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The Web Strategy of Desiring God

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This is a message I delivered to a class at The University of Northwestern in the fall of 2011. I outline the web strategy that my team and I developed at Desiring God. 

Hello again. Thanks for having me back.

Last time I spoke about productivity and the gospel and ran out of time before I could talk about Desiring God’s strategy for media, which is what I’m going to talk about today.

Now, before moving ahead, I mentioned last time that these two topics are not wholly unrelated. There is a connection between productivity and media at Desiring God. And that connection is this: Just as technology has amplified our ability to engage in good works, so also technology has amplified our ability to spread our message through media to more and more people around the world.

So the key connection here is technology and it’s role in amplifying the good that we should be doing anyway.

Now, let’s talk about our media strategy at Desiring God.

Talking about our media strategy really means talking about our web strategy, because the web is the core of our media strategy. When we think of media, we think of the web.

Here’s our strategy in a nutshell: Our strategy is to post everything online for free without requiring registration in a maximally usable interface.

First I’m going to talk about the goal and principles behind this strategy. Then I’m going to talk in more detail about each of the four specific parts of that strategy.

 

The Goal and Principles Underneath Our Strategy

Our Goal: Amplify Word of Mouth

The goal of our strategy is to spark and amplify word of mouth.

This is because we aren’t the best people to spread our message. The people we serve, who love our message, are the best people to spread it.

You can see this in your own lives. If you see a commercial on TV for a new restaurant, you might or might not check it out. But if a friend recommends it to you and tells you that they loved it and it was fantastic, you are much more likely to go.

Likewise, the people we serve are the best people to spread our message. Thus, our role is to equip and motivate them to spread the truths that we exist to proclaim.

The internet is what makes it possible for this to work on a large scale. Word of mouth has always been the most effective means of spreading anything. But before the internet, word of mouth died out very quickly and easily. You would tell a few people, but it was very hard to tell a lot of people.

As a result, companies resorted to mass media advertising to spread their message. The philosophy was this: Get your message before enough eyeballs, and a certain percentage will respond. The problem with this is that it was expensive, and so the door was closed to most smaller players—like a ministry.

The internet changed all of this. It takes us back away from the impersonal, shot-gun-blast, expensive approach of mass media back to word of mouth. The reason it can do this is because the internet amplifies word of mouth.

In other words, word of mouth no longer dies out so quickly. Instead, it is amplified because one person who loves what you are doing can now easily notify a hundred or a thousand others—who, in turn, can likewise spread the message if they are interested.

This is far cheaper than mass media advertising and thus opens the door to smaller players with less money, such as a ministry like Desiring God.

Principle 1: Be Remarkable

But the issue now becomes: How do you get people talking? How do you do that?

And the answer is: be remarkable. To be remarkable doesn’t mean to be perfect or pristine or flawless. It means being worth remarking on. It means doing things worth talking about.

Seth Godin gives this illustration. [Purple Cow.]

So the key to success online is to be remarkable. Do things that are worth talking about, and people will talk and spread your message. The internet, in turn, amplifies this word of mouth, resulting in each person being able to tell dozens and hundreds, rather than just a few. So if you are really remarkable, your message will spread to a large number of people.

Hence, no longer does money make the difference; rather, being interesting and truly useful to people does.

Principle 2: Remove Friction

Now, once you’ve sparked word of mouth by being remarkable, then what do you do? You need to help add velocity to that word of mouth by removing friction—that is, anything that slows it down.

In other words, the internet amplifies word of mouth, but there are certain things that slow it down. These are things that make it harder to spread the message—things that make it more complicated to tell someone else, make it take longer to tell them, or make it harder for them to access it once they have been told. I will give some specific examples here shortly.

Once you’ve sparked word of mouth, you will shoot yourself in the foot if you don’t remove friction and make it as easy as possible for your message to spread.

With these things in mind, we can now take a closer look at our strategy and see how these principles flesh themselves out.

 

Our Strategy

That’s why we post everything online, for free, without requiring registration, in a maximally usable interface. All five of those things are aimed at being remarkable and reducing friction.

