Presentation = Success

by Sarah

This week I was working on a website for my parent's church. I found E-zekiel.com, a church website building program, to be quite the frustrating experience.

After loudly expressing my feelings on the matter to a roommate, I got to thinking about a) What exactly I didn't like about it and b) What a website needs to be successful and c) How presentation in America is everything.

So then,

a) The program is not intuitive or easy to navigate. There are invisible buttons, that do not appear until you scroll over them. Cool effect if you have an artsy website, but not helpful for the technically challenged church goer who was elected manager of the website.

b) In order for a website to be successful it has to have (at least):
- The facts - when, where, what
- Identity - who are these people and what are they about
- Professionalism - is the website clean, well organized, and interesting

c) Today, if you are a company, church or individual wanting business, advertisement, or just to get information out there - Presentation is EVERYTHING. Especially web presentation.

As I was explaining this to my mother, it hit me that this is an American thing. Our culture is driven by presentation. Why else do we have designer brands? Ridiculously priced sports cars? Jewelry stores up the wazoo? And web-building programs (however unintuitive they are) for churches?

But it's not just presentation. You could have a pretty terrible website that presents your business, church or yourself and still not get anymore business or attendants than before. Quality is important.

I would even go so far to say that the quality of the presentation determines the success. It is not longer satisfactory to just have a website - now it has to be cutting-edge, well-done, classy even.

All this to say, all you web designers out there, buff up on your skills, because the presentation of websites is taking the stage in American success.