Flyers get lost, emails can be overlooked, and print mailings get recycled, but your website remains an accessible resource. Here’s how to get your website ready for the High Holidays.
While we may have officially celebrated the new year three months ago, another kind of new year is upon us. As you’re busy making (or already breaking) your personal New Year resolutions for 2019, now is a great time to extend a little self-care to your synagogue’s website.
We took a look at how similar niches, in particular, Christian churches, use their websites as a marketing tool. What we discovered surprised us and we came away with new ideas as to how synagogues can build a better website.
Think of your homepage as akin to the cover of a book. Much like how an appealing cover entices a reader to start reading, your homepage serves to encourage website visitors to dive in for more information.
In their original printed form, these flyers were perfect. Bright text artfully positioned on top of engaging images that grab your congregants attention. But, when the same flyers are added to your homepage problems abound.
Recently we sat down with renowned author, educator and inspirational speaker, Dr. Ron Wolfson to discuss synagogue websites, the importance of storytelling and the downside to giving things away for free.
For many synagogues, their preschool/early childhood center (ECC) is a main attraction that brings young families into the synagogue community and starts them on their path to synagogue membership. What many synagogues often do is include the preschool content within the main synagogue website, but is that really the best approach? Or would it be better if the preschool had its own separate website, one that better highlights what the preschool offers?
In today’s day and Internet age, when so many people are used to accomplishing certain tasks online (especially younger generations), a synagogue’s website should offer the ability to accomplish some common tasks online – tasks that are common to life in the synagogue community. Here is my list of five tasks that an outstanding synagogue website should let people accomplish.
Who is primarily responsible for managing the synagogue’s website? Is it volunteers or laypeople, who are often passionate about technology and want to give their time by working on the website? Is it the professional staff, who are often over-burdened with other responsibilities? Is it an outside website firm altogether? Or is it some combination of all three?
I don’t believe that the need for a website and what it contains are dependent on the size of the synagogue. Synagogues need to view themselves as professional organizations running a professional website presence, and as such need to have a better way of assigning responsibility for it.