What we Post is Remarkable

First, what we post is remarkable. If you don’t have engaging content that is worth talking about, you won’t be able to get any farther. You can’t add the other parts of our strategy on the top of poor content and expect anything to happen. At DG, what’s remarkable about our content is that we seek to teach what the Bible says. The Bible is remarkable, and our aim is not to cover that up and thus become boring. By saying what the Bible says, you will be remarkable because the Bible is remarkable. I would also add that John Piper has a particular gift of communicating biblical truth in a compelling and engaging way.

We Post Everything

Second, we post everything, not just some things, because if something isn’t posted, people can’t benefit from it and share it. Not having something posted at all is the ultimate form of friction—something can’t spread if it isn’t available.

Further, posting everything is remarkable. The result is that we have 30 years of sermons and articles online. That’s amazing. There’s a wow factor to that.

For Free

Third, we post everything for free because having to pay is a barrier to accessing the content. It creates friction. Note that the problem is not mainly the price. People can usually afford a dollar for a sermon or whatever. The main barrier is the payment process itself. It is complicated and a pain to pull out your credit card and go through that process to buy a sermon. It creates friction that would result in less people listening.

Making everything free is also remarkable. The key here is everything. It would be one thing if 50% of Piper’s sermons were free, and the other 50% you had to pay for. That would be nice, but it wouldn’t be remarkable. To be remarkable you have to go all the way—you have to hit the extreme. Saying everything is free is remarkable. Saying 99% of his sermons are free would be a whole different reality than being able to say 100% are free.

[Note: For more on free as a web strategy, see my article “Make it Free: Improving Online Effectiveness by Removing All Barriers to Accessing and Sharing Content.”]

Without Requiring Registration

Fourth, we post everything without requiring registration for the same reason—going through the registration process is an obstacle to accessing the content. It creates friction because it gets in the way and is a pain.

Example of being sent a link only to see that registration is required.

In a Maximally Usable Interface

Fifth and finally, we seek to make our web interface as usable as possible because hard to use websites are also a form of friction. You cannot access or share the content if you cannot find it easily, and if the site doesn’t give you an overall sense that it is easy and pleasant to use.

[Note: For more on usability, see the resources I’ve collected here.]

 

Two Other Reasons

Two other reasons we do this:

It is Right

First, it is right. More and more, organizations are realizing that they don’t get free pass from the obligation to be human.

In other words, the golden rule applies to organizations just as much as to individuals: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In other words, seek to be of benefit to others before you are a benefit to yourself.

Making everything free is not the only way to put others first in how we do things as a ministry. I don’t think it would be wrong to charge. But it is right and good to make everything free because it shows that our aim is to first serve our people rather than ourselves. We exist first and foremost to be a benefit to others, not ourselves.

And thus, our strategy must reflect this. So many organizational strategies don’t—they seek to protect the organization or play it safe, and the leaders of the organization justify it on the basis that “if we don’t keep existing, we can’t serve anyone.” But that’s lame and boring and actually backfires. If you serve yourself first, you end up not doing cool and interesting things and you aren’t as useful to people. As an organization, we don’t exist to exist. We exist to serve. And we aren’t going to say that with our lips and then turn around and do something else with our actions. And, ironically, by putting yourself out there to benefit others before yourself, you end up prospering more as an organization.

It Demonstrates the Gospel

Second, it demonstrates the gospel. The gospel is free. Since the gospel is at the heart of our content, it makes sense that we would make our content available for free as well.

Again, we don’t have to do this. But our desire is to demonstrate the gospel not just in what we say, but also in how we say it. We want the things we do as an organization to as much as possible be visible illustrations of the freeness and greatness of the gospel. Making all of our content available for free is one way of doing this.

 

On Film

These things are central to spreading anything—even if you are interested in something like film. For a long time we had a media department that was making inroads into film, as another way to spread our message—namely, through story. That affects people in a different way. The web gave an outlet to the short films and other products our media department produced and enabled them to get wide exposure for low distribution costs.

