Christian blog about church website design
Click to go back to the site, to the collection of free Christian website templates and our nice church website design.How to build links, a neverending story
One of the most important activity of a webmaster is getting links. A Christian webmaster is no different, he needs to get links, as many links as possible to his website. I was reading today a post about how to get links. Some of them are not quite “white hat” but they work. And some of them are just funny.
But beyond these the task still remains: you need to build links. If you build a quality Christian website, other Christian websites will happily link to you, in a natural “link love” process. Just provide a clean and valuable website. Of course, you need to get links, all the time, this is you day to day job, to get links. In a situation where you give some free design like I do here, your task is easier since people using your templates will link you for providing them free website templates. This has nothing to do with Christian templates, you could provide whatever design you want. Just keep the link!
Also remember to ask webmasters for links back to you. This will be easier when your PR will grow a bit. If you have a PR of 4 it will be easier to ask for a quality link than if you have no PR, then nobody will be happy to link to you just because you asked nicely.
It is a strange situation since in order to get a higher PR you need links and of course, it will be easier to get links when you offer a link back from your higher PR website!
Am I right or what?
Improving your Christian website usability by watching 5 people for 5 hours using your website
I was reading on Reuters, on their blog that in order to solve your website usability issues, 5 people will be enough. Well, they may be right about this. I think that it is a fair number, and 5 people looking at your site will do a great job. Just stay behind them and watch their mouse pointer to see what they do with it, how are they reacting to your website, etc.
You will have a nice surprise if you are willing to accept comments, than not all your ideas were that great. Really, everybody thinks in an other way than you, probably. What you may consider as a normal think may not be that “normal”. The hot spot of your (religious) website may be different than the one you imagined it would be.
Think that you have started a Christian website and you expect that all the people visiting your site do a specific action. But, instead, 80% of your visitors click on other things than where you expected. Why is that? Because you see your website in an other way than your visitors see it. Looking at your visitors mouse arrow is a good way to tell how they see it since the mouse pointer follow most of the times user’s visual trace, shows you where the user looks.
Ok, now the big problem in some cases will be to accept that what your testers will tell you and not react against their opinions. You will probably have the tendency of explaining yourself to them and telling them why you have done one thing or an other, but you can not ignore the fact that they “saw” your Christian website in an other way that you imagined and this should make you wonder why.
5 people for 5 hours they say and it will be enough. I say that you should listen to at least 2 people about what they think about your site and you will gain good knowledge about it. Try it, it won’t hurt, this will be your first experience with real life feedback!
You don’t need Flash based splash-screens
On MarketingBlurb.com I have seen a good article about why to avoid a splash-screen on your website and I can only agree with this. While I have been asked many times to have such a Flash splash-screen and I have also implemented such Flash based splash-screens, I don’t agree with them also and I try to explain to my customers each and every day to not fall for it.
But of course,Flash based design is beautiful, and if done right, people will love it. Will love it, indeed, just that they won’t find it on Google too much or too high. Plus that the visitor that is going to come back time after time on your site just to see that Flash intro will eventually get bored and not come back again for the same thing that maybe he liked the first time.
Maybe you like some splash screen saying something like “best friend Jesus” or something like this but people visiting your website are looking for information, not for Flash design. Ah, ok, you give away (church) Flash templates? Not even in that case! Instead present your user your best offers, maybe your latest stuff, so he come back again next time.
You just found a lovely church Flash templates collection featuring an adorable cross template flying over clouds? Not for you, my friend! Not for your site! Your site needs information.
I am a website designer, I design sites, I love to design sites, but I know I don’t need this also. So why would you?
A Good Christian Designer Makes Peace With Himself
Designing a Christian template means work, inspiration and inner quietness. Really, this is how I feel about it. You can not start designing, especially Christian related works when you are not relaxed and in peace with yourself. If you are struggling inside and you can not find your inner peace, how do you think that you will be able to design religious material?
Supposing that you will be able to produce anything, even IMO the result will not be satisfying at all, do you really think that the person looking at your design will not see the fact that you were not in peace with yourself when producing the design? Because designing is like when singing or acting or performing any other artistic activity: it reflects your soul and the way you feel.
It happened to me many times that when I start a design, to not be in a appropriate state of mind and soul and to not be able to produce anything for almost a week, while in other cases, in a few hours I produce a beautiful design. Considering I am also a musician, I know this feeling from this other part of art too. When trying to write a song, if I don’t feel good about something, I can not do it while if I have the right state of mind, I can produce something that makes me feel good (observe please that I didn’t say something beautiful because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right?)
That’s why, first of all start feeling good, start building your inner peace and quietness and then…start designing. You will have the certitude of a thing well done!
How to become a web designer, part 3 – look around
Well, today’s lesson is “Always learn from the others!”. This is true in any domain of activity, not only in web design. It is one of the “must do” things. Always look around. As a personal experience outside the design business, I (used to – we haven’t met in a while) play in a rock band. While playing together we were great. Well, once a year we used to go to a national concert where underground bands from all over the country used to come and play. Well…what do you know? There were other people better or at least different!
And you know what? You could only see this by looking around. If you do your stuff closed in a box, you will never learn anything and more than this you will never see new stuff, you will never see trends, what is good and what is wrong, etc. This is a part of your permanent education. Loon and see how the others are doing one way or an other, there are always better solutions to your problems. Actually when you say that there is no solution to some problem you face, always think that the solution is there, only that you can’t see it. Well, maybe somebody else already found it.
