OurChurch.Com News and Announcements

Why We Redesigned Our Site & How It`s Producing Results

pdstein — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:24:55 -0500

View this announcement with color and graphics at:
http://blog.ourchurch.com/2012/02/09/why-redesign-ourchurch-website-producing-results/

OurChurch.Com is excited to announce the official launch of our newly redesigned website. The launch is a fitting segue between our "Start with Why" series of blog posts in January and our February theme of Web Design Month.

Start With Why

The "Start With Why" philosophy is that while most organizations start by telling you what they do an appeal to their audience's self-interest, inspiring leaders and organizations start by telling you why they do what they do and invite you to join their cause.

OurChurch.Com believes in partnering with other Christian organizations to help them achieve their mission online. That's our cause. So, the OCC site was redesigned in several ways to "Start With Why."

- The motto below our logo was changed from "Because the church is the people" to "Achieve your mission online.

- On our homepage and the main page of each section of our site - web design, web hosting, search marketing and advertising services - we replaced content that promoted our services with graphics showing quotes from ministries who we have helped achieve their mission online.

- Further down on the homepage, we added a "Why Choose OurChurch.Com" box and included our mission statement next to it.
Simple and Beautiful

We believe that the simpler a website is the better. However, we also wanted to include color and creativity in the site so that people interested in having us develop a custom designed website for them would immediately know we are capable of creating a stunning website for them. To achieve both simple and beautiful, we designed the site itself to be very simple and include a lot of white space and put color and creativity into the content - the slides you see just below the header.

A few more things we did to simplify our site. We�

- Reduced the number of items in each menu

- Placed the consultation request form at the bottom of every page in our design, SEO and advertising sections (previously the bottom of each page had a link to a separate consultation request form)

- Drastically reduced the number of items in the consultation request form.
The results couldn't be more dramatic! The number of people completing the consultation request forms has more than tripled!

Better Social Media Integration

One other significant improvement made to the new site is the addition of the social media sharing buttons on the left side of every page. Not only is social media an important source of new visitors, but search engines are factoring Tweets, likes and +1s into their ranking algorithms, so it's important to encourage and facilitate as much Tweeting, liking, sharing and +1ing as we can.

In fact, would you please take a moment to Tweet, like and +1 our homepage right now?

We Covet Your Comments!

While we're super excited about our new site, we also recognize that our opinions and our user experience on the site is secondary in importance to yours. Please tell us what you think of the new site - good and bad.

- How does it look to you? Do you feel like we achieved simple and beautiful?

- Can you immediately understand our "why" - our mission - when you first arrive on our site?

- Are you able to quickly and easily find our way around our site?

- Did you run across any problems? Any misspellings, broken links, confusing text?

Thanks for taking a look at our new site! And thanks for the feedback!

In His Service,
Paul Steinbrueck, CEO
OurChurch.Com

Web Design Month � Achieve Your Mission Online!

pdstein — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:07:58 -0500

View this announcement with color and images on our blog:
http://blog.ourchurch.com/2012/02/02/web-design-month-achieve-your-mission-onlin/

Good day!

OurChurch.Com's mission is to help you achieve your mission online. Having a well-designed website is absolutely essential to achieving your mission online. That's because a) your website is likely the hub of your communications, and b) the design of your website affects so many aspects of your site.

The design of your website encompasses:

- The way your site looks
- How easy (or difficult) it is for visitors to find their way around
- Functionality such as login, forms, calendar, blog, multimedia
- The administrative interface for staff
- The "behind the scenes" tags necessary to optimize it for search engines

As you can see, web design is about much, much more than having a pretty site. There's a lot riding on it!

So, we're devoting an entire month to helping you evaluate and improve the design of your website.

1) Blogging About Design Issues

As I mentioned earlier, our mission is to help you achieve your mission online. That's regardless of whether you use any of our services or not. We'll be blogging about design issues that may be giving people a bad impression of your organization, issues that could be frustrating your visitors and help you think through and prioritize steps that will bring your website more in alignment with your mission.

2) Website Reviews

If you'd like to take the general insight we offer here on Christian Web Trends and have it applied specifically to your website, we offer a comprehensive website review. The review includes evaluation of your site in 6 key areas:

1. Appearance and layout
2. Navigation and usability
3. Purpose and goals
4. Content
5. Availability in search engines
6. Interactivity and social media

We provide you with a written evaluation very similar to the reviews web published here two years ago and include recommended action steps. Then we schedule a half hour phone call to go over the evaluation with you and answer any questions you might have. The cost of this comprehensive review is just $199. If you're interested, please complete the consultation request form to discuss the service further.