Even if you go a more traditional route with films you create, the principles here are important for how you do the promotion of your film. You can use the internet to effectively and widely promote your work, for a low cost, by means of these principles. And also one reminder: being remarkable is not something you can add on after the fact. It has to be part of the essence of what you are doing—whether it is a film or message or whatever it is.

Marvin Olasky, George Orwell, and Sheridan Baker on Writing

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From Marvin Olasky; goes right to the core of good writing:

Here’s slightly overstated advice from George Orwell, and if you follow it 99 percent of the time you can find the joy of exceptions: “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short word will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive where you can use the active.” (Essayist Sheridan Baker noted similarly, “Never use a long word when you can find a short one…. Pick up every sentence in turn, asking ourselves if we can possibly make it shorter.”)

9 Core Principles of Writing

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Last summer, in preparation for writing my book, I read 15 or so books on writing and publishing. I then went back through the books and typed up the most important points from them into a single document (which came to 66 pages).

Out of all of this — and based also just on what I already knew about writing from classes (especially from two incredible English and composition teachers in high school) and just plain writing a lot — I pulled together what I take to be the top 9 core principles for effective writing.

Here they are:

  1. Omit needless words
  2. Use the active voice
  3. Be clear
  4. Be concrete and specific, permeating the work with details. For non-fiction, interviews are a helpful way to do this.
  5. Build your work around a key question
  6. Create tension
  7. Be yourself
  8. Write with nouns and verbs, not adjectives and adverbs
  9. Give the reader room to play their role (for example, when you state an amazing fact, don’t then say “that’s really amazing.” Let readers do their own marveling)

If you have other core principles that you think should be included in this list, I’d love to hear them.

For Writers (And Everyone Else): 12 Tips on Overcoming Procrastination

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These are from my notes on writing and are pulled from a bunch of books I read last summer. While the focus is how to overcome procrastination in writing, these principles can easily be adapted to be applicable for anyone, in about any context:

  1. “Almost all writers procrastinate.”
  2. Turn it into rehearsal.
  3. Lower your standards. Writers block is a product of some kind of disproportion between your standards and your performance. Get rid of the standards that inhibit you, write, then raise your standards during revision.
  4. Just start typing.
  5. Adopt a daily routine. “Fluent writers prefer mornings.”
  6. Draft sooner. Avoid over research, which makes writing seem tougher. Write earlier in the process so you discover the information you need.
  7. Discount nothing.
  8. Limit self criticism in early drafts.
  9. Rewrite.
  10. Set the table (= pull everything together and get things ready; make short plan).
  11. Find a helper.
  12. Keep a daily record of accomplishment.

When you Get Stuck

  1. Just start writing. “Writing is the means to achieving the clarity of what you should write.”
  2. It’s OK if you just produce a few pages a day for the first several weeks. Things will snowball if you get momentum.

How Successful Entrepreneurs Act – It's Not What You Think

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“Successful entrepreneurs realize that in a world where you can’t predict the future, what do you do? Act. If you can’t predict the future, create it. Creation-oriented action. There is an academic, real correlation between entrepreneurs and this belief; that is, studies show this is how most entrepreneurs think.

“Indiana Jones is actually a good example here. He’s thrust into the dark. Can’t see. What does he do? You ask: What do I have on me? Where are my feet? Not going to jump around. I’ll take a small step. OK, does it feel like I can take another step? Oh, on my belt I have a flashlight. Maybe that can help me a bit. You, playing Indiana Jones, know exactly how to get out of a dark hole. And these are exactly the rules you need to understand to take entrepreneurial action.

“In the face of unknowability, what does rational behavior look like? Action. You can’t think your way into an unknowable future, so your only way forward is to act. How? Take small steps–not big leaps. Small steps. [Prior point: It is a myth that entrepreneurs are inclined to take huge risks; they are inclined to minimize risk.] Take a small step with what you have in hand. Limit the risk with each step. Then build off what you actually find from taking that step, whether good or bad, and would be nice to have some friends and resources standing by to help.

