Planning Your Parish Web Site
Part II: Expectations and Goals
by Brandon Jubar
What Are the Expectations and Goals?
So you've figured out why the Parish wants a Web site, and you've
identified your target audience. The next step is to set your
expectations and begin developing concrete goals. Do you want to
inform, teach, convince, entertain, motivate to do something, sell
something? There are many different ways to go about doing this. One
way would be to use some variation of the following three-step
process:
Brainstorm Long-term Goals
Gather a group of people (Parish staff and/or active parishioners)
and conduct a brainstorming session. While keeping your target
audience in mind, come up with a list of different things you would
like to accomplish with them. At this step, make the goals more
conceptual in nature (e.g. we want to get high school youth enthused
about Christ). Come up with as many as you can, and do not eliminate
any at this point. It is imperative that the team does not critique or
judge any of the goals during the brainstorming phase. Even the most
outlandish idea can be the stepping stone to something unique and
effective, so don't rule anything out just yet!
Organize and Clarify
Now take your list of goals and look for any that are similar, or
could be grouped together under a more common "idea". Once
that has been done, start going down the list, and evaluate them one
idea at a time. Start by assuming that you have reached that goal,
then begin to trace it back to today. How did we accomplish the goal?
What needed to happen? What was the progression? Through this
exercise, you will begin identifying the concrete steps that need to
be made in order to reach a particular goal.
For example: One of your goals might be to get everyone in the
Parish to set-up an internet email account on your Parish Web site.
This would give them incentive to visit the site whenever they are
online. If we trace that back, we have to figure a few things out in
the process. If every parishioner has an email account, that means
every parishioner has access to the internet. But since that is not
true now, how do we make it happen so that we can achieve our goal?
Maybe the Parish helps organize a way for people to donate old PCs,
which are then upgraded by volunteers (using donated or discounted
parts) and provided at little or no cost to needy families.
Narrow the Focus
Once you have traced back each broad goal on your list, it is time
to start eliminating ideas. One way to do this is, once again, to look
for commonalties. When you traced back, were there any elements that
you saw repeated in different goals? If you can identify any
short-term goals which are applicable and necessary in order to
accomplish a number of different long-term goals, then those are good
things to focus your efforts on. If one short-term goal is applicable
to three different long-term goals, you are definitely getting more
bang for your buck.
Small Steps and Firm Deadlines
When you finally have a manageable list of goals for your Parish
Web site, each one should be looked at yet again. This time, you will
need to break each goal down into its component pieces, thus creating
a series of steps to take. Each step should be small, concrete and
have a firm deadline attached to it. Will you have a roll-out meeting
with the Parish staff? When? Will you hire a web design company? If
so, how many will you look at, and by what date?
By breaking down a large task into smaller pieces, it makes it
easier to not only see where we are going, but quantify where we have
been. A series of small accomplishments makes an otherwise daunting
task seem much more achievable.
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