This is the year of mobility. In fact, every year it’s getting more prevalent and ministries are beginning to take seriously this avenue of traffic, awareness, and potential.
But the most important question is whether or not your ministry is ready to take that step into the world of mobile-ready websites.
Here are 3 ways (among many) that have helped me counsel a ministry that they might be ready to jump in the deep waters of mobile:
3 Starting Thoughts:
- People Want It, Traffic Proves It – Over the last few months you’ve been asked within and without your congregation for a mobile-ready site. You’ve gotten the hunch that it would really be used. In addition, you’ve compared traffic patterns to your website and a good bit are accessing it via a mobile device.
- Part of Global Strategy and Culture – Your global strategy has always included things that directly related to mobility and expansion of your content into different segments and mediums. Jumping into this wouldn’t scare, frighten or make anyone anxious. Your culture supports it.
- You Can Afford It and Support It – This is pretty obvious but if you can support it both financially and with man-power then you might be ready to do it. I think the latter part is just as important if not more important than the former. Does your team have the technical chops? If not, do you know where to get it?
Although these are just starting questions they can help frame a lot of your decision making moving forward.
Is your ministry and church ready?
Eric Murrell says
At Long Hollow, I’ve tried to make it a point to view our information as a stream of content that our users can receive in whatever fashion they’re the most comfortable with. For some, that’s the website. For others, it’s the mobile site or an RSS feed. Whenever a new technology comes out, I try to ensure that our content is formatted to be a natural fit for users on that medium. It has built an expectation with our audience that they can get our content however they want to receive it.
You can take a look a look at our approach to mobile at http://m.longhollow.com. If you’re looking on an iPod/iPhone, add it to your home screen for the best experience.
John Saddington says
love it!
youngdesign says
Our Mobile website launches on Friday night- it’s feature rich, graphic rich and took us about 6 months to develop from start to finish… but the exciting part is:
It’s built entirely on WordPress (!!) so maintenance is amazingly simple. And it’s very cheap-
I’d encourage all churches to have a go at a Mobile site! Now that I’ve been using ours in testing I love it… mobile sites are so great at what they do!
As a selfish plug: Check out the site/features on our Facebook wall: http://ow.ly/1ebXx
John Saddington says
sweet! thanks for the link.
Nick Shoemaker says
Our church needs to do this, but isn’t. It kinda stinks. Maybe THIS article will be read as I fwd it!
John Saddington says
forward away!
Scott Magdalein says
Numbers 1 and 3 are the big ones for me. The culture thing is difficult to gauge, but numbers are easy. Just track how many mobile browsers are hitting the site, what they do when they get there, how much it would cost to mobilize your website, and then see if the investment is worth the return.
John Saddington says
numbers make it easy, huh?
🙂