“Successful entrepreneurs also start with things they care about. The question is not where do you find opportunity, but what is it you would like to do? We start with you. Entrepreneurs are always doing what they want to do, or think will get them what they want. In the face of unknowability, taking any other action is simply foolish. So, given who you are and what you want, what step should you take? Sometimes you might see someone else with an idea, and partner up. 50% of entrepreneur partnerships in their study started simply because the people liked each other — not even a big idea. This works.

“Now we get to the part where the bankers and financial experts in the room will be deeply offended. They have all developed ways to measure risk. We live in a world of affordable loss. To put more numbers on that just makes things more depressing and doesn’t work. How do you decide what to do? Well, how badly do you want to do it. Then you act. Then you bring some other people along. Willow Creek is a good example here actually — take a look at what they’ve been doing.

“Now, what keeps people from doing this? First, they get completely caught up about what they’re trying to do. So how about not worrying about that, but instead thinking about what you’ll do next. Stop worrying about what you want to do, and instead worry about what you should do next. [Sounds familiar — what’s best next!] Second, people fear failure. They think ‘we can’t fail.’ We’ve been educated to believe that failure is a dirty word. That when people fail, we send them away and they disappear. ‘If you fail you go to the desert and don’t come back.’ But in reality, if you take a step and it doesn’t turn out how you expected, quite likely you just learned something that nobody else knows. So for those uncomfortable with calling it failure, call it ‘an exercise in learning what nobody else knows.'”

Solving big problems:

  1. Baby steps
  2. Small wins

Multiple simultaneous ventures.

With action trumping everything, you get more at bats in the same elapsed time. And greater aggregate number of ventures for society as a whole, taking us all on a journey towards solutions.

How the Gospel Should Shape Your Web Strategy, Not Just Your Web Content – My Message at the Christian Web Conference

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Here’s the message I gave at the Christian Web Conference on “How the Gospel Should Shape Your Web Strategy — Not Just Your Web Content”:

Here are some of the things I talk about:

  • A few words on my upcoming book, and how technology and productivity practices exist to amplify our ability to do good.
  • What usability is.
  • Why there is a biblical case for making our websites (and everything else we do!) usable and helpful to people.
  • The process we went through creating the major redesign of the Desiring God website of 2006 on the basis of sound usability principles.
  • Some of the (perhaps unorthodox!) extreme productivity measures involved including 90 hour weeks and three all-nighters in a row.
  • On the necessity of avoiding the self-protective mindset in organizations in order to keep the user and people you serve first.
  • How it is Christian to make websites usable and just plain good workmanship in general.
  • Reducing friction so ideas can spread.
  • 5 principles for making websites usable.
  • A few words on why ministries should post everything online for free.
  • And other stuff!

Here are my slides (there’s just a few for this one):

And here is my manuscript/notes for the message:

Most of us aim for the content of our sites to be true to the gospel and gospel-centered. The gospel—the truth that Christ died and rose again for us, and that through faith in him we enter a right relationship with God—is at the heart of what we are here to say. Everything else that we say is founded on this. That’s what makes us Christian ministries and organizations, and just plain Christians, period.

This is as it should be. But I want to take us a step further and argue that the gospel should not only shape our web content, but should also shape our web strategy—that is, it should shape how we go about our websites altogether.

In other words, the gospel has implications not only for what we say on our sites, but also for the strategy behind how we architect our sites and design our sites and build our sites and utilize our sites. It should be behind everything about our sites, not just the content.

In particular, I want to look at two primary ways the gospel should shape our web strategy. First, the gospel implies that we should make our sites maximally usable. In fact, we should take pains to do this. Second, the gospel implies that we should make our sites free—even at sacrifice to ourselves.

And these two factors—a site that is maximally usable and free, combined with excellent content—are the pillars of an effective web strategy. That is, they not only are fitting ways to reflect the gospel, they are also what work best. There is no ultimate conflict behind a web strategy that seeks to embody the gospel and a web strategy that works.

