Site Review: FUMC – Swainsboro, GA

by mickey on July 23, 2007

Church: First UMC – Swainsboro, GA
URL: http://www.swainsborofumc.org

FUMC - Swainsboro


Initial thoughts

As you might expect, my eyes were immediately drawn to the animated colored text at the top of the page. It seems like a bad move, for three reasons:

1 – If you’re gonna use Flash, at least get some photos of church members in there.
2 – If I want to get to your church, one way might be to copy-and-paste your address into Google Maps. I can’t copy and paste from a Flash animation.
3 – Search engines can’t read that text. If someone searches for “church on west main street in swainsboro” or “30401 church”, you won’t rank nearly as high as you should.

Some other comments on the front page:

  • The menu looks good in Internet Explorer, but not so good in FireFox. The “Main Page” link drops down a line, which kicks the main text over to the right a bit.
  • No links in the text. You talk about “strong history”, “variety of programs” and “global mission projects”, but don’t give me a link for more information about any of them.
  • “We hope that we can assist you in having a closer walk with our Lord Jesus Christ.” I hope so too. If someone is new to your area and is coming from another church, they’ll agree. However, if someone is finally starting to maybe sorta think about going to a church, they will RUN from your site when they see text like that. Same goes for the mission statement. You can keep the mission statement on the site, but put it on an internal page instead.
  • Get rid of the counter at the bottom of the page.
  • I’m not sure where I stand on the “Developed by Dwight Watt” text. While I can see reasons for having it, it hurts the church site at least a bit. If nothing else, the site is leaking PageRank from there. Maybe just apply “rel=nofollow” to that link so the PageRank doesn’t go out with it.

Browsing around

So, lets try to get to the church. I don’t see a link for directions, so I assume I can get there from the “staff and contact info” page. Oops, broken link – “PAGE NOT FOUND”. Doing the drop-down link directly to the “contact” page gives me the address. I’m still on my own to find the church, but at least now I have the address in a format that I can copy and paste. If nothing else, at least include a link to your location on a mapping site, like this.

Now I want to read about your “global mission projects“.  Since I can’t click to it from the front page, I’ll dig around.  I guess  maybe under “Groups and Activities”?  Ahh yes, missions!  Let’s see what we’ve got:

“First United Methodist Church is active in local, national and international missions.  We have sent volunteer mission teams to local, national and international projects.”  That’s it?  Where were these projects?  When were they?  No photos all?

Down at the bottom I see that it was “revised August 10, 2003″.  Ouch – four years. For “an active church in missions”, it’s pretty sad to only have two quick sentences that were posted nearly four years ago.

Since the site is fairly void of photos, I went to the “Links and Pictures” and then “Pictures” to find some more.  At the bottom is some text that says “These pictures are reduced to speed display.  Blah blah e-mail Dwight for the full-size”.   Going into them, I see what he means.  They’re tiny — they’re thumbnails.  Why on earth can’t I click them for a larger version?  They don’t have to be full-size, but at least give me a 600 pixel wide photo instead of just the thumbs.  The pages will load just as quickly, but then those that choose to wait can get a larger one.

After that, I went to the “services” page.  “Worship Services” seemed like a good link to follow.

Not much there.  If I wanted to go to the 11:00 service, I see that it was a nursery and that’s about it.  No more info,  no links.  Some questions I might have:

  • What kind of service?  Very traditional, blended, contemporary, something else?
  • What ages can the nursery handle?
  • What should I wear?  Suit and tie, or can I come in a golf shirt and jeans?
  • Sunday School appears to only be at 9:45, so does that mean that our four-year-old comes to the service with us?

There are plenty more questions that someone might have.

Search engine optimization

You rank first in Google right now for “swainsboro church”, which is great.  How about some longer tail searches, though:

  • “swainsboro worship” – #1
  • “swainsboro sunday school” – #12
  • “swainsboro youth group” – #51
  • “swainsboro bible study” – not in the top 100
  • “30401 church” – not in the top 100
  • “Wayne DeFore” – not in the top 100

Some of those are quite surprising to me.  Searching the name of a staff member should almost always bring the church site up near the top (unless it’s a very common name).  Your church is nowhere to be found when I search for your Pastor, “Wayne DeFore”.

