by Amanda Salmon

How would you describe the presence or personality of your ministry’s website? What experience do you want users to have on the site? How do you want them to perceive the website, the overall “brand”? For many ministries these types of branding questions go unasked and unanswered, leaving a disconnect between a website ministry’s goals and what their users are actually experiencing. Enter the concept of brand perception.

Clarify Your Web Ministry Brand

By clarifying a web ministry’s branding goals and comparing them to the actual user’s experiences, a site can discover the perceptions users have about the ministry website and its brand. Often we get hung up on what we want people to see and don’t bother with what they are actually seeing. Keep in mind what Al and Laura Ries said, “For the first time the target is in charge, not the shooter.”

Just as a church will attempt to create programs and messages that reach certain “felt needs” in the community, the brand should try to connect with the target audience. If a site and their staff are not members of the website’s target audience, the site should not be making decisions about how a target audience might perceive the website without a lot of input from the target audience.

There are many ways to begin to develop and understand a website’s brand perception. To see if the users are seeing what you want them to see, try one of these ideas:

• Choose some measurable branding goals for the site and record them.
• Offer a user survey. Ask pertinent questions about how the site is perceived. Don’t be shy. The site wants to know the good and the bad so craft the questions so that the site will get the hard answers. SurveyMonkey.com is easy to use, offers comprehensive statistics and at just $20 a month fits into most budgets.
• Choose a specific target audience to focus the branding efforts on. Occasionally it works to target all types of users, but most of the time it does not. Decide who to reach reach with the brand and then continue to cater to that audience based on user feedback.
• Host a focus group with the target audience and ask them to answer a few user test questions to find out how they would perceive the website. Find people who aren’t afraid to share their opinion and give an honest answer.
• Put up an open ended feedback form on your website asking for input about the website. Ask about their perceptions of the site as well as their experiences

Once you receive the results from the user tests and surveys, what do you do with that information? Evaluate and implement.

Evaluate the results of the surveys and focus groups to look for patterns, similarities and themes. A decision to make: do you want to try to change the perception of the audience or cater to the perception they have? The best choice is to adapt the website to the audience’s perception. Perhaps you can plan to put a good idea on hold for future development on another site. Or maybe it’s time to implement a new idea that will really strike a chord with the readership and strengthen the brand by matching perception of the brand with the product.

Would you buy a compact sized Cadillac? Picture such a thing? Most people think BIG when they think Cadillac. The power of this perception was proven when Cadillac attempted to sell a small car — it was less than successful. Their brand reality taught them to focus on the consumer’s perception. When Cadillac released the Escalade, an SUV, it made better sense.

For more information, read The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding by Al Ries and Laura Ries, specifically Law 7 which suggests that perception of the brand is more important than the reality. http://www.wilsonweb.com/reviews/11-laws.htm