1. We Should Take Pains to Make Our Sites Usable

We should take pains to make our sites usable. But what is usability? What do I mean when I talk about usability?

What is Usability?

Here’s one definition of usability, from Web Design: The Complete Reference: “Usability is the extent to which a site can be used by a specified group of users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use” (Powell, Web Design: The Complete Reference, 50).

But as Steve Krug has so simply shown in his book Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, one simple sentence sums up the definition of usability: A usable website is one that doesn’t make people think about how to use it.

In other words, it doesn’t raise question marks in people’s minds about how to do this or that, how to get here are there, or how to respond to the information on the page. They see the page, and know what they need to do, and how to do it.

[Here’s an example of a hard to use page]

[Here’s an example of an easy to use page]

This principle is “the ultimate tie-breaker in deciding whether something works or doesn’t in a Web design” (Krug, Don’t Make Me Think, 11). It is the very definition of what a usable site is.

Krug fills out the meaning of this principle more fully:

It means that as far as is humanly possible, when I look at a Web page it should be self-evident. Obvious. Self-explanatory.

I should be able to ‘get it’—what it is and how to use it—without expending any effort thinking about it.

Just how self-evident are we talking about?

Well, self-evident enough, for instance, that your next door neighbor, who has no interest in the subject of your site and who barely knows how to use the Back button, could like at your site’s Home page and say, ‘Oh, it’s a _____.” (With any luck, she’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s a _____. Neat.” But that’s another subject.)

Everything boils down to this: Don’t make people think. A usable site minimizes the amount of thinking people have to do to use the site.

But why should we make our sites usable? One reason is that making your site usable is simply good strategy in general.

Why This is Good Strategy in General

1. If your site is not usable, it distracts from the content.

Hard to use sites add to people’s cognitive workload. This causes frustration and is distracting. Here’s how Steve Krug puts it: “When we’re using the Web every question mark adds to our cognitive workload, distracting our attention from the task at hand. The distractions may be slight but they add up, and sometimes it doesn’t take much to throw us” (Krug, 15).

People are doing important things. When our sites are hard to use, it makes it harder for them to do what they are doing—such as doing research for a sermon, or preparing a Bible study, or trying to find answers to questions their friends have asked them about the Bible or apologetics or such. We don’t want to make these important tasks even harder for people. We want to enable them to focus on their task rather than adding to their already significant cognitive workload.

2. In fact, if your site is not usable, people might not even invest the time to find and benefit from the content.

Not only are you making things harder for your user if your site is hard to use, you are also shooting yourself in the foot. When the user has a hard time with your site, he or she might just give up altogether and go somewhere else.

A hard to use website can cost you site visitors.

And even if it doesn’t cost you site visitors, it will cost you user satisfaction. People won’t like coming to your site as much, and they will be less likely to tell others because they won’t be having a good experience.

Conversely:

3. When your site is usable, everything just seems better.

Usability creates a better impression all around for the user. The user might not even be able to point to why they like the site, but they will walk away with a better experience and more enthusiasm for the site because it met their needs.

Here’s how Krug puts it: “Making pages self-evident is like having good lighting in a store: It just makes everything seem better. Using a site that doesn’t make us think about unimportant things feels effortless, whereas puzzling over things that don’t matter to us tends to sap our energy and enthusiasm—and time” (Krug, 19).

4. When your site is usable, it increases site usage and user satisfaction

This is not just theory. We have seen results of this in the real world. For example, in 2006 we redesigned our entire site on the basis of sound principles of usability. Within four months of releasing the new site, visits increased 99%, audio listens increased 356%, and page views increased 359%.

To this day, we receive a continual stream of comments from people on how easy to use the site is. In other words, usability not only increased site usage, but also increased user satisfaction. People go away from the site with a more satisfying experience that makes them more inclined to tell others and come back to the site.

So there is a strong strategic case for focusing on usability. But there are also biblical reasons for making your site usable. And this is what is most important.

Why This is Biblical

So usability is good strategy. But that’s not the main point I want to make. The main point I want to make is that usability is biblical. In other words, there is a biblical case for usable websites.

