These six words usually bring a smile to church webmasters’ faces: “for more details, check the website.” But what about if you’re sitting peacefully at church when a speaker concludes an announcement with those six words…in reference to an event you’ve never heard of and that you’re pretty sure doesn’t appear on your site?

I usually grab a bulletin to start scrawling notes on–assuming I was paying attention and not distracted by picking up a toy dropped by my youngest–and then try to intercept the speaker after Mass. How do you respond?  What do you do to avoid such situations at your church?

When you’re trying to find the right seat for Mass, it comes down to location, location, location, right? In that spirit, you can pick up a few pointers for your church site from the real estate world. Brandon Cornett put together an A-to-Z list of real estate blogging tips that you’ll find apply to church webmasters as well. He covers it all from Authoritative, Believable and Candid all the way to Xstensible, Yours and Zippy.

Here are some points that stood out and my interpretation for church webheads:

E – Enthusiastic
“…Half-hearted commentary stands out like a purple elephant in the blogosphere.” (Not to be confused with a remarkable purple cow.)

H – Happening
(Include the latest buzz at your church, whether photos from recent events, recaps of an education series or related links to hot local topics.)

J – Jargon-free
(No one outside of the innermost religious education circles says “catechetical.”)

L – Lead-producing
(You want people to join your community, right?)

P – Purposeful
(Understand what your church is trying to achieve online and measure it.)

R – Recyclable
(Don’t forget about re-highlighting your best articles or photos. Annual picnic coming up? Advertise it using last year’s photos. Reflections on the Blessed Mother? Bring them back out for May and October (her designated months). Same for Lent and Advent reflections. My parish celebrated the Jubilee in 2000 with themes on the sabbath, freedom and more that we’ve re-linked to over the years.)

U – Usable
(I’m into usability and your congregation will thank you if you put your efforts there.)

What would you put on your A-Z list?

Your church website can learn a few lessons from corporate intranets. After all, both types of sites focus on making their members more effective participants in an organization. Here are best practices adapted from The Wall St. Journal’s “How To be A Star In A Youtube World” collection of articles.

In Dated and Confused: Corporate intranets should be invaluable employee tools. Too bad they often aren’t, Forrester Research is cited regarding the top factors driving companies that have implemented, or are considering, employee portals. Below are the percentage choosing each option followed by how this relates to church websites.

1. Let employees find information: 94%
   Easy to see how you can substitute parishioners in this example.
2. Enable collaboration/information sharing: 50%
   Think ministry meeting notes, upcoming events, feedback about events, polls.
3. Automate business processes: 44%
   Online registration for church membership, ticket sales, religious education enrollment
4. Reduce costs: 40%
   Mailing and printing to some extent. Note: while companies can mandate that employees use an intranet, churches are limited to encouraging such use.
5. Provide secure, remote access via Web: 25%
   Potentially, but probably a stretch for most churches.
6. Provide online training: 17%
   Orientation for new members; overview of forms, schedules/calendars; religious ed curriculums; and manuals.
7. Control access to content/applications: 10%
   Less common with church sites, but you could have protected access to finances or sensitive data assuming you had the resources to implement this properly and safely.
8. Better govern existing intranet: 8%
   Sure, there’s always room to improve.
9. Allow access to crucial business systems: 6%
   See 7.
10. Other: 9%
    Hmm, add yours in the comments below.
11. Don’t know: 2%
    Wow, 2% admitted to not knowing why a portal was implemented. Maybe that can be reassuring for your parish if you don’t have all the answers.

Another article in the series, The Winning Formula:An Intranet Guru Talks About What The Best Ones Have In Common, featured comments by Kara Coyne, director of research at Nielsen Norman Group. She was asked about “coolest new features that have lately popped up on intranets.” Her answers:

• Classified ads (easy to add to a church site)
• Killer app is usually phone book or cafeteria menu

For churches, the phone book equivalent is contact information for staff and volunteers. What about the cafeteria menu? The corresponding item is your Mass schedule including who’s officiating.

So, what similarities do you see?

When going pro, athletes are advised to use two different signatures–their “real” one for signing contracts and other legal documents, along with a newly created “public” one for autographing balls, jerseys and who knows what else. The same forgery-avoidance advice applies to pastors, even if they don’t sign million dollar contracts.

Maybe your priest isn’t autographing footballs after Mass that end up on the Internet, but his signature is probably available electronically. Think about that weekly pastor’s column in the bulletin online or the bottom of those welcome letters and fundraising pamphlets done in Word. Why create a temptation for forgery? Make your pastor feel like a superstar by handling signatures like a pro.