Church Website Help

Site Review: Hillsdale UMC - Hillsdale, NJ

Church: Hillsdale UMC - Hillsdale, NJ
URL: http://www.gbgm-umc.org/hillsdale-umc/

Initial thoughts

Oddly enough, my first thought when viewing this site was “what’s up with the text in their header?”. It appears that you compressed the header jpg just a bit too much, as the letters are all surrounded by artifacts. I wouldn’t increase it much, but it could stand to be a bit less compressed.

As I skimmed the rest of the page, it seemed that the site was focused more on current members and than visitors. Of course, that’s a very hard line to balance and my time on the rest of the site may prove that false.

One thing this webmaster was concerned about was their JavaScript-driven menu at the top. I typically advise against using a JS menu, but I’m really against it if there is no alternative. If I disable JavaScript in my browser and refresh, I am told “Your browser does not support script”. Ouch. About 10% of users out there don’t have JS and these folks are dead meat on this site.

Fortunately, the fix is pretty easy. In the “noscript” area of the code where you tell me “your browser does not support script”, you could change that to a static menu with the base links. Very easy. However, this brings up another problem - the base links don’t work! Even with JS enabled and the menu working, I get an error if I click on “About Us”. Looking in the code tells me that it’s pointed to “http://” (right - no address there).

What needs to be built is a page for each of those base items that don’t yet have a page (About Us, Forms, Links) . This will elimate the error message and it will also make the fix for the non-JS users pretty simple. These pages don’t need to be much. For example, the “About Us” page could be this:

Here are some pages with more information about our church:

• Worship
• History
• Nostalgia
• Ministers
• Calendar
• Newsletter
• Outreach

That’s it! Just link each item in the list to their page and the problem is solved. The menu will still cause some problems for your search engine rankings, but we’ll discuss that later in the review.

Browsing around

I figured I’d try to get directions to the church.  I love the “enter your address” box — I had a similar item on the directions page at my last church.  However, it still would be nice to toss a map on the page; partly to give a general idea where you are, as well as spice up the page a bit.  Also, the image at the top (direct4.gif) is broken.

Next I went over to the worship page to see what a service is like.  I’m a bit confused why you have a link to your history there, but it’s not a big deal.  The only thing I’d change is where it says “click on picture…”.  Never tell a user to click somewhere else.  If you want to give them a link, give them a link!  You can have the picture be a link, but that text should also link to it.

By reading the page, it seems that I can go to Worship or Sunday School, but not both.  They’re both at 10am, so I simply have to choose.  Is that accurate?

The rest of the page seems pretty logical.  I would suggest that most sections be given links for more info, but I guess that’s all of the info that you have right now.  The very bottom is strange, though - a link to ENTRIX.  What is that?  It seems like it’s under the Senior High section, but reading the page makes it sound like it’s for slightly older folks (20-30ish).  Even visiting the page gives me little clue why the link is there.

Next I went to the pastors page.  It’s a neat page, but gives me painfully little control.  I wanted to see a photo of your current pastor (his photo won’t always be on the front), but I guess I’d have to sit here and watch all of the others first.  I should be able to click their name to see a photo of that pastor.

Finally I tried to go to the contact us page.  For some reason it wouldn’t load.  I looked in the code and discovered that it’s simply a mailto link.  It must be some issue with the JavaScript, as mailto links work fine for me on other sites.

Search engine optimization

If my family moved to the area, we’d begin our search for a church by typing hillsdale church into Google.  You currently come up 19th for that, which means we’d probably never even see your site.

There’s a few things you can do to improve that.

First, you need to at least change the JS menu using the tips I mentioned above.  Google can’t real JavaScript, so it has a difficult time navigating your site.  If you add the “noscript” items I suggested and build in a few more root pages, it will be of great benefit to Google (not to mention your non-JS users).

Also, the HTML code for that menu is massive.   I didn’t do an exact count, but it’s well over 500 lines of code in every page on your site.  That will not only slow your dial-up users way down, but it makes every word on the page very diluted in the eyes of Google.  You should be able to move most of that code to an external file and reference it there, similar to how you reference your external CSS file.  That would help quite a bit.

Your title tags are pretty good.  I normally suggest putting the city/state in there as well, but since your city and your church name are already the same, it’s not completely necessary.

Your H1 tags are interesting.  I normally tell churches to make sure they have one on each page.  In your case, you need to get rid of a few.  For example, your worship page has seven of them.  A good page will have just one.

In the case of your worship page, the word “worship” should be in the H1.  The items below it should be using H2-H4 tags.  Think of it like making an outline.   H2 come under H1, H3 come under H2, etc.  Having multiple H2/H3/H4 is fine, but try to follow the proper nesting.  For example:

<H1>Worship</H1>
<H2>Sunday Worship Service - 10 AM</H2>
<H3>Sunday School - 10 AM</H3>
<H3>Nursery</H3>
<H4>Nursery School</H4>
<H3>Chancel Choir</H3>
<H3>Youth Choir</H3>
<H3>Chapel Choir</H3>
<H2>Youth Enhancement</H2>
<H3>Junior High School</H3>
<H3>Senior High</H3>

If you find that you really need more than a single H1 on a page, that means you have more than one main topic for the page.  If you have more than one main topic, you need to split it into multiple pages.

I would also suggest a bit more internal linking.  If you mention the nursery, I should be able to click on it for more info about it (where it is?  who is in charge?  can I e-mail a question?  how old can my child be?).   It seems that things are linked pretty well and there just isn’t enough content there yet.  As you have time, answer as many questions as possible so that people feel more comfortable when they come to visit.

Conclusion

The site is pretty good.  I would expect more general info on the front page, but I’ll chalk that up to the temporary new pastor greeting.

The summary of my suggestions:

• Build landing pages for each of the root items in the menu.
• Build a simple, plain text menu for the noscript folks.
• Do something different with the “contact us” button, since it doesn’t work.  Maybe build a simple “contact us” page with phone and e-mail info on there.
• Move as must JavaScript as possible to external files.
• Add a map to the directions page.
• Try to rework the pastors page to give users a bit more control.
• Re-save the header image with slightly better quality.
• Re-work your H1-H4 tags.

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