Making a website, suggestions wanted

[Gabriela]

49 minutes ago, katherineH said:

I just wrote my thesis addressing this very topic.  One of the questions I asked participants (women discerning religious life) was what information they looked for on communities' websites.  Their responses were: 

 

#	Answer		Response	%
1	A description of daily life in the community		71	92%
2	Information for parents		13	17%
3	A description of the values and various ministries (charisms, apostolates) of the community		70	91%
4	A general description of religious life		36	47%
5	Dates for vocation events		52	68%
6	The history of the community		57	74%
7	A blog		19	25%
8	Pictures		59	77%
9	A description of the community's prayer life		52	68%
10	Vocation stories		49	64%
11	Other:		4	5%
12	Forum, discussion board		2	3%
13	Podcasts		5	6%
14	Contact information for discerners to use		59	77%
15	Some kind of news updates of things happening in the community		48	62%

 

hope this helps!

 

I hoped you'd post.  

[Egeria]

14 hours ago, Sister Leticia said:

Other ways to regularly update the website would be to post weekly or monthly quotes from your founder or Rule,

This is actually a very good idea that I'm going to pinch for another project! Thanks, Sister Leticia. 

[Sister Leticia]

You're welcome! It can be a fun, creative thing to do, especially if you marry the quotes with photos.

[Klarisse]

On 4/6/2016, 12:31:34, Gabriela said:

Which religious websites are you looking at? I had the opposite problem: There was so much mystical, lofty talk of God I couldn't actually find out anything about the community. It was all useless abstractness.

...

Usability testing is probably overkill for what beatitude is talking about. I think she just wants a basic, small website.

Sorry about the delay; between taxes, eye trouble, and other stresses it's been hard to reply.

I don't know which communities they were, but quite likely most of them were active Franciscan communities, possibly listed in Vision's search results. The contemplative ones were closer to what you describe, though I was able to find enough information to get a sense of the life easily enough. Those tended to be heavy on quotes, though the quotes themselves were usually on-topic and relevant (i.e. quotes from the rule, the founder, Saints from the order, and current sisters.) It might have helped that they were mostly Poor Clares' websites, and the first one I looked at had good information. I can see how either extreme would be bad.

 

The main reason I mentioned a simple type of usability testing is that labels can very easily mislead. It's like having someone else read a draft of a paper - it should catch if the reader has trouble finding something and shouldn't take long. Using common terms from similar sites is probably safe, if those terms aren't jargon. If feedback only comes from the creator, it perpetuates the blind spots. Normal usability testing is definitely overkill, though.