3) Custom Web Design Services

If you're at the point where you know you need a new website in order to accomplish your mission online, we would love to help you with that. Remember, our mission is not just to build websites but to help you achieve your God-given mission online. So we listen to understand who you are and what your mission is. Then we can custom design a site for you that has a look that conveys who you are as an organization and the specific functionality you need to accomplish your goals. See our web design portfolio for examples of the organizations we serve and then complete the consultation request form so we can set up a time to talk.

4) Everything But the Kitchen Sink

Lastly, one of the ways we help you achieve your mission online is by being available to help you with whatever you need - everything but the kitchen sink. If you need someone to fix up your current site, we can help with that. If you need custom programming or database integration, we can help with that. Domain registration, web hosting, SEO - you name it, we can do it all for you so that you have just one company to call anytime you want to do anything with your site.

Whew! That's a lot going on this month. No matter how big your organization is and no matter what state your website is in now, we've got something that will help you take the next step towards achieving your mission online.

In His Service,
Paul Steinbrueck, CEO
OurChurch.Com

Change in Support and Domain Registration Pricing

pdstein — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:35:54 -0500

Hi OCC Webmaster,

OurChurch.Com exists to help Christian organizations achieve their mission online. One of the main ways we do this is by providing websites to all Christians regardless of their financial or technical resources with free, easy-to-build websites.

We are proud of the fact that we are the only Christian website services company that provides free websites, and that these free sites help thousands and thousands of Christian organizations achieve their mission online. Through some recent evaluations we've discovered that a majority of our support staff's time is going to provide support for free sites. In order to provide our paying members with the best possible support and continue funding improvements of our web builder and other services, we've come to the conclusion that changes need to be made.

We discussed the possibility of ending free sites altogether, but couldn't choose that option because of our commitment to providing services to as many Christians as possible regardless of financial or technical resources. So, the best way for us to continue to provide free sites and allocate the necessary resources to support paying members and continue to improve services, we will no longer be providing phone or email support for free sites after December 14.

Just to be clear, your website will continue operating as it currently does with the same pages, disk space and functionality, but after December 14 you'll need to refer to our very comprehensive knowledge base for any questions you may have.

If you'd like the help of our friendly, professional support staff by phone, chat, email or help desk, all you need to do is upgrade to any of our paid hosting packages, which start at less than $5 a month. If you'd like to upgrade now, you can do that at http://www.ourchurch.com/edit/order2.php

Domain Registration Pricing

There are some other changes having to do with domain name registration we want you to be aware of.

Over the last few years, the grand pubas at ICANN, the central organization for domain name registrations, have raised their prices several times. Up until this point we have kept our domain registration price unchanged and continued to offer free domain registration with the purchase of a year of web hosting. We've been doing this at a loss, however, with another round of ICANN price changes on the way, we've got to change our prices to be able to continue to provide you with the level of service you know and expect from OurChurch.Com

Beginning January 1, the cost for 1 year of domain registration will increase from $9.95 to $14.95. We will also no longer offer free domain name registration when purchasing a year of web hosting, though we will continue to provide 2 free months of hosting (a 17% savings) when purchasing a year. We're making these changes so we can continue to provide you with the convenience and simplicity of not having to worry about your domain name. You'll be able to renew your domain name at the same time you renew your hosting or design services without any additional hassle.

Before these changes go into effect, we're giving all our members one more opportunity to get in on the current prices. If you purchase a year of web hosting by December 29, you can get your domain registration free for another year. Or if you order a monthly hosting package by December 29, you can get a year of domain registration at the current price of $9.95

Order here: http://www.ourchurch.com/edit/order2.php

If you have an auto-payment established with OurChurch.Com for the hosting of your website, the above pricing with automatically take effect and your payment method on file will be charged on your renewal date. This email acts as an official change of pricing and by continuing your hosting service with OurChurch.Com, you are agreeing to the updated pricing.

If you have any questions, please let us know.

Thanks for the opportunity to partner with you to accomplish your mission online.

In His Service,
Paul Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Part 1 of the NE1 Web Builder Upgrade Trilogy

pdstein — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:07:02 -0500

We hope you had a great summer! While you were lounging around at the beach sipping daiquiris (non alcoholic, I'm sure) our team was hard at work creating a trilogy of improvements to the NE1 Web Builder. Over the next week, we will be rolling part 1, which includes 4 major improvements.