1. Good usability is a matter of loving your neighbor as yourself

Jesus said the Great Commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and “your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 22:37-39). The Golden Rule is another way to put that: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is the law and the prophets.”

How do we want people to do unto us? Do we want them taking shortcuts on their web design so that we have to muddle through their hard to use sites? Do we want people making things easier for us or harder for us?

Is there anyone here who likes hard to use websites?

Making our sites easy to use is simply a way of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. It is a way of loving our neighbor.

Here’s the thing: we often think we have to go to Africa to obey the command to love your neighbor; that’s a rare and special thing you have to pick up and leave town to do. You don’t, you don’t, you don’t. It’s great to go to Africa. But don’t limit your notion of service to large and complex and uncommon acts of mercy, like missions trips. We are to spend ourselves for the good of others right where we’re at: that is, in our vocations. And if you are in charge of your organizations website, that means making it usable.

Wilberforce said “Where is it that in such a world as this, health, and leisure, and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, some want to supply, some misery to alleviate?” Do this with your websites. You don’t have to Africa to do this. Start in your vocations. Make a difference where you are.

Now, it is interesting that this also syncs with good web strategy. Most people point out that the key to an effective blog or website is to serve the reader. You need to be about your users and creating value for them, not first for yourself. Sites that are about themselves don’t work. Sites that put the reader first are the sites that succeed.

Well, that’s not just good strategy. That’s biblical. That’s a matter of loving your neighbor—of loving your users.

And this extends not just to content, but to site architecture, site design, site construction. Everything.

We should be always seeking to make things better for people. Life is hard enough. Seek to make things better, not harder for people.

GPS: time crunch, tired. I don’t need the added difficulty of the buttons being hard to push.

Hotel room lights: Always hard to find. Last night I walked in, it was totally dark, no light switches turned a light on, and I had to feel around for the lamps.

My house: The hose box. The sump pump. (My whole neighborhood with sump pumps.)

In everything, we should seek to be making things work well for people.

2. Good usability is a matter of serving your user

This is simply another angle on what I have already said. Making your site usable is a matter of serving your user.

This angle also adds another dimension: it shows that we should make our site usable even at cost to ourselves. This comes out when we look at some of the texts on serving.

For example, Matthew 20:28 says:

“For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

We see this teaching continued throughout the NT:

“Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, ‘the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me’” (Romans 15:2-3).

“Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor” (1 Cor 10:24).

“So then, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1).

“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who … made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:4-7).

Spend yourself for the good of others.

And where are we to have this mindset? Only when we do large and complex things, like going into missions or going on a short term trip? Certainly not. This is a mindset we are to have every day, in everything that is before us. And so one of the primary avenues in which we exhibit this mindset is in our vocations—our day-to-day responsibilities of life. The very fabric of our lives and work, and therefore of our strategies and approaches to our websites—is the arena for manifesting this mindset.

Be looking out for the interests of your users. Be genuinely concerned about their welfare, as Timothy was for the Philippians (Phil 2:20), and as Epaphroditus was, even to the point of risking his life (Eph 2:30). This is not about you. It is about them. Many web strategists rightly point out that the key to an effective site is to serve your users. Focus on them. Do what will benefit them and add value for them, not first yourself. That’s good strategy. And now we see that this is also biblical. What secular web strategists have recognized is simply an echo of the greater realities that the Bible teaches. So how much more, as Christians, ought we to be devoted to our users?

And we should take pains to serve them, because this is the biblical ethic of putting others before ourselves. We make our own lives harder in order to make other’s lives easier. We are to take the burdens of the user on ourselves.

Which means: instead of creating a site that the user has to spend time figuring out, spend that time yourself on the front end to iron out the problems. This may take you a lot of time, but it will save thousands and perhaps even hundreds of thousands of people lots of time and trouble. And that’s a pretty good investment: a few people taking time to iron out the difficulties saves time for thousands of people. That’s a pretty good investment.

That’s why at DG we took an inside-out approach to technology rather than an outside-in approach. Explain.

