Evaluate your YWAM website

Evaluating a website is something every leader needs to make sure is covered when a website is part of a communications strategy. See Leaders guide to managing a website.

The following evaluation is offered as a process that a YWAM Leader can ensure is followed to ensure that any YWAM website that is published meets the highest standards of professionalism. A high standard reflects well on YWAM as a whole just as a poorly designed and implemented website can robs confidence in YWAM as a whole from the supporters, partners, potential staff and students and the general public. Consider even those who are not Christians - how are they influenced by seeing a missionary website?

The Evaluation
The questions below need to be answered. You might seek an impartial person, but there is no reason it can't be done in house. Some sections might need brief written answers, that can be scored by someone else.


 * For each question,Yes, totally is maximum score, Not at all, is zero. If a question doesn't apply to your situation, feel free to give maximum score.
 * If you're having trouble to evaluate a question, click on the reference to view more background information.
 * Add up your score for each section.
 * For an example, see an evaluation of this site (ywamkb.net)

MOST IMPORTANTLY - when looking at the evaluation results, see where you can make improvements and create an action plan (with a completion date) to implement changes. Acting on the easiest 80% of possible improvements can be quick and gives vital progress. More details to this process can be found in Steady Improvement.

For the future we might need to incorporate some way of testing the degree to which a YWAM site implements then Mind The Gap principle. Mind The Gap Test is a page with a testing methodology that can help diagnose the ease of access of a website for people with low bandwidth connections.

General Information
This information should be visible on the Main Page (i.e., the first page the visitor will see, here http://www.ywamkb.net).

If it takes more than 5 seconds for an visitor to find one of these informations, reconsider the layout.


 * 1) Name of Site (5 points)
 * 2) URL of Site (5 points)
 * 3) Goal of Site (5 points)
 * 4) Target Audience (5 points)
 * 5) Responsible Organisation (5 points)

Legal Information
This information should be present somewhere. Most users won't read it, but if an lawyer takes an hour to find these informations, he may charge it to you.


 * 1) Responsible Person (5 points)
 * 2) Postal Address of Responsible Person (5 points)
 * 3) National legal entity government body (5 points)
 * 4) Disclaimer concerning liabilities (5 points)
 * 5) Privacy Policy (5 points)


 * Maximum score for this section: 50
 * "Good" score: 45

Your Site's Relationship to YWAM
This section has the goal to reinforce the corporate identity of YWAM.


 * 1) Does it explain in great clarity what YWAM is about and what YWAM is doing? (10 points)
 * 2) Does your site display the YWAM Logo? (5 points)
 * 3) Is the logo unmodified (not customised at all)? (10 points)
 * 4) Does the site contain a link to http://www.ywam.org and the words "X is a ministry of YWAM International" ? (10 points)
 * 5) Does the site have a clear link to the next tier up ? (10 points)
 * 6) The site does not display any sensitive information unsuitable for the general public. Is this the case? (5 points)


 * Maximum score for this section: 50
 * "Good" score: 35

The Quality of Your Site
The tool below leads people through an evaluation of a churches website (but very clearly applicable to YWAM) in areas of technical and artistic good practice but also with aim to make the website people (esp. non-Christian) focused. It takes some time to fill in, but it is HIGHLY recommended. If some aspect doesn't seem relevant to your site, it may well not be! But why not consider this point of view anyway, there could be something to be gained.

Take the free website self evaluation tool test.


 * Maximum score: around 400
 * "Good" score: 250

The Quality of the Management of Your Site

 * 1) Do you have frequent reviews of the site ? (5 points)
 * 2) Are you making sure it has fresh and good new content? Do you keep date-related articles up to date (e.g. recent events)? (10 points)
 * 3) Are all back-end server hosting/domains paid for and to date? (5 points)
 * 4) Are all used web applications (CMS's e.g. Drupal) up to date ? Is the server and the server software up to date ? (5 points)
 * 5) Are all the server details, domain details and site details documented so others can easily take on the management of the site? (5 points)
 * 6) Do you have a plan for backup and data recovery in place? Have you tested it? (10 points)
 * 7) Do you have staff in place with the right skills to maintain the site? Is there a list of trained staff? (5 points)
 * 8) Does it do what you want? Does it reach your goals? (5 points)


 * Maximum score: 50
 * "Good" score: 35

Scoring

 * If in the four categories above your site is scoring well then keep up the good work.
 * If you are only scoring well in one or two categories then some urgent attention to your website is needed. There is a lot of help out there in YWAM, EuroCom and the U of N communication and website schools. They would love to help!

Print-Version
If you want to print this test, you can use this PDF.