In my last post I mentioned that our "Better Website" hadn't performed like we had hoped the first month. As I wrap up this series of blog posts, it's important not just to present a plan to your folks, but also to have a process in place to help avoid failure and find success.
Within a couple of weeks of releasing the new website, we realized that we had inadvertantly made our ONE THING, Start a free trial, less accessible than before. We were driving sign ups through the pricing page. So, we made some changes that more than doubled our response rate of people clicking to do a free trial.
Failure and success are part of life. Remember James 1:2-4
"Consider it pure joy my brothers when you face trials of many kinds because you know the testing of your faith develops perseverance. And perseverence must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."
Agile is a popular word in software development circles. It is highly relational and uses short development cycles (often 2-3 weeks) to focus on continuous improvement. This is how Churchteams was and is being built. We see a need and produce software to meet the need. We get continuous feedback and regularly tweak the application to make it easier to navigate and more useful. For me, the bottom line it so change from thinking you are finally done with a project to realizing you are constantly improving it.
If you think of your website as a project you have to tackle every few years, I think you're missing the point of agile and of the value of failure and success. Find a way to get regular feedback about your website from guests, members, leaders and staff. Is it doing what it was designed to do? If not, what else can we try? We've got some more ideas up our sleeves too.