Some things that will help:

Change the flash at the top.  As a general rule, don’t bury text in Flash.  If you want to use Flash, give us smiling faces.  Put the address down in the footer or something instead.

Remove or nofollow the link to “Dwight Watt” at the bottom.  The site has precious little PageRank already, and that’s just leaking it out.

Move all of that CSS to an external file and bring it in with a “link” in your page head.

Link internally everywhere.  In this case, you’re simply lacking a lot of pages.  You should have a better page for your missions, then link to it from the front.  You should have a detail page about Rev. DeFore, then link to it whenever you mention his name.  Stuff like that.

Use H1 tags.  Right now, you seem to use mostly H3 tags for the main header text on each page.  Change those to H1, then style them however you want using CSS.

Good title tags.  They keep the right info in them, but change appropriately on each page.  Well done.

Conclusion

Aside from the SEO tips above, the following should also be done:

  • Fix the broken “Staff and Contact Info” link in the menu.
  • Add directions to the “Contact Us” page, or even create a separate “Directions” page.
  • Add a few more photos throughout the site to spruce it up.
  • Turn the small images in the “Pictures” section into true thumbnails and link them to the larger versions of each photo.

Any other suggestions for them or thoughts about what I’ve said? Leave them in the comments below.

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  • dwight-watt

    You have some interesting comments and many that I will implement but a few either I have not been able to because of GBGM hosting or that they are what church wants specifically.

    The flash is partly to dramatize coming together. I need to add the address at bottom and I am adding that to list to do along with putting text menu across the bottom so that those without ability to use menu at top can wander. Which is reason for having a sub-menu that is called on major parts at top that I have goofed on Contacts and staff. I would like to add picture of minister and other staff on staff page with their names but they have not been easy to get pictures of (and I want him either working at desk or talking with people and secretary working at desk, not head shot). I did not intend it to appear twice on contact page.

    The mission is on front page at request of church council when they updated the statement recently.

    I plan to use SSI in the site for the menus but I am hosting at GBGM and until they upgraded me to 20 meg last week, SSI would not work. They said it would with the new space but not tried yet.

    I was not aware of the problems on links with contacts and staff (and had not noticed the problems with contacts since I revised last month with the new menus).

    Pictures are 250 pixels wide which i have had satisfactory comments from people on several other sites I do as they are bigger than most thumbnails which normally I find at about 100 or less pixels. There are not as many pictures in site as I would like but limitations on space at GBGM was major reason. I have moved them to my personal space i buy from a hosting company but primary use of that space is revenue producing for me in other sites I am paid for so. If i go with a 600 pixel pictures then question becomes how many will scroll down to them. Studies i keep seeing say 80% or more of web surfers will not scroll down and even more not sideways. What size are you suggesting i make the photos in picture pages? To me traditional thumbnails are to small for anyone to even figure if they want to click. I have gone with a size of 250 in that I can put 3 across page and they fit in800 width page. Since most people seem to be moving monitors to 1024 setting now i could size them to 333 approximately for same effect. Space they take and download speed is reason for staying away from bigger ones. And also we are in a rural are where there is still a large number of dialup internet and the larger picture the slower download. The other factor on pictures is I have not had time to resize a bunch to use 9and edit in many cases) as I have two other sites I am doing pictures on that I get some reward fro in the short term and not having to wait for the mansion building in heaven and I shot over a thousand pictures for them last two weeks of June and doing that while working more than 40 hours takes time. I used a thumbnail program at one time in past and did not like smallness. I like doing my size much better., Couple years ago I used 200 for width and then moved to 250.

    I thought I had tested in Firefox, Opera and Netscape on menu but I am going to go back and check again. I previously had (until about a month ago) menu that was a long list on left and no submenus. I know I tested the other location I use the same menu skeleton in all of those including Safari when Bill released to Windows last month and had to tweak for it.

    I agree on needing some pictures and specifics on missions but i have kept hoping that members will get me stuff to fill it.

    had not thought about the links in the text, but like idea so on list.

    The welcome message many at church including me consider important that we include Jesus somehow in it. We are there to worship God and Jesus . Minister sermon Sunday had a big portion on that the current theme for UMC ha nothing about Jesus or God in the open minds, open hearts open doors. What are we there for?

