Church Website Design Q&A with Element Fusion

Tim Wall, director of product marketing for Element Fusion, is our next Q&A responder for the Building Rockin’ Church Websites series.

Element is my Oklahoma City neighbor and I’ve long admired their work. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a Web 2.0 conference they did for their clients. A couple of days afterward, Tim and I had the opportunity to sit down for lunch. He’s a former church communication director too!
Here’s Tim’s answers:

1. What’s your company’s mission?

Our company builds web-based products according to two core values. First, we value sophisticated simplicity. We want our products to be streamlined and simple to use. Second, we value being the best, not necessarily doing the most. We don’t try to add every possible feature, we focus on perfecting the features that most people need most of the time.

In addition to our products, our company also provides professional services in internet design and development. Our reputation is that of quality and of comprehensive customer service.

2. Can you give me some background on how you started doing church web sites?

Personally, I used to work in full-time ministry. I was in music ministry, actually. But because no one else was doing it, I sort of naturally gravitated toward managing our web presence. Time went by and I eventually ended up as Pastor of Technology and Communications at a large church in Houston. Now I’m working full-time in the technology world here at EF and I’m back to doing music at my home church here.

As for our company, we are not a “church web company,” we serve businesses and organizations of all kinds. However, we do work with a lot of churches. I think that’s because our three owners are all Christian businessmen who are active in their church and so from the beginning we’ve naturally had a lot of church contacts. In addition, we’ve had a long-time partnership with Life Church here in Oklahoma City and so a lot of churches find us through that relationship.

One of our products, Sky, is specifically geared toward churches. But it really doesn’t have any special mission that’s different from our other products. All of our products are designed to make high-end, professional websites approachable and simple to the end user. That’s a need for businesses just as much as it is for churches.

3. What products and services do you specialize in?

We specialize in creating high-end design backed by simple and sophisticated content management all wrapped up in outstanding customer service.

4. Any products you would like to highlight or mention that would be of specific value to churches?

As I previously mentioned, Sky is an online content management system specifically designed for churches. It’s built for custom design which means you can’t just sign up and pick from a template. But we did put together a very special design option called Custom Xpress that gets you a world-class custom website design for $1,995 in just five days. We really believe in custom website design over templates and we are trying to hold the standard high while still making it an approachable reality for churches.

We also have a very unique product called Light that targets designers and agencies who want to help churches or other organizations get a high-end content managed website. A designer who may not know how to build out websites can design the site and use Light to build it out and let their client (the church) manage it themselves.

5. What are the basic steps to designing a church site?

With Sky, you can sign up for a free account right on our website. You get the complete system at no charge, it’s just limited to three pages. You can try out all of the tools and see for yourself how easy it is to use.

When you’re ready to get a design, simply order Custom Xpress. We charge $1,995 and you are presented with an easy to understand online form where we ask all kinds of questions about what you are looking for in your site. Submit the form and five days later, we’ll give you your design loaded and ready to use on Sky.

From there, you have control and can build out your site with our easy to use tools. Once the site is ready, switch the DNS and you’re live!

6. What church web sites have you done?

Check out our design gallery on Sky here.

7. What advice do you have for smaller churches who may not have the resources to pay for a full-fledge site design?

Though we are major proponents of quality custom design, we do have some example templates built into Sky and we do have some churches that use these example templates as their website design for free. This is certainly an option, though I would recommend this only be a temporary solution while the church puts in place a plan to save for an eventual site redesign. The great thing with our system though is that if you get all of the content in there even on a free template, one day when you can add the custom design, all of the content is already there and fits right in with no extra work.

8. What purpose should Web sites accomplish for churches?

You know, when I was on staff at churches I was always trying to figure out how to make our church website the hub of online activity for our members. I always wanted to have a church website that was so compelling and interactive that it would be the home page for our members when they went online.

But now I’ve changed my mind a bit. Web 2.0 has exploded with a million little web applications that everyone can use. High speed internet and the conveniences of modern browsers make it simple to jump back and forth from site to site for whatever you need. RSS aggregation makes it a snap to pull in the content I want from all over the web and put it where I want it.

There’s no need for the church to try and make their site the center of all online activity. Instead, the church should do what every other quality website on the internet does – provide consistent and compelling content. Focus your time and energy on telling your members and the world what you do and what you’re about. Use blogs to share insights. Blogging should be huge for the church, and not because it’s just a cool thing to do. I mean, it’s all about putting your beliefs and thoughts online. Use blogs and also put accurate information about your events and your activities and keep it all updated all of the time.

Focus on the basics of content. Then let Google do its job and index all of that content so that people all over the world can find it in two seconds, and let your members go to other sites for all of the fancy online gadgets.

9. What trends (for good or bad) do you see in church web site design?

One interesting trend that I’ve noticed since being out here in the product marketing world is that there are actually more web builder type tools marketed specifically at churches than at businesses. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, just interesting. I think it means that churches need to be careful not to just try and jump onto whatever neat new toy comes along. Again, just focus on the basics and make good content.

10. What one (or more) Internet technology do you wish more churches would take advantage of?

My wish is for churches to make the transition from the Internet being a new, cool toy to embracing it as just a standard part of their world. I think this is a lot of what Web 2.0 is about – realizing that it’s not new anymore and it’s here to stay. What I mean by this is:

1) We don’t need to “try so hard” at our websites. We need to have one, it needs to look nice, and it needs to have consistent and compelling content all of the time. But it doesn’t have to have video, music, flash or anything else. It can, but it doesn’t have to. And if you do want video, why not put it on YouTube or something? It’s free and doesn’t take up your own space. I mean, this is all just a part of life now. Might as well use it.

2) We have to think about it, budget for it, and plan for it just like we do with letterhead and stamps, and air conditioning. And it doesn’t have to be super expensive, but it does have to cost something. It’s not just for the cool kids anymore.

11. What are a few basic search engine optimization techniques you would suggest churches do?

I have one SEO technique to recommend – maintain consistent and compelling content all of the time.

12. Any resources, sites, links, magazines, or articles (that you may have written) that you’d point churches to?

If you are interested in podcasting, I wrote a series of articles about it on our product support site that you might find helpful.

See “Sermon Management with the Blog Element”
“Podcasting with the Blog Element” and
“How and Why to Use Feedburner”

Also, there are lots more good resources on that same support site as well as on our company blog at www.elementfusion.com.

[Thanks, Tim! I like your tip about “consistent and compelling content.”]

See all the Q&As in the Building Rockin’ Cool Church Websites series here.

December 19, 2006 · Filed Under Q&As, Rockin' Web Sites, Web 2.0, Web Site Design

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