Widgets are the future of church web sites
I’ve been building up a link library on widgets which is a technology that I believe is the future of church web sites. Instead of going all Geeky on you, I came across Mashable!’s coverage the Colts’ (an AFC American Football team) widget:
I was impressed by the Heifer International fund raising campaign. Now you can use widgets to enhance just a segment of your church web site (i.e. youth event widget). But I’m wondering if the whole church web site should be replaced by widgets.
Five reasons widgets are the future of church web sites
- No one visits your church web site. Widgets peels your content off your church’s domain and puts it smack in the middle of where the people are: blogs, MySpace, etc.
- Widgets are social. Widgets will get shared more often than your church web site.
- Few churches can maintain more than a five page web site. With a widget for a church web site, you would use a simple YouTube like interface to update rich media and information: photos, video, podcasts, events, news and contact information.
- Widgets push traffic back to your web site. Although the point is getting your content out there and off your domain, widgets will push traffic back to your web site for more rich media and information.
- Widgets are measurable. New widget tracking services will be able to tell you a lot about where your widgets are and who uses them.
Widgets
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I would add a 6th reason Tim – widgets are very good for SEO. The number of one-way backlinks that a good viral widget generates can tremendously help the ranking of the domain that hosts the widget.
Now the question is: who will spread the widget and why? Why would I (a regular “joe” of my congregation) put up a widget on my blog that has to do with my church? I’ve scrapped a number of widgets we’ve been working on because they couldn’t answer that one important question.
Joe – you have an important point. I’m not sure I have a good answer and that certainly needs to be answered before this is embraced as an alternative to a church web site.