    Getting a good ranking on the minister in search engines i think will always be harder but especially in UMC. With minister change every four years, and If it had not been for a bad family medical situation this year he would have probably been sent to another church in June. He also is of the thinking that there should not be a lot written on him on the site as it is not his church but Christ’s and the members church.

    Adding directions in is a good thought.

    Interesting that when i did a search on 30401 church just now, this page is at top. In the business at top that Google maps to interesting that 3 churches are listed and when I go to page behind my church is #5 so just missed showing clear at top. But strange that many on the list serv just last week were questioning if Google would do churches as business listings and obviously they have.

    The counter is there at request of church. I plan to change to one of others discussed to get more measurements.

  • http://www.churchwebsitehelp.com Mickey

    With the photos, I think you should leave the pages just as they are. However, each photo should be linked to a larger version of that photo. 250 wide is fine for thumbnails, but I expect to be able to click those photos and get a larger (600+ wide) photo.

    The menu has some serious problems now. In Firefox (ver 2.0.0.5), it stays in the same location on the screen even when you scroll, making for a STRANGE effect. It could be that you’re working on it right now, but I thought I’d let you know.

    I disagree about your comments regarding the minister ranking. As you see if you search for “30401 church” (where this page is now #1 after just a couple days), rankings can come quickly if the content is right. He makes an excellent point about the church not being his, and I certainly appreciate that from a pastor. However, people still want to know about him — at least a little bit. Where did he previously serve? Is he married? With children? Just some tidbits (and a photo) would be nice.

    The counter at the bottom really needs to go, but I know that church politics can be tricky. If it’s a big deal to them, then it might not be worth the fight. Still, it’s another outgoing link on every page, further killing your ranking in Google.

  • http://www.dwightwatt.com dwight-watt

    I worked on menu last week and completely redid and updated the whole site to now using CSS, SSI with the HTML. The menu worked when I tested it in IE7, Safari (PC), Opera, Firefox and Netscape earlier in week. During the development time for a couple days the menu did do some weird things. I worked on to 2 in morning some nights and did not realize problems in some spots as I called it a night so it did appear with problems for short times. Also using SSI the only way to test a change is load it on server.

    Name of church is no longer in lash after first page. However on every page is the name and address and link to a map to church (using mapquest) at the bottom.

    Counter is only on first page, it appeared on others temporary as I was implementing SSI. Likewise the UM news feed is on first only now.

    Besides menus at top of page (with a link to a submenu for the group names, which is suggested for accessibility reasons), links to all submenus are in text form at bottom of page. So if you could not get graphics site is still useable or for some readers the site will still work

    I have added (and still adding alt/title text/summary text for all images, links and tables.

    To make more CSS compliant I have move to from for navigation purposes. However I hit two places where I still need to do table as I tried div a number of ways and could not get them to do side by side (maybe a gbgm server problem). I had to use a table to get the navigation bar to center in IE, it worked fine in all the others, and also for the name of church and logo on top of all back pages. In the second situation if I used div I had the name info laying on top the logo and they moved from center to left depending on setting. If you have suggestion on way to implement that works with div I would like.

    For the pictures to put a larger image out there you can click on, the smaller will require me going back and editing all the pictures (from original) to get ones in size of 600px and 75dpi (for purposes of space and speed loading as most were originally shot at 6 megapixel. Since I have paid sites to work on also this will be a longer term project but as new pictures added will plan to do for them as easy to do when doing thumbnail. Church has agreed to buy web space so I will have some more to use instead of using my space. They also want to do webcasts ASAP and want that high on list as they like the new web page as is.

    The stained glass pictures are real thumbnails and some early slides I scanned and need bigger pictures for the page (to the 250 size and larger for more detail. however I must find the tray of slides at church to rescan them (yes I shot the slides in about 1987 and scanned in 1998) and will do that in a few weeks as I am gone for next few weekends.

    I am asking minister for a bio sketch just as I have asked for pictures of him and secretary. Secretary says she will send the pictures.

    Links on each page to me are e-mail except on links page where there is to website also.

    The church wants the counter on the web page and just like when a professional site is done, this is not my site so not my decisions but the organization whose site it is.

    I m also going to work further on flash to not need activating.

    Dwight

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