How do you create a robust, attractive, and user-friendly website for your audience? Let me count the ways!
The following list of ideas is not exhaustive but should stimulate a few thoughts about the way you want to get your unique message out.
It contains some basic elements that should go into designing a website and some of the possibilities that exist for creating a truly dynamic internet presence to serve your mission.
Essential Style/Design Principles
Web design is a unique modern form of art. It is virtual reality, images, videos, and words floating in cyberspace that people can access at the click of a button.
Creating an attractive forum that people want to come to and return to, however, is easier said than done. Here is what good web design has to do:
- Be Personal – It has to fit your style and vision of your ministry and has to communicate in a way that your people will recognize as distinctively yours. I help you get a website tailored to your personality and mission.
- Be Complete – Whether your website is for your parish, a mission based organization, or a personal apostolate, it should strive to be a total expression of your mission’s message and core capabilities. It doesn’t have to explain every detail or element of the work, but it should amply instruct about the main elements, programs, and values that drive your mission. The visitor must be able to find out every critical aspect of your mission there on the site.
- Be Responsive – “Responsive” design means the website fits or responds to the four standard screen types (Desktop | Laptop | Tablet | Mobile) – each of which has various sizes within its own category! Our goal is to make your site readable and interactive on all screen sizes to the fullest extent possible.
- Be Attractive and/or Cool – What’s the use of putting up another boring, second rate website? The creative process is a lot of work, but it’s also meant to be enjoyable. We’ll make a site that you’re proud of when finished and that other people will find inspiring.
Here at Priest Mode Websites, we don’t perform miracles, but we do offer solid and creative design services for you…and more. Such as:
Resources or Features
Priests and deacons love to be resource persons. As mediators and intercessors, that’s an important part of the vocation. There’s so much good Catholic stuff out there, and you are in a unique position to make it accessible for your people as part of your particular outreach to souls.
Among the many features you may wish to offer on your site, there are a few standards, all or none of which you may want to feature:
- News (on Church and culture)—these are usually links to articles on other websites
- News feeds (from established news sources)—these can appear on your site as they are “fed” or posted by the 3rd party news site
- Commentary (yours and other linked articles)
- Influencers (people who have a high profile on “our issues”)
- Teaching (scripture, doctrine, catechetics, etc.)
- Motivational and Inspirational (primarily saints and movements)
- Spiritual (for personal growth and events)
- Media (podcasts, videos, blogs, etc.)
- Social Media (links to your platforms if you already have them set up.)
In effect, the sky is the limit with online resources. Like preaching, the harder part is whittling things down to the essentials. In the case of a website, you want it to be complete, but you don’t want it to look cluttered or get confusing to navigate.
Blog
Your blog (if you want one on your site, see “Promotional Questions” on the FAQ page) can take on various shapes and sizes, but its purpose is to be a vehicle to get your own ideas out there and engage your readers. Here are a few things to know about blogs:
- You should treat a blog like your own mini-social media platform. It’s a place for posting and interacting with your specific audience.
- A blog can be central or peripheral to your site. Because of the predominance of social media (immediate interactions with others), most blogs are generally places for posting ideas and images you want people to see rather than for interacting.
- However, it’s entirely about how you want to use your site for your mission, and some priest blogs (like Fr. Z’s Blog, for example) are all about interaction. Different strokes for different folks.
- Do some research into the phenomenon of modern day “blogging” – due to the rise of social media, it’s different from what it was in the early 2000s. Be realistic in your expectations about what blogging could do for your mission because it tends to be very time-consuming. “To blog or not to blog” – that is the question.
- And remember, it’s all about the mission.
Mission Augmentation
A website can really come in handy for your mission. Here are a few ways a website can augment your ministry:
- Preaching: Post all your sermons and talks on the site and send people the links (video or audio are both popular formats these days, see below.)
- Teaching: Post materials in PDF format that people can download when you are giving a talk or conference (“Hey guys, just go to my website, coolpriest.com [not an actual site!] and download my document on X, Y, and Z…”)
- Inspiration: Every priest comes across inspirational stuff on the Internet that he wants to share with others. Just post it and you can tell people to go look at it. Sometimes you are the inspiration people are seeking. We’ll find a way to make it accessible to the world.
- Spirituality: A website is an amazing resource for encouraging prayer and devotions. We’ll get all those great spiritual resources up there.
- Communication: You can post announcements on your site for any upcoming events, whether they are related to your ministry or things you want people to participate in for other causes (retreats, conferences, ministries, pro-life, etc.)
- Sign-Ups: You can creatively use contact, intake, feedback, and sign-up forms as a way of drawing people to your site or augmenting an event you’re having. All are accessible later on a downloadable database for use in other forums.
Audio/Visual
The phenomenon of podcasting has vivified Internet culture in a major way in the past five to ten years, and many clergy and Catholic ministries have gotten in on the game. Good for you if you use this unique form of communication to get the word out.
Many priests post their sermons on their websites as a very basic type of podcasting. Why not? All it takes is a digital recorder. Again, if you send the file to me, I’ll get it up on your site.
The same holds true for self-made videos. We can post anything these days. [Hint: if the TikTok craze has taught us anything, we’ve learned that shorter is better in video culture.]
With YouTube, Rumble, and all kinds of other online video resources, linking to other people’s videos is uber-easy too. Copyright issues aside (see the “Copyright Questions” FAQ for more information), in most cases, all the webmaster has to do is copy the link to the desired video, and boom, the video appears on your site, but it is not a copyright violation because you are not appropriating their material but linking to it.
Many priests even have their own YouTube pages, which interface easily with their websites and social media accounts.
Sales/ Donations
It’s tremendously easy today to set up an e-commerce store on your website to sell things. Naturally, commerce is not the work of the priestly vocation, but sometimes these items can be used for fundraisers or ministry support.
It’s also very easy to accept donations via websites these days. The harder or more time-consuming part has to do with several technical factors:
- Linking the store to your bank account,
- Creating attractive products images to show on the site,
- Determining sales tax and shipping,
- Fulfilling and sending the orders you get in a timely fashion, and
- Promoting your own products.
- Or finding creative ways to ask for donations and acknowledging those that come through your site. (Expressing gratitude to donors is not only proper courtesy but also a professional expectation in the non-profit world.)
If you have something to sell, a web store is entirely possible. However, more often than not, it is best to link to other people’s stores and/or Amazon whose business is selling things.
If you take donations through your site, there are many ready-made ways to do that which can be integrated with the site and add another dimension of strength and engagement to your mission.
