Hi, I’m Mark Steinbrueck with OurChurch.Com, and on this video I’m gonna talk about website platforms and address the question, “What is the best platform and why does it matter?”

So the first thing that you need to do is determine what your needs are for your website.

By doing that, it will help you understand what you need out of a website platform. So if you say to yourself, “I need to be able to have online event registration, or I need to be able to have a blog or an eNewsletter or shopping cart,” that will help you in your research of website platforms in determining whether or not those website platforms will be able to provide that functionality.

Second thing to take into consideration is whether the software is online or it’s a desktop software.

Online software simply means that you don’t store the software on your computer, but you login to a website using username and password to be able to access the backend of your website and make changes.

Desktop software, on the other hand, is stored on your computer. So that means that you have to have that software and that particular computer to be able to make updates. This also means that if you have a web team, of multiple people, every single one of those individuals needs to have that software on their computer that they are going to be using. So it limits you in exactly where you can access it from, you probably can’t do changes from a smart phone or tablet. And it also it makes it more difficult to add people to maintain the website.

And then lastly, if you want to have additional work done by people that are not part of your organization, whether it be tech support or having someone do SEO for your website, going with a desktop platform, makes it nearly impossible to do that, so you certainly want to select an online platform if all possible.

Next thing to take a look at is whether or not the software is proprietary.

Certainly you want to use an online software platform, and if all possible, try to find one that’s not proprietary. The proprietary simply means that, the organization that hosts the site, also owns that software so you can’t take the website with you when you want to leave.

Now if you’re not planning on keeping your website for a long period of time, or if simply the cost of a particular hosting package and the software that it comes with it is proprietary, fits your budget, then maybe going with a proprietary software is something that is reasonable and will fit your needs. But if you can, try to find some kind of software that you can take, that means that you can take your website with you, if you were to choose to leave and go to a another host.

The next thing to take into consideration is the ease of use.

Research how easy a particular software platform is to use. Go online and see if there’s any online reviews. Talk to other people who may have used this, and these conversations and advice, can save you a lot of time in using a sub part platform.

In the same sense, research the support of the platform:

• Can you even get support?
• And if so, do you have to pay for it?
• Is it free or is it a pay per incident or pay per month or what kind of fee structure is there?
• How quickly can you get responses when you are looking for support?
• And then also, how do they provide support?
• Is there phone support?
• Is it email support?
• Is it only through the help desk?

Take a look at those things so you know what to expect if you select a particular platform.

So I hope that this has given you a good understanding of what things to take into consideration when selecting or researching a website platform.

1. Determine your needs for a website.
2. Then look at the online software versus desktop software. And if all possible select an online software.
3. Also understand the drawbacks and limitations of proprietary software.
4. Research the ease of use as well as the support that has been provided for a particular software.

And I hope this has been insightful and informative.

If there is anything that we can do for you here at OurChurch.Com to help you achieve your goals and mission online, please complete the consultation request form below.

Hi, I’m Mark Steinbrueck with OurChurch.Com. And on this video, I want to talk about what determines the build time of my website. Or the most popular questions that I’m asked is, “How soon can the website be done?”

So we’re going to talk about what goes into determining the length of time that it takes to build a website for a client.

Is it a custom or pre-existing design?

When we’re talking about the design, we’re talking about the look, the layout of the website. And the type of design will greatly affect the time that it takes to build a website.

Using a pre-existing design, often called a template or theme if you’re working with WordPress, will speed up the process. Pre-existing designs, however, don’t offer the uniqueness or the flexibility that custom designs offer.

Choosing a custom design will increase the amount of development time. However, it gives you much more control as far as the options, the look, the layout of the website.

The number of revisions provided in the design process.

This is especially important when you’re doing something that has a custom design. So if you only have one revision, then, obviously, that will take the developer less time. There’s going to be less back and forth communication with the developer and so that will be a quicker process.

Whereas, if you have two or three revisions, then that will take a little bit longer because the developer is going through the process of making changes. And you’re going to go through the process of reviewing the design and having the developer make those changes.

So, usually two to three revisions is sufficient to get the design to the way that the customer wants. But each revision typically does add about a week of time to the design process.

Amount of content that is being entered.

How much is being entered by the developer versus how much will be entered by you later on. And, the amount of content that the developer enters, it’s not going to affect the design time as much as a custom design versus a pre-designed template.

However, if they’re only creating two or three pages versus, you know, creating 40 or 50 pages, that will significantly impact the amount of time that it takes to build a website.

The developer and client response times.

So does the developer have some kind of a goal or a required turn-around time when it comes to responding to your e-mails or your phone calls?

