Your Welcome Mat - August 29, 2012

You’ve heard the old real-estate adage, "Location, Location, Location."

Your website is your community's virtual "home," your home page is its front porch. Creating an environment reflective of the voices, values, interests, and needs of the full spectrum of your membership is a fundamental first step to stirring them to come inside.

Content is Key 

When rolling out that online welcome mat, content is the key you offer your members to the front door of your community. Keeping things fresh goes a long way toward engaging existing members, connecting with first-time visitors, and encouraging folks to keep coming back.  Pay attention to the words you choose and how you share them, how you integrate graphic and multimedia elements, and find creative ways to let members know just how much they'll find when they come for a visit. What do people see when they’re looking on your home page? Do you have a plan for updating the content?

Read on for some innovative ideas: 

•  Look at your home page through the eyes of your members and prospective members and make sure it’s relevant.
•  Maintain fresh content by highlighting upcoming events -- and removing them once the event has taken place.
•  Use compelling images and headlines to help draw people in and connect them to your organization.  
•  Organize content so it’s easily scannable: use lists, bullet points, bold headers, and concise amounts of copy to easily help members find what they’re looking.
•  Go deeper. Use your home page to draw users to other area of your website.
•  Review Google Analytics to better understand what visitors to your website are interested in.
•  Create a website with no “dead ends.”  Content-rich sites contain the basics, but they also provide features such as Jewish news, a blog by a Rabbi and/or religious school director, holiday information, Jewish practices information, Jewish shopping, favorite recipes, and so on.

Rock Your Home Page with Jvillage Content 

Jvillage provides its member sites with regularly updated content "channels," with topics ranging from recipes to holiday activities for children to the latest in Jewish music. Whether or not you have a Jvillage site, there are myriad ways to invite your members to explore and spend time on your website. Check out some of our members' ideas:

• The folks at Temple Beth El of Northern Valley in Closter, NJ cooked up a great way to give their Jvillage channels a permanent home on the left sidebar of their homepage. A catchy header, J Buzz, draws readers in.

• The Home Page at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, IL highlights their Jewish Radio channel, along with recent news and upcoming events. 

• Congregation ShiratHayam in Swampscott, MA gets creative with multimedia by featuring a live “Shulcast” of services for those who are unable to physically attend.

What are you doing to roll out the welcome mat?  Leave a comment sharing a content-related tip (or pitfall!)--and we'll send you a complimentary Website Tune-Up Guide.