “saw” in your mind. A sentence out of place, an incomplete thought you failed to notice will be caught by a person with another “set of eyes”. The most compelling writing won’t help if you leave out information in other ways.
- Take note cards or (sticky notes) and write out the titles of the pages in your website; then organize the content headings of your site by logical topics.
- Put yourself in the place of the surfer of your website and organize the content from their perspective.
- Next time you are in the states, or next time a volunteer team comes through, ask them to bring you a copy of the book “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. It is an easy-to-read book with a lot of helpful advice for website developers.
Topics: Missions |
March 18th, 2008 at 7:50 am
Chris,
I love the way you write. I can hear your voice saying these words! But your words aren’t just entertaining, they are compelling and encouraging. Thanks for keeping it simple and personal.
March 18th, 2008 at 7:56 am
Thanks Janet!