The first step was always to have a think about who the users actually are.

What broad groups of users are using (or should be using) your church website?

Having worked out broadly who our users are, we then got more specific by making Personas - fictional people who represent typical users in these groups – who are they? what are they like? what do they look like? what problem are they trying to solve or questions do they want answered by visiting your church website?

Personas are a powerful tool to put yourself in the shoes of your users and consider whether your website is really meeting their needs. Personas stop you from distancing yourself from the users of your site. They force you to consider how real people might work with your website. Personas prevent you from making assumptions about your users – something easy to do while ever you call them ‘user’ – far better to call them something like ‘Jenny’, or ‘Bill’.

I thought it could be a valuable resource if we developed a collection of personas that could be used as a starting point for churches wanting to make a new website, or improve their old one.

The first job is to work out more broadly what groups of users visit our church websites (or what groups we would like to visit). I thought of three:

1. The Local Visitor. Someone who is not a member of the church, but is a potential member of the church.
2. The Church Member. Explains itself.
3. The Resource Hunter. This person is probably a member of another church and has come to your church website – maybe to download a sermon, or just sus the place out. I am one of these people when I visit other church’s sites just to have a look.

Here’s an example of a persona – a fictional (but real) person in group 2:

So, can you help me make my persona collection?

Have I missed any broad groups for church websites? Can you think of better names for them?