St Basil Website
Strategic Plan: The core items a parish website should have.
Welcome/Home page should have the parish mission and announcements. Announcements are a great way to alleviate reliance on the bulletin. We all have space constraints in the bulletin and everybody wants their thing in it. An announcements section provides another avenue to highlighting events in a quicker way rather than waiting until Sunday.
Clergy and staff directory page. Need to have photographs of the individuals because it’s more personalized that way. The directory should include phone and email contact information and can include a short bio.
Ministry Directory page. Most parishes have several ministries and by listing all of them on the website with who to contact provides for a very easy way to keep the list organized and up-to-date. It should include who to contact in regards to the ministry as well.
Parish calendar page. This should be an embedded online calendar. An embedded online calendar such as Google Calendars allows the information to updated by any volunteer or office staff which automatically updates on the website. Enter once and use everywhere approach.
Mass schedule page. This again should be an embedded calendar that is separate from the Parish Events calendar. The reason is that most of the time Masses remain the same times, but Holy Days and holidays are obviously different. This makes for a very neat and organized way to communicate alternate Mass times.
Parish history/information page. This is typically the “About” page you see on most websites. It should have the generic address and phone contact information. You can also include an embedded satellite map from services like Google or Bing maps. This way, out of town visitors can easily get driving directions.
Catholic Links page. There are a ton of great Catholic websites. Create a page that links to them and organize the page by categories. Link to your Diocese, the Vatican, USCCB, etc.
Once you have those pieces in place, then you can further enhance the website to automate administrative tasks and provide further services. Online forms are a great example of this. By moving forms such as new parishioner registrations online you can then make them available for download by visitors. This in turn reduces requests to the office saving time and saves money that is normally spent on printing and mailing. In turn you do not need to worry about storing blank forms since if you did need to provide a copy to someone visiting the office, you can simply print one from the website.
Suggested Plan of Action
Upgrade website to take advantage to premium features.
Prepare content
A. Present website to ministry leaders for comment/ suggestions for improvement; 30 days.
B. Concurrently, Clergy/staff/ministry leaders to prepare content for website; 30 days.
Committee review of website pages to be added/deleted and web features to be added/deleted with emphasis on current need and future requirements; two weeks.
Update content on website and prepare to go “online;” two weeks.
Final review of content by clergy/ministry leaders; two weeks.
Concurrently, content updates and final review will determine the need for procedures for training, maintenance, and user interface.
Establish 3rd party procedures for calendar updates, donations, e-giving, bulletin updates, and registration forms.
Prepare training schedule and commence as soon as users/staff are identified.
Decide on a cutover date to move website to St Basil’s current URL.
Continue training of calendar, schedules, and customer pages, as required.