3. Good usability adorns the gospel

Mt 5:16: the meaning of good works again, and their role in relation to the gospel.

Dan Cathy example.

4. Good usability is simply good workmanship

“He who is slack in his work is a cousin to him who destroys” (Proverbs 18:9). Hard to use websites are slack work. If your website is hard to use, you are a cousin to him who destroys because slack work makes life harder for people. Life is hard enough. Don’t make it harder.

5. Good usability enables maximum spreading of the gospel

Because it reduces friction.

This is all about reducing friction so the content can be primary. Eliminate anything that gets in the way of accessing and spreading the content.

Making your site maximally effective for spreading the gospel.

6. Good usability echoes the gospel

 

How Do You Make a Site Usable? Five Principles

1. Don’t Make People Think. This is the guiding principle, and we have already discussed this above. Seek to eliminate question marks. Etc.

2. Provide good orientation. Global navigation and local navigation.

3. Use good principles of classification.

4. Make obvious what is clickable.

5. Use the smallest effective difference.

 

Synopsis

The first principle for an effective web strategy is: create excellent content and make your site usable. You want users to think hard about your content—not about how to use your site. But usability doesn’t only make your site better and more effective. It is also important for biblical reasons because it is a way of serving your users and demonstrating the gospel that we exist to proclaim.

In other words, the gospel has something to say about how you do your website. Not just what content you put on your site, but what your overall web strategy is.

That’s what we’re going to talk about in this session. We will look at how the gospel should shape our web strategies and how we have sought to do this so far at Desiring God. This will take us on a tour of the biblical and strategic reasons for making your website usable, five simple usability principles that are at the center of every easy-to-use website, the four principles that matter almost as much as usability, and more.

As a bonus, bring your most difficult and challenging questions on web strategy. We’ll spend the last part of the session talking about them.

Cuts

We Should Make Our Sites Free—Even at Sacrifice to Ourselves

Reasons

Making your site maximally reflect the gospel

Free is a form of usability

Reduces friction and increases spreading

Funding: A Biblical Case and a Business Case for Why This Won’t Bankrupt You

One of the big questions people raise about free is: How do you fund this? What is the funding model to support making everything free? I wish I had time to talk about this, because there are two very cool things here. There is first of all a biblical case to be made for how making everything free can actually create a self-sustaining source of funding, and there is also a business case to be made that shows exactly how making everything free translates into revenue—often more revenue than you would have had if you sold sermons. So there is a biblical case and a business case for free, and if I am able I’ll make those another time.

Our Vision at Desiring God

Our web vision at Desiring God, stemming from these things: Post everything online, for free, without requiring registration, in a maximally usable interface.

This is actually very efficient. I spent 2 weeks I think it was pouring over how to do the architecture for the Desiring God site. During those two weeks, my visible productivity was very low. But the time I invested has saved millions of others substantial time. That is a high leverage activity.

Other Notes

It follows from the Christian principle of service, which is rooted in the gospel.

– First, this is actually rooted in the law. “Love your neighbor.”

– But it is even more rooted in the gospel, because of Christ’s example. And so we have a new commandment, “love one another as I have loved you.”

– So we are here to serve, and our love for ourselves and Christ’s love for us are the two principles that guide us here.

– How do we love ourselves? We don’t make things harder for ourselves, but easier. Now, the Christian ethic doesn’t say: “focus your life now on making things easy for yourself.” Rather, it says, “OK, you love yourself by making things easier for yourself. So now sacrifice that to some degree by spending yourself to make things easier for others.”

Related: See my message from the following year for additional discussion on the nuts and bolts of how to make your site usable.

The Difference Between Buzz and Word of Mouth

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It’s common to hope for new products, books, and marketing initiatives to “generate buzz.” And if something creates a season of buzz early on, that is often looked at as a mark of success.

At first this sounds good. It sounds like it’s in line with one of the core principles of (good) marketing: create things worth talking about. Unleash word of mouth, which is then amplified by the internet as never before.

