There are hundreds of factors that go into making a successful website but four stand out as key to making church and ministry websites useful for visitors. Many organizations think of sites as just another way to present information but this is not correct. The web is a different media type and as distinct as TV is from newspapers. Taking your printed church brochure and putting it on the web may be a quick way to create a website but it is not the best way. Web users have different expectation and use information on the web very differently then they use printed media.

• Audience - who is using the site, what are their information needs and how do they want to use the web?
• Content Usefulness - what information is most useful to visitors and how should it be arranged and presented on the site?
• Search - how do users find your site in the search engines and what can you do to improve your ranking?
• Process - how do you engineer you business processes to ensure your site is maintained?