We here at OurChurch.Com, we strive for a maximum of one business day turn-around time. Oftentimes, it’s much less than that. It’s within a few hours.

But it’s good to know and it’s good to find out if the developer has a certain goal time that they have to respond back. But something else that is going to greatly affect the launch date or the overall time in the project is how quickly you, the customer, are in responding back to the developer.

One of the biggest things that we find slows down the project and we’re not complaining about it, but it is simply the fact of life is that, oftentimes, the website is not the number one priority of the point-of-contact.

And so it usually will take a few days to get a response back to an e-mail. Or when it comes to putting in content, it usually, you know, sometimes it might take weeks to be able to get that content in.

So, to improve or to speed things up, it’s oftentimes very helpful to get to responses within a day from the client or to get the content in within just a few days of when we’re asking for it.

Website build times. So, in summary, it’s impacted by whether:

1. It’s a custom design versus a pre-existing design.
2. The number of revisions that’s provided in the design process.
3. The amount of content that the developer is going to be entering.
4. And then, lastly, the developer and client response times.

So I hope that this has been an informative video and helps you understand what goes into determining the length of time that a website project will take.

If there’s anything that we can do for you here at OurChurch.Com to help you achieve your mission or your goals on-line, please complete the consultation request form below.

Thank you very much.

Hi, I’m Mark Steinbrueck with OurChurch.Com. In this video I want to talk about the question that I’m often asked: Will I be able to maintain the website myself?

Let’s talk about maintaining website and doing it yourself versus having a website developer company do it for you.

What are the pros and cons of maintaining a website yourself versus having a developer do it for you?

Maintaining the website yourself will take more of your time but it will typically save you money. That’s the advantage of maintaining it yourself. Advantage of updating the website yourself is that you can do it anytime that you want whereas if you have a developer maintain it for you often times there’s going to be some kind of a leave time it might be a few days, it might be a few hours sometimes it takes a week or more. Typically it’s going to be a lot quicker for you to be able to maintain the site yourself.

But ask yourself if either you or someone else at your organization has the time and the desire to maintain the website internally. If you don’t or you don’t have that time, you don’t have the desire to maintain the website yourself most likely it won’t be done then. In those situations it is recommended that you consider having a website developer or company maintain the site for you simply then you have new content put on there on a regular basis.

We recommend that you try to do it yourself if possible but if you don’t have the time or you don’t have the desire to do it then often times it is better to have a company or an organization do it for you.

Something else to take in consideration when it comes to maintaining the site is:

Are you using a desktop-based platform or a web-based platform?

Simply put a Desktop-based Platform as software that is stored on your computer and web-based platform is something that is not stored on your computer you simply need to have access to the web to be able to log into them and back into the website to be able to maintain it.

There are limitations to going with the desktop-based software and simply put is you have to have it on every single computer that is going to be used in maintaining the website.

If you have three or four people on your web team that means that each of them has to have it on their computer to do it. If it is unavailable on the Smartphone or a tablet that means that they are not able to do it that way. If they have a desktop versus a notebook computer they’d have to have it on both of those units as well.

The preferred way or the recommended way is to go with a Web-based Platform because that means that you can do it from anywhere in the world that you have internet access you can use a computer, a Smartphone or a tablet to be able to do that.

Is training provided?

So whether you maintain the site yourself or not that’s a very big part of it. Are you going to know how to do that? Find out how to update the website. What kind of training is provided? Is it going to be done by video tutorials, are there phone trainings that are provided or are there reading tutorials that you have to go online and read to be able to gain the knowledge to maintain the website.

How easy is it to maintain yourself?

Some web platforms are very easy to use whereas others are more complicated. It is very important to research the platform that the developer will be using to make your site or that you will be using when you build your own site and find out what other people are saying about it. Find out if they are saying that it’s easy and if it’s complicated. It’s something that’s very important to know before getting into using a particular software platform.

Is there support if I need help maintaining the website?

When you do get stuck or you do need help maintaining the website is there support that’s provided and how is it provided? Is it provided by email, is it provided by filling online forms, is there a phone number that you can call? But all those questions are important to have answers to before selecting a choice of maintaining the site yourself or having a developer do it for you.

I hope that this was informative and I hope that it gave you a lot of good information as far as maintaining the website yourself or having a developer maintain it for you.

If you have any questions or would like to talk to someone at OurChurch.com please complete the consultation request form below and we will be more than happy to speak with you.

Hi, I’m Mark Steinbrueck with OurChurch.com and on this video I want to talk about what determines the price of a website. The most common question I am asked when talking to someone about a website is how much it’s going to cost.