1) New Image Editor

Currently, if you go into the asset manager and click the "edit" (pencil-like) icon next to an image, it launches a basic image editor that enables you to resize, crop, and rotate images. We're ditching that image editor and replacing it with an awesome image editor provided by pixlr.com. This image editor can do just about everything except file your taxes for you. Use it to add text, reduce red eye, adjust brightness and contrast, make your boss look like he's posing in a fun house hall of mirrors, plus dozens of other filters and adjustments. The most commonly used features are intuitive to use and there are video tutorials for the more advanced features.

2) New Gallery

Big improvements are on the way for the image gallery as well. The new version will enable you to:

� Change the order of images by simply dragging and dropping them where you want them
� Set the size of the thumbnails
� Set the number of images per page
� Set the number of images per row
� Hide the comments

The Gallery module comes in the all Gold, Silver and Bronze [url=http://www.ourchurch.com/hosting/]hosting packages[/url], so if you've got a Free or Starter package now, you'll need to [url=http://www.ourchurch.com/edit/order2.php]upgrade[/url] to get the new gallery.

3) User Access Manager

The User Access Manager is a completely new module that enables you set up multiple administrators for your website. Not only that, but it enables you to determine exactly which pages and modules each person can edit.

Want to give your senior pastor access to post to the blog but don't want him to be able to change the site template? You got it! Want to give teachers the ability to update pages just for their classes? Your wish is our command! Want to set up a second administrator and give them access to everything so you can go on vacation ignore all calls from your boss? Done!

The User Access Manager is gold. Figuratively and literally. It's available exclusively in the Gold package.

4) New Help Icons

As if that wasn't enough to get you dancing a jig, you'll soon notice "Help" icons next to the title of every NE1 Admin page. Click it, and it will magically take you to the help page for that admin function.

Rollout Schedule

The plan is to begin rolling out these improvements Friday morning to NE1 sites in Gold, Silver, and Bronze hosting packages. If all goes well, Free and Starter packages sites should begin seeing these goodies by the middle of next week.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, [url=http://www.ourchurch.com/support/]give us a shout[/url].

In His Service,
Paul Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Win Outspoken: Conversations on Church Communications

pdstein — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 23:57:43 -0500

[url=http://blog.ourchurch.com/2011/09/15/win-a-copy-of-outspoken-conversations-on-church-communications-outspokenbook/]Read the HTML version of this announcement with color & images[/url]

Today we're reviewing, discussing, and giving away the book [url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/146373817X/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=liveintent-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=146373817X]Outspoken: Conversations on Church Communications[/url]. Keep reading to learn how you can win one of 3 copies we're giving away.

Outspoken is a brand new book about church communications that's being released today. What makes Outspoken remarkable is that it's a compilation of insight from more than 60 church communications professionals including Jon Acuff, Phil Cooke, DJ Chuang, Steve Fogg, Charles Lee, Kem Meyer, Tony Morgan, John Saddington, Tony Steward, and Leonard Sweet. I'm excited to be a contributor as well.

The book is published by The Center for Church Communications (known for its popular blog Church Marketing Sucks) and was edited and organized by its co-director Tim Schraeder. It covers all facets of church communications such as leadership, branding, design, words and stories, technology, creativity, and personal growth.

This is a book every person that does church communications, web design, or marketing should read and keep within arm's reach at their desk. It's a great book for pastors too because they do and oversee a lot of church communications as well.

Get a Free Book

Because all of us at OurChurch.Com and Christian Web Trends want to see churches communicate better, we're not only helping to spread the word about Outspoken, we're also going to give away 3 copies. All you have to do to win one is:

1) Retweet this post or share it on Facebook, AND�

2) Post a comment to [url=http://blog.ourchurch.com/2011/09/15/win-a-copy-of-outspoken-conversations-on-church-communications-outspokenbook/]this blog post[/url] with one bit of advice for church communicators or a question about church communications. (Include your Facebook or Twitter username in your comment so I can connect your comment to your share/tweet).

Three people will be selected Friday, September 16, at 4 PM to receive a free copy of the book.

If you'd like to double your chances of winning, share/comment once each day.

In the mean time, you can [url=http://www.outspokenbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Outspoken-Sample.pdf]download a free preview[/url] or [url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/146373817X/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=liveintent-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=146373817X]purchase Outspoken on Amazon[/url].