Meet people. Meet designers, chat and learn, tell the others how you do things and they will tell you how they do things. Don’t just go and tell them “I am the best” or “Let me show you how things should be done”, you will only upset the rest and they will never accept you around.
Look for design collections, there are plenty of design collections, for example I have found a great collection of best sites from the point of view of a designer where you can see nice designs, see for ex this one or this one , you will only learn from seeing somebody else’s work.
Always ask yourself how an other designer did this or that. Ask around, read blogs, forums, chat with the designer, some of them will tell you.
Be social, you need it when you work as a web media professional!
You should always set the next goal the very moment you reached the current one
When your site reaches a limit that you can not pass, is it your site limit or is it your own? Well, I ask myself this for a period of time and I have the impression that it is the limit of the person operating the website. I have this Christian website that you are reading right this very moment. I remember I set a target for it, for it’s traffic. Now I have reached this traffic for some time but I can’t seem to go further for some time. Why is that? Well, I don’t know, maybe because I need to set an other target in order to reach it.
When building a website, as in life, you need to set goals. So I should set an other goal, an other target to reach. Never relax, always set an other goal. So, starting today I will set an other goal for MagicTemplate.com website, a goal that I will not make public yet, but it will become my only goal for this Christian website that I really love!
That post is based on my experience with this site, I was asking myself why can’t I go to the next level. I just think it is because of me and because of the current lack of goals. I should always go to the next level, to make this website as visited as possible.
Now, since I already set my next goal, I will go on to work on i and tell you about it later…
The best thing you could do for your website
What is more important when you design a website? Well, this question I asked myself many times, because I often find myself in front of one of my websites asking myself what could I do to make this site get more visitors? Well, this is a good question, but I think that the best question would be what could I do to make people want to visit my site? What could I make in order to make people find my website interesting?
This is the real question, since you build your website for people! Just think that people come to your church website the way they come to a physical place. They come once by mistake, but if they don’t find it something interesting, they will not come back next time.
So, you optimize your church website for search engines, ok, perfect, but it is not enough. Use this to your advantage and make the website interesting so when somebody finds your website by searching on Google they really have the impression they got something great visiting your website. This way they will come back next time and more than this they will tell other people. Viral marketing is one of the best thing you coud use for promoting your church website.
So the only good answer is Always build your site for your visitors. Give them what they need and search for and they will come back next time and bring more visitors. This is the way to promote your church. Always put yourself in the place of your visitor. Ask yourself what would you like to find on your website, what is not there but you would like to find? Then add it! This way you will make your site user-oriented, the only way a website should be.
How to become a skilled website designer, part 2.
Flash is a tool to master, even if you don’t use it much
After I saw 2advanced.com, I was amazed by what a designer can do with Flash. I know that not all the websites should be Flash based, and if you want a short observation, I kind of avoid building Flash sites now since I don’t like too much the fact that you need the sources to update them. HTML, PHP is easy to update at anytime, all you need is the files on the server and the editor. I know that this may sound like the most stupid reason for which one avoids Flash but I must admit loosing sources a few times. Yes, I admit. I lost sources. Well, now I said it!
However, when you grow as a web developer, even if you don’t build your work around Flash, you have to know it and work at least a bit in order to fulfill your development.
It’s like when learning to sing(ok, maybe not many of you had this experience) , you need to take those boring classes before finding your way of singing. Flash is a tool to learn because it creates astonishing effects and it changed the way web looks.
Finding you way
After a while I let 2advanced go, or at least I am not checking them as often as before. I remember the moment they launched their 4th version of the site, I was waiting for that day so I rushed in to visit it. The site experienced big difficulties since everybody else seems to rush in also. Well, after a day everything cooled down.
In time I started to do things my way and one of the nicest thing a friend told me is that he recognizes me in my sites, he recognizes that a particular site is developed and designed by me. This really made my day back then. I also realize that this may be a 2 edges sword, meaning that you have some repetitive graphics habits that could make your work recognizable but boring. I hope to not be that case, even if sometimes I realize I am out of ideas…
To be continued…
What it takes to become a real skilled web designer
Phase 1:Being stupid
What I am going to say here is the result of all the years that passed since I started designing web sites. You know that saying that it is not smart to fight the person who only read one book in his life? Well, this person used to be me! What I want to say is that when I started to design websites, I thought I am really good! Really, I tell you, I had this belief! I thought I am the master of Photoshop and stuff!This happened some years ago, about 6, I think.
Phase 2:Starting to learn web design
Well, one day I discovered a great collection of Photoshop tutorials that really changed the way I was looking at
things. I stated to read those web design articles and tutorials, I started and even managed to go through with each and every one of them. There were about 400 tutorials I gathered from the internet. You can not imagine what huge impact they had on me. That was the real moment when I started to understand things. From that moment on I didn’t consider myself that good anymore.
Phase 3:2advanced.com,the way sites should be designed
From that moment on I started to have tastes in design. I understood that I like some styles of web design while I hate others (Note: I hate those crowded 3d web designs). By the way, if you want to hear who I really enjoy watching, consider Eric Jordan of 2advanced.com. 2advanced changed my perception of web design with their 2nd version of website. From that moment on I watched them to see what they are going to release next…
To be continued….