Let’s talk about what are the things that go into determining the cost of a website.

1) Consultative vs Cookie-Cutter Process

Number one, is it a consultative approach or the cookie cutter process? Are you communicating only by email or just through a series of forums, are you actually able to talk with the person who is building your new website. Are you having live discussions to talk about the purpose, the goal and mission of your website? If you are then it’s more of a consultative approach than a cookie cutter process. Also is your input being considered in the building process or the developing dictating what your site will be like. If the developer is dictating what the site is going to be like then it’s most likely a cookie cutter process.

2) Content Mapping

Number two, content mapping. A lot of people don’t know what content mapping is and it’s certainly the process of listing or mapping all the pages that you will have on your website. This is a step that most companies either don’t understand don’t recognize the importance of and therefore leave it out but it is a very important step for a couple of reasons.

1. It helps the designer understand what the focus of your website will be. If you look at all the content of the website you will be able to see exactly what kind o purpose or what the mission or the goals of the website will be.
2. It also is extremely helpful for you the customer to think about all the content you will need to create. This may give you the opportunity to go to other people within the organization to start providing some of that content so that when it’s ready to be entered into the website that you have it.

3) Design

The number three thing that goes into develop or determine the price of a website is the design. Is it an already premade design or template and if so the cost will most likely be much lower? If it is something that is designed from scratch then that’s going to impact and increase the cost of the website.

4) Functionality

Number four the functionalities of the website. If a website doesn’t have many functionalities or it’s very basic functionalities or it’s more or less just like an online brochure that’s going to typically mean a lower cost for the website. However, if you have higher-end functionalities things like better registration, document management, online forms that can be filled out, shopping cards things like that that often times would increase the price of the website.

5) Content Input

Content input how much content is the website developer putting into the site for you and how much are you putting in yourself? Simply put the more time that the developer has to spend putting content into the website the more he is going to charge you or she is going to charge you. If they are not putting a whole lot of content in and you are doing that mostly on your own that will typically keep the cost lower.

6) Training

Number six training. Are they training you on how to maintain the website or are you either expected to know how to maintain the website yourself or are they going to be providing some kind of an online training or video training?

Here at OurChurch.com with our build it yourself websites we have some online pages that show you exactly how to do things on the website and as a result it keeps the cost down but it is a more self-guided process. With our custom sites on the other hand we provide full training as well as video tutorial training. It’s more of a consultative approach and a more in-depth training approach and so the cost with our custom sites are a little bit higher than those the build it yourself websites.

7) Support

Number seven, support. Does the website include any support at all and if so how is the support provided? Are they providing it via email, via phone, via Help Desk and are they doing it by online or email support? Typically if you are getting phone support then that will usually have a higher cost whereas if there’s online or email support only or only help pages that typically will result to lower cost.

8) Hosting, Email, Domain Name

Lastly, hosting, email and domain name. Are they providing that as well? Is that included in the cost of the website? So are you receiving email at your domain name, are you including hosting as part of the package price or is that something separate and does it include the registration of your domain name or is that something that you have to either buy from another company or pay extra for? All these items need to be factored into the cost of the website.

In Summary

In summary, the things that determine the price of a website:

1. Is it a consultative approach or a cookie cutter process?
2. Is there content mapping that’s included?
3. What’s the design? Is it premade or custom?
4. What kind of functionalities are being included?
5. Content input, are you putting a lot of content in or are they putting a lot in for you?
6. What kind of training are they providing?
7. What kind of support is included?
8. What kind of hosting email or domain name registration is included?

I hope that you’ve found this video informative and helpful. Please complete the consultation request form below  if we can help you in determining what we can do to help you achieve your goals and your missions online for your website.

Thank you very much.

Hi, I’m Mark Steinbrueck with OurChurch.Com. And on this video, we’re going to talk about How to Choose a Website Company and what goes into that decision making process.

First of all, ask the website developer;

1) What the mission is of their organization. Why are they in business?

If they can’t give you a quick response, they probably don’t know. Or they’re just in business to make money.

OurChurch.Com exists to help Christians achieve their missions on-line. And, as a result of that, we can identify with Christian organizations and individuals in helping them build their website.

2) Do they understand your organization?

Are they a secular organization? Or are they a Christian organization? Not to say that you have to go with a Christian organization. But oftentimes, people that don’t understand or don’t have the same values that your organization has, they’re not going to be able to effectively put together a website to accomplish what your mission is. Some companies just appear to be Christian companies, but they’re simply just divisions of secular companies that are trying to capitalize on the Christian market. It’s best to choose a company that’s aligned with your organization goals and mission.

3) How long have they been in business?

