Tag Archives: going
Church Website Design Tips
Does your church need a new church website? As a pastor and web designer, many folks have asked me what goes into an effective web design for a church site. After dwelling on this topic for a while, I came up with the following suggestions. Please be aware that these tips are for churches and ministries that are targeting people outside their respective congregations.
Church Design Tips
An ideal and suitable church website should be designed to be welcoming to visitors. After all, what good is having an awesome looking site if no one from outside the church finds it on the web? Therefore a good design should have search engine optimization (SEO) in mind.
Any information on the website should be useful and relevant for its potential visitors.
The look and content of your site should look enticing. The reason for this is that studies show it takes only 7 seconds for a visitor to decide to stay or click through to another site. A suitable church website will have pictures of its congregation and colors that are inviting and pleasing to the eye.
successful church site have basic layouts with a simple navigation system. In regard to this it is very important that your average visitor is easily able to find the information they are seeking without having to search more than 2 clicks off the home page.
Make a list of what you feel are the top subjects visitors would be seeking on your site. After this, make sure you provide individual pages with good content on these subjects. Things such as contact information and what’s going on currently at your church are very popular things to have on your site
Another way to design a suitable church website is to allow visitors to be able to comment their opinions, ideas, and suggestions about the church and what it offers. That way, you can get a better idea of what people are looking for in a church
One last way to design a suitable church website is to set up online donations. A church relies on donations to keep it going. Regarding receiving online donations, if not using Paypal, there are many Christian online giving services (like Easy Give, for example), that will help integrate this valuable service directly into your church website.
Overall, if you follow the above tips on what to include in a well designed church website, you will help your outreach efforts, and be a success.
Church Website Design Tips
Does your church need a new church website? As a pastor and web designer, many folks have asked me what goes into an effective web design for a church site. After dwelling on this topic for a while, I came up with the following suggestions. Please be aware that these tips are for churches and ministries that are targeting people outside their respective congregations.
Church Design Tips
An ideal and suitable church website should be designed to be welcoming to visitors. After all, what good is having an awesome looking site if no one from outside the church finds it on the web? Therefore a good design should have search engine optimization (SEO) in mind.
Any information on the website should be useful and relevant for its potential visitors.
The look and content of your site should look enticing. The reason for this is that studies show it takes only 7 seconds for a visitor to decide to stay or click through to another site. A suitable church website will have pictures of its congregation and colors that are inviting and pleasing to the eye.
successful church site have basic layouts with a simple navigation system. In regard to this it is very important that your average visitor is easily able to find the information they are seeking without having to search more than 2 clicks off the home page.
Make a list of what you feel are the top subjects visitors would be seeking on your site. After this, make sure you provide individual pages with good content on these subjects. Things such as contact information and what’s going on currently at your church are very popular things to have on your site
Another way to design a suitable church website is to allow visitors to be able to comment their opinions, ideas, and suggestions about the church and what it offers. That way, you can get a better idea of what people are looking for in a church
One last way to design a suitable church website is to set up online donations. A church relies on donations to keep it going. Regarding receiving online donations, if not using Paypal, there are many Christian online giving services (like Easy Give, for example), that will help integrate this valuable service directly into your church website.
Overall, if you follow the above tips on what to include in a well designed church website, you will help your outreach efforts, and be a success.
Managing the Phishing Threat to Your Organization
By now youre familiar with the basic phishing e-mail. You know the one — it comes from a bank you dont do business with asking you to verify personal information such as your name, Social Security Number and your existing bank account information. The e-mail may claim the bank it purports to represent has a check to deposit to your account, is trying to clear a check or something else along those lines. These phishing e-mails are easy to spot, their misspelled words obvious and the bogus links show up clearly. Theyre also fairly easy to fight.
Unfortunately, so many people are on to this kind of attempted identity theft that the phishers have turned to more sophisticated means. They use real bank logos and information theyve gleaned from elsewhere on the Internet to make it look like they know you, and they dont ask for personal information. Rather, they ask you to visit a website that will download a virus that will go through your computer and collect whatever information it can find.
But as phishing continues to evolve, detecting phishing e-mails is becoming more difficult. Worse, some phishing e-mails are really the visible part of an APT. They appear to be from someone you know, and they appear to ask for a response regarding something related to work, your finances or something else a friend may know. But spear phishing, as these highly personal phishing e-mails are called, depends on gaining your confidence by using material gleaned from social networks or other sources. When the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was attacked, for example, the attackers went after the e-mail files. Most likely they were looking for e-mail addresses and information from the contents of the e-mails they found to use in a later spear phishing attack.
But these attacks may not be after personal finance information; rather, they may be after passwords to other companies systems, they may be after the names and e-mail addresses at other companies, or they may be after personal information they can use elsewhere.
The solution to most spear phishing attacks is first to use the best screening systems you can find. Some next-generation firewalls and most high-end security software can at least warn when they find a suspicious message. In addition, users must be trained never to answer requests for personal information of any kind. The bank is never going to e-mail anyone asking for account information. The IRS isnt going to e-mail anyone about taxes, and the security staff at another company isnt going to e-mail anyone about their access information.
Should such an e-mail hit your inbox, however, forward that e-mail to abuse@companyname.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , and contact the sender directly to see if theres actually a need for the information. Whatever you do, dont reply to any e-mails asking for information. If you must supply information, originate the e-mail yourself.