OurChurch.Com Launches 50 Point Social Media Review Service

pdstein — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:35:01 -0500

[url=http://blog.ourchurch.com/2011/03/10/ourchurch-com-launches-50-point-social-media-review-service/]View this announcement with graphics and HTML[/url]

OurChurch.Com has launched a social media consulting service called The 50 Point Social Media Review, which provides organizations a comprehensive review of their social media profiles and operations and specific recommendations to make more effective use of social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, and a blog.

Social media provides churches, ministries, and businesses an extraordinary new opportunity to connect and communicate more effectively with people inside and outside their organizations. Many organizations recognize social media's potential, but need help getting started or an experienced professional to look over their shoulder and let them know what they're doing right and how they could improve their efforts. That's what this service provides.

With the 50 Point Social Media Review, you'll receive:

- Full written report of the 50 point social media evaluation of your organization's
--- website
--- blog
--- Facebook page
--- Twitter profile
--- The Facebook profile of your social media point person (CEO, senior pastor, communication director)
--- The Twitter profile of your social media point person (CEO, senior pastor, communication director)

- Prioritized recommendations for the next steps that will make your social media efforts more effective.

- 30 minute private consultation to discuss the results and recommendation

- Follow-up 30 days later to evaluate progress

Cost of this service will be $299. However, for the next 7 days, you can receive this valuable service for just $199 using coupon code smlaunch.

[url=http://www.ourchurch.com/consulting/social-media-consulting.php]Order the 50 Point Social Media Review now![/url]

Social Media for Pastors and Church Planters Webinar

pdstein — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 14:50:26 -0500

View this announcement with color and graphics at:
http://blog.ourchurch.com/2011/02/23/webinar-social-media-for-pastors-and-church-planters/

Chris Walker (of EvangelismCoach.org) and I are teaming up to present a webinar on Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 1:00 PM titled Social Media for Pastors and Church Planters.

In this free 1 hour webinar you'll learn:

- How to decide which social media sites are right for you and your church.
- How to avoid social media faux pas that can drive people away from your church.
- How to use social media to get better search rankings in Google.
- How to use both a Facebook page and Facebook profile together for maximum effectiveness.

[url=https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/845931811]Click to register for the webinar.[/url]

There will be time for Q&A at the end of the webinar, but what questions would you like to see addressed in the webinar?

In His Service,
Paul Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Sales Peeps, We�re Hiring. Join the OurChurch.Com Team

pdstein — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 14:46:08 -0500

View this announcement with color and graphics at:
http://blog.ourchurch.com/2011/02/22/sales-hiring-join-ourchurch-com-team/

OurChurch.Com is looking for some awesome people who love God, love sales, and would love to make some money. Here are the details�

Title: Web Solutions Sales

Description: OurChurch.Com is a leading provider of web design, marketing, hosting, and advertising services to Christian individuals and organizations. We are seeking to add to our team experienced salespeople who are passionate about seeing Christian organizations connect and communicate more effectively using the Internet.

Duties: This person will be responsible for contacting potential clients, analyzing their current internet presence and goals, and offering solutions to help them reach those goals. This is not a lead generating position but one that will be responsible for working with potential clients throughout the sales process.

The job requires sales skills including the abilities cold call, email prospective clients, write proposals, follow up with leads, and close sales. This position requires excellent time management, self motivation, self discipline, and an outgoing personality.

Knowledge and Experience: This person must have at least 3 years sales experience. Knowledge of website design, search engine marketing, hosting, and internet advertising are a plus. This person must also be able to learn details of OurChurch.Com's specific services with minimal assistance.

Character: This person must be self-motivated and able to work from home with no direct supervision. He or she must have good communication skills and be able to communicate clearly both verbally and in written text. The individual must have a friendly, positive attitude, be very patient and not easily frustrated. He or she should view the position as more than just a job but as a ministry of Christian service helping other Christians in ministry.

Hours: There is no specific number of hours required for this position; however, a minimum of 10 hours per week is required. The exact number of hours and when those hours are worked are up to the discretion of the salesperson. This position is commission only, so the number of hours one is able to dedicate to the position will directly impact the effectiveness and compensation of individual.

Additional requirements: Individual must have a desktop or laptop computer and a broadband Internet connection. They must also have a quality phone line where they can make and receive calls. The phone can be a land line, VOIP, or cell phone.

Location: Individual will work from their home. Working from home has many benefits, but the individual must be able to perform their job with minimal interruptions.

Compensation: This position is commission only. Individual will receive 25% of all sales they close. Individual will be compensated as a contractor and will be responsible for their own federal income tax & social security withholdings, and payroll taxes.