Simply ask them that question. How long have you been in business? Experience may not be everything, but it’s best to choose an organization that’s been in business for awhile because then they know exactly the ins and outs of building a website and how to communicate effectively with customers. And it’ll be a better experience in the long run.

4) What are other customers saying about them?

Look for on-line reviews of the company. Ask for customer references. Check out the Better Business Bureau rating. All these things can go and help you make an informed decision on whether or not they are a customer friendly organization.

5) How responsive are they?

If it took them more than a week, or you know, three or four days to respond to your initial inquiry, why would it be different once you are a client? So, use the sales process as an evaluation process to see how effective they are in communicating with you.

6) Examples of previous work.

Ask for a list of previous work or a link to their on-line portfolio. This will probably be their best work. However, if you don’t see anything there that you would be proud of or that you would want for your own website, then you most likely won’t be getting something produced by them that you’ll be happy with either. So ask to see some examples of their work.

So, in summary how to choose a website company:

1. Ask what their mission is.
2. Ask if they understand your organization.
3. How long have they been in business?
4. What are the other customers saying about them?
5. How responsive are they?
6. And ask for examples of their previous work.

I hope this helps provide some guidance on selecting a website company. If you’d like to talk with someone here at OurChurch.Com in how we can help you achieve your mission and your goals on-line, please complete the consultation request form below.

This week concludes “Design month”, so we wanted to finish it off with two more of our Template Personalization Service clients. These two churches literally received their new template in the past 2 days and started the personalization a week ago. We are proud to be a part of their ministry.

Faith Lutheran Church

FLC is one of our most recent recipients of our TPS (Template Personalization Service) product. They had chosen the “Travel Portal” template in the building process of their website, using the NE1 Website Builder’s template gallery. They sent us a logo (off of a scanned piece of paper) and provided their own header images. We then graphically embedded them (along with their name and slogan) into the template. The result was a unique website design personalized just for Faith Lutheran Church. Visit their site at http://www.flcnpr.org/.

Druid Hills United Methodist Church

Druid Hills UMC is located in Ocala, Florida. They recently purchased one of OurChurch.Com’s Bundle packages which includes the TPS that we mentioned above. They had chosen the “Worship the Lord” template. They sent us a sketch of their church building to use as the church logo, but then the rest of the design was left up to us. We decided to make the header of the website a little larger so that the logo cold be seen, then we created a dark gray background with some lighting effects to finish it off. Check out their site at http://www.druidhillsocala.org.

In this week’s showcase, we are featuring one site that was actually a winner of a custom header design and another that invested in their own Custom CMS website. We felt that both of these websites were great examples of the possibilities that the NE1 website builder and our Custom CMS products can offer.

Faith Bible Church

Faith Bible Church, located in Libby, Montana, is a “Christ-centered, Bible-teaching church whose mission is exalting Jesus Christ, evangelizing and discipling people in service for Him, and connecting with each other.” They were fortunate enough to be a winner in one of our contests called the “Extreme Makeover OCC Edition.” As the winner of this contest, they received a Custom Header for the template of their choice. They chose to go with a Flash header with rotating images and animated text. You can visit their site at http://www.libbyfbc.org/.

Heritage United Methodist Church

Heritage United Methodist Church is located in Clearwater, Florida. They are a multi-generational community of believers in the United Methodist tradition growing together under the leadership of Jesus Christ. Their primary focus and audience is young families and children. Because of this, they chose to have an “edgier” website design. They also chose to have a second, yet similar design for the Student Ministry section of their website. Two of the favorite features on their website are their “Sermons Online” section, where visitors can stream audio recordings of past sermons from the website, and the event registration software, which allows the church to collect both information and money directly from the website for upcoming events. These are just a couple of the features that keeps their website remarkable and saves them time in the end.

Hi, I’m Mark Steinbrueck with OurChurch.Com. And, in this video, I’m going to talk to you about How to Decide What Your Needs are For a Website.

Ask your web team:

What is the purpose of the website?

For those of you who don’t know what a web team is, a web team is a group of individuals that are responsible for the content and the decision making of the website. So it’s important to ask the question:

• Why do we have the website?
• What’s the purpose?
• Are you trying to get people to visit your church or your school?
• Are you trying to get people to buy something from your business?
• Are you trying to get people to request more information or to set up an appointment?

But it’s very important to make sure that you ask the question and figure out what is the purpose for the website. Secondly, think about;

What the immediate needs and wants are, as well as the long term needs and wants are for your website.

Make a list of what you want the website to do for you:

• Audio
• video
• e-newsletters
• blogging
• event registration
• shopping cart, etc.

