Practical guides / By Kris Singh

A practical website checklist

A useful website helps someone do the thing they came for. Work through this checklist on your phone, starting with the most common visitor task. You can use it with your existing Squarespace tools.

Start with the next visitor

• Can a new visitor find the next service or event time without opening a menu?
• Is the address a link to a map, with an entrance or parking note where needed?
• Is there a clear next step for someone who wants to ask a question?
• Does the homepage explain who the organisation serves in ordinary language?

Make people and resources easy to find

• Check that staff roles, contact details and photographs are current and suitable for public display.
• Give policies and downloads descriptive names. Add the version or review date where it helps.
• Try finding an older sermon, a particular resource or a team contact without knowing its exact title.
• Use consistent categories for related content rather than inventing a new label each time.

Check the practical details

• Open every main button on a phone. Confirm it reaches the intended page, form or giving service.
• Check event dates, locations and time zones, including daylight saving changes.
• If you show an appeal total, show when it was updated and who is responsible for keeping it current.
• Read text at a comfortable zoom level. Keep buttons easy to tap and links easy to distinguish.

Make the handover easier

• Name the person responsible for each important page and how often they will review it.
• Keep a short record of installed plugins, the source of their content and where their guides are stored.
• Test changes on the published page as well as in the Squarespace editor.
• Keep account access in the organisation’s password manager, with recovery details owned by the organisation.

Choose one improvement

Pick the most important task that failed. Fix that first, then ask someone who did not build the page to try again. A clear label or a better organised collection may be all you need.

If you need more ways to browse content, try the Singh Studio plugin demos. Every plugin has a working demo and an install guide available before you buy.

Read the sermon library guide or the staff directory guide for two practical starting points.