Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Chapter 2 Summary

Chapter 2 gives you steps to opening your own online business. Before you create your business, it is important to understand your market and see how you can meet their needs. You have to have information about your competitors, customers, culture, and context. The products that you sell have to be cheap, customized, convenient, and compelling. It is important to make your site unique so people will want to go to it. Another step that is important is determining what you have to offer. You have to have a cyberbusiness plan. A business plan is essential to any business that is trying to start out. After you have your business plan, it is time to find a host for your website. The web host makes your site available 24 hours a day by maintaining it on a web server. Once you have a web host you have to chose a business software. These different software's make it easier for you to format your website. You may have to consult and work with people to help get your website established. When creating a website, the main things to remember is to keep your site content-rich, establish a graphic identity, list your website with search engines, and make sure to always keep your data updated.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Analysis of Church Websites

After taking a look at Banner Elk Presbyterian Church website and comparing it to my church Friendship Missionary Baptist Church website, I came up with some comparisons.

Banner Elk Presbyterian Church- http://bepresbyterian.org/
Friendship Missionary Baptist Church- http://www.friendshipcharlotte.org/

The strengths of my church's website is that it it very colorful and the information is well organized. Everything that you would want to know about the church can be easily accessed. There are also links where you can make online payments or pledges and sign up to receive text alerts from the church. The text alerts will keep the younger members more involved of the activities that will be going on. I really did not see many weaknesses to the website. One suggestion that I do have is that there should be a link that allows you to watch services from previous weeks. That will definitely be an improvement to the website.

One strength of the Banner Elk Presbyterian Church website is that the information is organized. You can easily see how the church operates. Some weaknesses that I noticed is that the website is not very colorful and inviting. It is also hard to find some of the links. It is not very appealing. The website probably does contain all the information that they need, it just needs to be presented in a more creative way. There are many improvements that can be made to the website like the color scheme, layout, and adding more pictures. These improvements will make the website much more inviting.