Ask those questions of what you want it to do immediately and what you want it to do down the line. And what you need it to do versus what are simply wants.

Create four columns and in one column, create immediate needs.In the second column, create immediate wants. In the third column, create long term needs. And in the fourth column, create long term wants. And this will give you the visual and understanding of exactly what things you want the website to do for you.

Don’t create too much work for yourself.

So many times, I talk to people and they really don’t like the idea of getting into a new website because they just don’t want to add something else to their list of things to do. And I completely understand.

Find ways for the website to work for you.

So, in other words, find a way for the website to take work off of your plate if you’re going to be putting some work into it.

So, for example, if you have bulletins or newsletters or mailers that you currently send out, find a way for the website to do that for you. Send out e-newsletters instead of sending out bulletins and mailers. It’ll save you on time for what you’re currently doing. It will also save you on the cost of postage and printing.

Registration forms. A lot of organizations still use the good, old paper forms. But if you use the on-line forms, those forms can be created very easily. You don’t have to print them out and hand them out to people within your organization. And it also is a good way, when people fill out those forms on-line, it’ll automatically categorize and put it in a format that’s easy to go through and digest the information.

Member, student or staff directories. A lot of organizations are using on-line directories instead of printing out paper directories. It’s going to save you on printing costs. It’ll save you on the cost of putting them together for print. And you can keep it on-line and easily maintain it as people leave and join your organization.

Decide who’s going to be responsible for maintaining the website.

So, the needs for the website are not just what the website will do and how it will function, but who will maintain the website and how often will it be done. And how much time will be put into it. Set the expectations up front.

The reason that people get frustrated with things in life is simply because their expectations are not met. So make sure that everyone that’s involved in the website understands and agrees for what the website’s expectations will be for maintaining and updating the website.

So, in review, the things that you take into consideration when deciding the needs of your website is to find a purpose of the website.

1. Figure out what your immediate needs and wants and long term needs and wants are.
2. Don’t create too much work.
3. Find ways to take work off your plate when you’re adding things to it for maintaining the website.
4. And then decide who will be responsible for the website and what the expectations will be as well.

I hope that you found this video to be informative and help you in your process in developing a website for your organization.

If there’s anything that we can do for you here at OurChurch.Com, please complete the consultation request form below. We’d love to speak with you.

In this week’s showcase, I want to highlight two clients that took advantage of our Template Personalization Service (TPS for short). With the TPS, our NE1 clients can have their chosen template personalized to include their logo, name and slogan embedded into their website as a part of their template.

Syosset Gospel Church

Our first TPS showcase is Syosset Gospel Church, in Syosset, New York. They had chosen our “Amazing” template, but then asked if they could design they could replace the entire image that was at the top of the template. They had sent in 2 different images of an open bible and then asked if we could just add their name and a bible verse to it. We did just that and they were extremely happy with the results. You can visit their website at http://www.syossetgospelchurch.com.

Grace and Truth Ministries

Grace and Truth Ministries is a ministry run by Pastor Marty Dickerson. He has placed several of his teachings and sermons into MP3 format and is using his website to distribute these teachings to the public for free. Pastor Dickerson did not have a logo to use, so what we decided to do is design the title of the organization in a way that would represent a logo. The “Heavens” template was chosen and we used a beautiful script font to represent God’s beauty and the wonder of His grace. The end result came out very nice. Feel free to visit pastor Dickerson’s site at http://www.gracereigns.org/.

What do you think?

With February being Website Design Month, we decided to let you into the “inside” and feature a few of our recent clients that hired OurChurch.Com to design either part or all of their website. This week we are featuring 2 different school websites. An NE1 Website and a Custom CMS Website.

Paradise Leadership Christian Academy

Paradise Leadership University is an academy in Jacksonville, AR that partners with universities, churches and seminary institutions to develop well-round youth that will excel as 21st century leaders.

They currently have only a summer program, but plan to start a year-round program in 2014.

They hired OurChurch.Com to create a Custom Header for their NE1 Website. You can visit their site at http://www.paradisechristianleadershipacademy.org/.

College of Christian Studies at Anderson University

The College of Christian Studies is a department of Anderson University, located in Anderson, SC. They offer programs that emphasize practical ministry training for a new generation of Kingdom leaders. Anderson University is an accredited university affiliated with the South Carolina Baptist Convention.

While being a part of the college, they decided to create a separate website than the website that Anderson University already had. They were looking for a professional look, but with a “grunge” twist to be more appealing to their target audience: High School Seniors.

Their site not only includes a custom design, but many other features such as a custom forms feature, Twitter widget, and more.

You can visit their website at http://www.auministry.com.