This past weekend, I was having a conversation with someone at my church who is in charge of the missions ministry. We have a program where church members can sponsor children in Kenya. This money is used to provide food, clothing, shelter, and education to these children. We were talking about the inconvenient way that sponsors are required to communicate with children they sponsor and how if there were some minor changes, more sponsors would regularly write to their children, hence, improving the overall experience for both the sponsored child and the sponsor.
So what does all of this have to do with the title of this post (being in the “Catering” business)? Basically what we were discussing was changing a system to accommodate (or “cater” to) those participating in the program. The cool thing was, as a result of our conversation, they are going to have a discussion with the “decision makers” to see if improvements can be made to the current communication system.
This lead me to ask the questions:
- How many Christian websites are not catering to its users?
- How many church websites are putting something out there, presuming that they know what is best for their users?
- How do you know if your website accommodates those who use it?
To learn if your website is helpful to its users, you need to ask those who use it? Pretty simple, huh? Well, it is simple in theory, but difficult in practice. Asking users for their opinion of your website requires you figure out what to ask people, who to ask, how many people to ask, and a bunch of other questions.
This is why most organizations simply take their best guess and go with it. However, you could be so wrong with the assumptions that are made.
Next week, I will share secrets of the best way to go about getting this information. But in the meantime, I want to know if anyone has some success stories (or failure stories) of how they gathered information from those who use their website. Please post your stories and comments below!
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The cool thing was, as a result of our conversation, they are going to have a discussion with the “decision makers” to see if improvements can be made to the current communication system.[link removed by moderator]