High Point Church

High Point Church, located in Arlington, Texas caught my attention because they call themselves “Church Unusual.” I wanted to find out what is so unusual about this church, and to see if their website really hits the mark as far as design, usability and target audience is concerned.

High Point Church, located in Arlington, Texas caught my attention because they call themselves “Church Unusual.” I wanted to find out what is so unusual about this church, and to see if their website really hits the mark as far as design, usability and target audience is concerned.

Target Audience

First and foremost, this website should be geared toward those who want something different in a church. I say this because they coin themselves as unusual. As I read through the website, though, I didn’t find much that I’d consider unusual. The design is very usual and the information contained on the site is usual. I’m just not convinced that this church is unusual.

Usability

My biggest concern is with navigation. My initial visit left me guessing as to what was going to be behind some of the links. For example, I expected “Hear Our Music” to take me to a page with music samples. When I first went to that page I completely overlooked the two mp3 samples (I didn’t realize they were links) and thought the page was just about their worship ministry.

Also, the “Join Our Family” link initially made me think of church membership, when in fact it is a page describing their small group ministry “Touch Point.”

I felt that a church of this size and magnitude (423,000 square feet, that’s about 7 football fields) ought to reflect that by the amount of content on the site. Instead, I saw a lack of content. There’s a lot about the pastor, but nothing specific about the church’s goals, demographics, ministries (over 20), worship ministry, school, etc.

I want to get content quickly and easily and not have to read everything when I only want to find out a specific tidbit of information.

Design

I think the website design is the biggest weakness of this website (please don’t hate me for saying that). When I go to the website, the first and only thing that really grabs my eye is the picture of Gary and April Simons. They are a beautiful couple, but that’s the only place my eyes go.

Churches are about people (at least they should be) and this design and how the images are used don’t properly reflect that. The photos of people should be more prominent while Gary and April should be less prominent.

When I move on from Gary and April, I scroll down and realize that the text is very hard to read and skim. I’m a skimmer. Most people are. We want to get our impression of the website as quickly as possible. To fix this problem, the line-height needs to be adjusted so that there is more space between lines. This not only helps in skimming, but it is also easier on the eyes for reading.

Items like “Special Announcements” should be farther up on the page, possibly in a second column next to the intro text. This allows someone to see what is going on immediately.

It would take too long to go into every design detail, but the design completely misses the mark on how they seem to want to portray the church. If the church is unusual then the website needs to reflect that. Unusual doesn’t mean strange. It means thinking outside the box, using colors that aren’t the typical corporate blues and having a layout that doesn’t fall into the single column category.

Summary

Overall, this website is better than most church websites that I have seen. But it doesn’t give an accurate picture of what the name suggests the church would be like. If the site design reflected properly who they are they would be 80 percent of the way to having a fantastic website. In addition to the website design, adding more content in distinct and well labeled categories would make this website one to which people return.