But it’s actually not. The concept of “buzz” is actually a hold-over from the old methods of interruption marketing where the organization (or marketer) sees themselves as in control. The reason is that there is a difference between buzz and word of mouth.

Buzz is surface level. It is usually based on superficial realities about the product or message. It doesn’t last.

Word of mouth, on the other hand, is substantive. It facilitates meaningful interactions and is based on deeper realities than just surface factors. It stems from a real emotional connection with the product. It is meaningful.

It’s not that buzz is bad. It’s just not enough. Seek for your product, book, message, website, or organization to generate true and valuable word of mouth, not just buzz.

Tim Keller on the Passion of An Entrepreneur

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Here is a short, good video of Tim Keller speaking on passion and entrepreneurship. Interestingly, he points out the the last of the seven deadly sins — sloth — doesn’t refer to laziness but rather passionless.

In other words, living a life without passion was traditionally considered to be one of the seven deadly sins.

(Sorry for not embedding the video — technical difficulties; the above link will take you right to it, though.)

Proposal for a Message at the 2011 Web 2.0 Conference

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This is a proposal I submitted for the 2011 Web 2.0 Conference. Though it was a secular conference, I submitted a proposal on how there is a biblical basis for web usability because it seemed that that topic would be of general interest. I’m posting it here as an example of doing public theology — that is, of seeking to bring a gospel-centered perspective on things into the wider culture in a (hopefully!) winsome, appropriate, and respectful way.

Description (65 words)

Website usability is not simply a good idea; there is actually a case to be made for it from the Bible. This transforms not only how we understand usability, but also how we understand all of our work. Now matter what your religious views, it is surprising (and helpful!) to see that the Bible has something to say about even the more sophisticated aspects of everyday life and work.

Full Description

The first principle for an effective content strategy is: have excellent content and make your site _usable_. You want users to think hard about your content–not about how to use your site.

But usability doesn’t only make your site better and more effective. There is also a case to be made for it from the Bible, because it is a way of serving your users.

This session will show how usable websites are an expression of the core biblical commandments to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27) and put others before ourselves (Philippians 2:4). Even for those who do not have religious beliefs, or who do not share a belief in the authority of the Bible, it can transform our work to see it not simply as a job or a way of making money, but also as a way of serving and doing good for others.

Secular thinkers such as Patrick Lencioni and Howard Schultz and even Tom Peters have long pointed out that work is not just about the work, but serving others and even uplifting the human spirit (see, for example, the beginning of Schultz’s latest book, “Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul,” or the last chapter of Lencioni’s “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job” or Tom Peter’s discussion of “transcendence” in our work in “In Search of Excellence”). This session will show how these thinkers are echoing an even greater reality that is in tune with the worldview of the Bible itself. We will also make an application to exactly why usability is a matter of serving others well, and how understanding usability in this way motivates even greater excellence–for since excellence is hard work, it is ultimately only possible when we put others (in this case, the user) before ourselves.

Seeing these things is not only surprising and engaging in itself, but will also give those who attend a snapshot into the worldview of many of their own web visitors, as a majority of web users do have at least a loose religious affiliation and concern for spiritual issues.

Additional Information

The purpose of this session is not to persuade people about religion or create any controversy in any way at all. People can choose to believe what they want, and my aim here is not to address any controversial issues.

Rather, it is simply interesting and illuminating to see that the Bible has things to say about the everyday things we do in life–including really cool things like interactive design and making sites usable. Even (especially) people who have no religious viewpoints or do not hold to the Bible as a special book will find this session interesting as they see how a book that many in our culture _do_ hold in high regard has very engaging things to say about everyday life and the world of technology.

While the content of my session will be engaging and interesting and surprising, it will not be religiously controversial. The compelling and interesting thing is the fact _that_ the Bible has relevance to these things, and _how_ this is so. And that is broadly interesting and applicable. Additionally, this session will help meet the diversity value listed in the criteria by which sessions are selected, as it looks at web design from a unique perspective not typically addressed at the conference, while also shedding light for attendees into how many of their users think about the world (as 50% + of the population does at least have some lose religious affiliation).