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    Church Website Best Practices

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    MonMondayMayMay14th2012 Above the Fold

    As a web designer there are a few "suggestions" that clients throw at me all the time.

    • Can you make my logo bigger?
    • Can we have only pictures and no text?
    • Can we have a flash website?
    • Can you be sure to keep everything "above the fold?"

    In this post, I'd like to address the concept of above the fold.

    The term comes from back in the days of printed newspapers. The best photographs and most attention grabbing headlines were placed above the newspaper fold to entice buyers to purchase that particular issue. There was literally no way to see what was on the bottom half unless you made the purchase, costing you money.

    For years now, the term above the fold has been used to represent the information that is placed above 600px on a website. According to the people who use this term, users aren't willing to scroll on a webpage. The fact of the matter is that this does not cost the website visitor anything other than a quick flick of the finger on the scroll wheel. It's free, unlike a newspaper. There is no reason someone won't look below the fold unless you have a poorly designed website.

    Take a second and read this quick post called "Life Below 600px" by Paddy Donnelley. I subscribe to the concept of the build up. Simply put, provide information and graphics that a website user will want to see. Then entice them to scroll down and want to see more by even more great graphics and written content. Maybe the best example you can find out there on the internet is the website for Charity Water. I want to scroll on just about every page on this website. The data is presented so well. There is breathing room around everything and pages have important information 3000px down. I saw it though.

    We analyze the statistics and how our iMinistries website is interacted with on a regular basis. We've also noticed on all of our pages, users are willing to scroll. With the above the fold concept you'd think that most of the clicks to our "Free Trial" or "Pricing" button would happen only at the top of this page. Clearly, we are getting many clicks all the way at the bottom. We believe this is because we've presented the information on this page in a simple, clean  visual way and have provided content that our website visitors want to see.



    On a Church Website, what do you think should be above the fold?

    • Important calls to action
    • Good graphics or pictures
    • The main website navigation
    • Some well written, SEO friendly text
    Spend some time on good copy and good graphics and persuade users to scroll and they will. A successful church website needs both of those to encourage interaction.



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    ThuThursdayMayMay10th2012 Galilee Responsive Church Website
    byDavid Pohlmeier Tagged Company News Responsive 0 comments Add comment

    Today we are pleased to announce our latest addition to our growing list of free responsive church website templates. In addition to Jericho and Olivet, we now offer Galilee.



    Galilee features

    • Responsive layout
    • Tablet friendly design
    • Mobile friendly design
    • jQuery enhancements
    • Custom fonts
    • Easy customization

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    TueTuesdayMayMay8th2012 Olivet Responsive Skin (re)Release
    byDavid Pohlmeier Tagged Free Responsive 0 comments Add comment
    Lately, we've been working on creating our new free website skins using responsive layouts. We released Jericho a few weeks ago and will soon be releasing Galillee. Today, we are announcing the (re)release of Olivet as a responsive skin.

    Responsive church designs are websites that scale to fit any screen size. It looks good on computer screens, phones as well as tablets. Each even has it's own layout.

    If you are wanting to change over to the responsive version of Olivet follow these steps:
    1. Log In to your website.
    2. Expand Site Control.
    3. Click Site Preferences.
    4. Click Design.
    5. Change your skin to Responsive Olivet Skin.
    6. Follow our support files to finalize the setup.
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