Please email resumes with cover letter to jobs (at) ourchurch (dot) com.

Make Your Website Remarkable in Website Design Month

pdstein — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 14:35:12 -0500

View this announcement with graphics & HTML in our blog:
http://blog.ourchurch.com/2011/02/03/make-your-website-simple-beautiful-and-remarkable-in-website-design-month/

Hi Folks!

February is Website Design Month at OurChurch.Com. All month long we're going to focus specifically on applying the principles of Simple, Beautiful, Remarkable to website design.

Or hope is that with some encouragement, perhaps some insight posted to the blog, or maybe some of our services, you'll take the next step towards making your website simple, beautiful, and remarkable.

Here's what we've got cooking in Website Design Month�

1) Save on NE1 Customization Services

Most of the people whose websites call OurChurch.Com home, have built their own websites using our NE1 Web Builder. We currently offer 3 levels of customization for NE1 sites, all 3 can be purchased in February for a special, discounted price.

- $25 off Template Personalization Service - Get the name of your organization, your slogan, and your logo embedded into the header of your site.

- $50 off Custom Header - We'll design an awesome custom header for your site using your logo, images, and text. We'll even throw in some Flash to rotate through the images or animate the text to make your site pop

- $50 off Custom Template - We'll not only create an awesome custom header, but create the entire template to your specs.

We've had more than 15 organizations already this year take their website design to the next level by ordering one of these services. [url=http://www.ourchurch.com/hosting/design-services.php]Read more about the customization services[/url] or [url=http://www.ourchurch.com/edit/order2.php]order here[/url].

2) Christian Web Trends: Simply Packed with Goodness

We've got all kinds of good things happening in the Christian Web Trends blog this month.

- Simple, Beautiful, Remarkable Design - Mike Cotton, our lead web designer, is writing a post every Tuesday about how to make the design of your site simple, beautiful, and remarkable. He kicked off this series on Tuesday with [url=http://blog.ourchurch.com/2011/02/01/3-ways-to-make-your-website-simple/]3 Ways to Make Your Website Simple[/url]

- Website Showcase - On Thursday of each week, Mike will also be showcasing some recently completed custom sites. The [url=http://blog.ourchurch.com/2011/02/03/web-design-showcase-paradise-leadership-christian-academy-anderson-university/]first post[/url] in that series was published today.

- Less Clutter, Less Noise continues - And it just so happens that yesterday's post was right on topic: [url=http://blog.ourchurch.com/2011/02/02/less-clutter-less-noise-10-untangle-the-web/]Untangling the Web[/url]

- Giving away an iPod touch! Yep, that's right, but you gotta wait a couple weeks.

Subscribe to the [url=http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChristianWebTrends]RSS feed[/url], follow us on [url=http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChristianWebTrends]Twitter[/url], or Like us on [url=http://facebook.com/ourchurchdotcom]Facebook[/url] so you don't miss any of it

3) Get a remarkable custom designed website

Does your website look old or cluttered? Is it hard to update? Does it lack time and cost-saving features like event registration, online video, eNewsletter management? Check out OurChurch.Com's [url=http://www.ourchurch.com/design/]custom website design services[/url]. Then schedule a free phone consultation so we can listen to what you want your website to accomplish for you and find the solution that help you do that most effectively.

4) More Remarkable Stuff on the Way

As if that wasn't enough, we've got a couple of other things coming down the pike in Website Design month like some significant improvements to NE1.

So what are you doing to make your website simple, beautiful, and remarkable this year? Anything we can do to help?

In His Service,
Paul Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

OCC Launches New Help Desk and Knowledge Base

pdstein — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 14:20:12 -0500

OurChurch.com is pleased to announce a major upgrade to make getting support simple, beautiful, and remarkable. The upgrade includes:

A new knowledge base to make finding answers much easier and faster
A new help desk which has the knowledge base embedded. When you begin to type a message to send to our support team, the help desk automatically suggests relevant help pages that may answer your question instantly.
Additionally, the new help desk and knowledge base are integrated into the redesigned MyOCC dashboard, which you can access by clicking the "MyOCC" link at the top of every page on OurChurch.Com.

Help desk tickets will be handled in the same way, but with new software to insure quick and efficient reply.

Watch a 2 minute video giving an overview of the new help system and post your comments and questions on this blog post:

http://blog.ourchurch.com/2011/01/21/occ-launches-new-help-desk-and-knowledge-base/

In His Service,
Paul Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com