Site Review: Mt. Zion UMC - Grandy, NC
July 5, 2007 – 9:51 pmChurch: Mt. Zion UMC - Grandy, NC
URL: http://www.mtziongrandy.org/
Initial thoughts
This just looks like a fun church. I love the pictures on the front and things seem to be pretty active. There’s maybe a bit too much going on here, but I wouldn’t get rid of much.
Some of the “Jesus junk” could probably go (the gold cross and the fish with the drop shadow). They’re not bad, but do they serve a purpose at all?
The text under the cross could use some links. Let me click on “Sunday School” or “Worship Service” or “Children’s Church” to get more information.
The mission statement could stand to be on another page, as could the Upper Room Devotional.
The rest of the front page could probably stay, so let’s dig into a page.
Browsing around
If a site has one, I usually like to start with the “visitor welcome page” so lets go there. This page has got a lot of text on it, but its broken up well into categories. The photos on the side help to break it up, too. As with the front page, more links on here would be nice.
For example, you mention the “front, side or back doors”. Why not a link on each of those to a picture of the respective doors? The more comfortable you can make a visitors before they visit, the better.
Also, you mention things like “nursery”, “sanctuary”, “Sunday School”, etc, that could really use links to more info.
“What should I wear?” So many churches forget to add this. It’s always great to see.
Next I figured I’d click on the “Rev. David J. Blackman” text at the top of the home page, since many visitors might go there first.
Having a photo of the minister is a must, so good job. The e-mail and phone also needs to be easy to find, and you’ve done a good job of that. After that, though, the page kind of gets away from you — it’s far too long. You probably just need a link after the minister to “staff” and then one for “committees”. I visited a page about the minister and ended up with things about a yard sale and golf tourament. Certainly valid information, but not in the right place.
Next I went to the “Calendar & News”. The calendar is very cute. It’s got the calendar look to it, but it’s using plain text (not a giant scanned image like some churches). Again, though, it’s missing links. I might be interested in something in there, but none of it gives very much detail.
Search engine optimization
The biggest problem you have right now in terms of SEO is the way your URL is used. While I can understand why you wanted to mask the GBGM URL with your own, it makes usability and SEO quite a pain. Google will have a hard time indexing individual pages, people can’t link to specific pages on your site, and I can’t send links to my friends to specific pages. If you aren’t willing or able to purchase web hosting outside of GBGM, then simply use their URLs. Have your main URL work for the home page, but then let it use the GBGM URL for the rest of the pages. It’s ugly, but it’s the better way to go.
Your title tags are all the same, which is a big no-no. Each one should reflect the page you’re on. I would suggest a typical page should look like this:
Mt. Zion United Methodist Church - Grandy, NC - Missions
You don’t seem to be using H1 tags at all. Instead, you’re doing things like “font size=5″. This will give a similar appearance to your users, but it’s much worse for Google. Look at changing the main header text on each page to H1s.
Your main navigation links (with the leaves) are all images rather than text. They look like text to you and me, but they look like garbage to Google and sight-impared users. You use alt attributes on them, which is good, but I’m not sure how effective they are when they’re buried in all of that JavaScript. I would advise losing the leaves and going with plain text. You can use CSS to give a simple rollover, and it’ll help your pages load much more quickly, be compatible with more users and rank better in the search engines.
The actual HTML code in your pages is pretty solid. There’s a lot of extra JavaScript in there to handle the leaf rollovers, but it’s not too bad. Still, this is one more reason to lose the leaves.
Conclusion
The site has a very friendly feel to it, which I love. Here is a summary of some of things I would look at doing to make it even better:
- Change the leaf navigation to plain text and spice it up with CSS however you wish.
- Use the GBGM URL or else get your own hosting.
- Break some of the longer pages into separate ones (like the page for your Minister).
- Fix your title tags.
- Start using H1 tags instead of big font tags.
- Add more internal links everywhere you can.
Any other suggestions for them or thoughts about what I’ve said? Leave them in the comments below.
