Affordable, Manageable Joomla! Websites for your church or non-profit.

Getting found on Search Engines like Google and Bing continues to be one of the main concerns of pastors, churches, and non-profits as they seek to use their websites most effectively.

I've been reading a book called Inbount Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah.  One of the key things they talk about is continuing to update your site with remarkable content.  That is content that others will read and remark upon. Your Search Engine Rank increases dramatically when other sites refer to yours because of your content.  One of the best ways to produce good quality content is with a blog, and it's a good idea to put the blog on your front page, not hidden back in the site.   With a blog written by your Pastor, church leader, or Non-Profit chairman or leader, search engines will notice that your page is not just static, and so will people.  They will come back again and again, especially as they find it's worth coming back.

For any website interested in making people do something such as buy a product or donate money to a cause one of the most important things to work into your home pages is action links. Actions links are clearly labeled and explained links that link someone directly to a website where they can go about making that action.

For instance if you wanted someone to Donate money to cause you should have at least one link if not two on your main site that will direct someone to a page where they can fill in the information required for the donation.

Because this my blog I feel that I am entitled to voice some of my own personal opinions and peeves about website design. Most of the time I do try to say things that are generally true, however there are some popular website designs that particularly bug me even if they do apparently work.

One of the things that bugs me the most when I open a website is instantly playing an audio file without asking the viewer for permission. Especially if it is a background audio file that can't be turned off. Doing the same thing with a video file can be even worse, especially if it is an add. This almost always irritates me even if it is something like because I was not expecting to listen to it and as I usually have music on anyway it clashes with my music. This attribute is of course understandable on a band or movie website and consequently less irritating there, but I can't understand why any other website would have it.

The primary thing that brings people back to any website in new content, while old but unseen content may as well the numbers are not as great. For this reason it is a good idea to have immediate access to new content on your home page. Not only this it should be in a place in which the viewers attention is immediately drawn to.

One way to do this have you have likely seen is a news feed, which is a slides show that cycles through various new features over the duration of a minute or so. One nice thing about a news feed is that it doesn't take up too much space and allows people to see the rest of the website as well.

While the amount of time spent choosing the color scheme of your website may be relatively small, it can have a great impression on the viewer. The most important thing is of course making sure that your colors do not clash, a bright green and red site will likely hurt most people eyes. I would venture that a website with badly clashing colors is far worse even than one with no color at all. However I would avoid doing this as well. The first thing I think when I log onto a black and white website is that it feels outdated and boring. Wiki sites are a possible exception to this, but their appeal is not in their design.

The Background Color of a website has the greatest possibility of clashing with any of the colors on the website. For this reason I suggest you choose a soft color either light or dark to be your background color. This sight for instance has a very soft green background. Colors can be a lot stronger than the one on this sight but if you make them to strong they are likely to clash with other colors.