Speaking of Clover.

Compare to Clover: Ease of Use

This is the third article in the series of comparisons. Give the intro a read first…

We hate it when companies expect you to purchase something (especially something expensive), and expect you to be OK with not fully demoing the product on your own. We’ve mentioned in a few places that “you would never purchase a car without test driving it first, so why a website?”. We really mean it.

If you (or someone in your ministry) will be managing your website on a daily, weekly, or monthly level, the way you edit your site (content management system, or CMS) is absolutely crucial. It really should hold 50% of the weight in your decision making process when deciding which website solution is best for you and your ministry.

There are really 2 options for managing your website’s content:

1. Hire a programmer or web company to manage it for you. This can be both expensive and frustrating if you need content changed on a daily or weekly level (like most ministries do).

2. Have a CMS that anyone in your ministry can use to update your site. (This is much easier said than done!)

At Clover, we allow you to demo everything. Not just a portion of a site, or a select set of easy tools that we have created just so that you can assume that the rest of the CMS is as easy as these simple tools. We actually allow you to demo everything as you would on your own site. To be honest, when you click “demo”, our system is actually creating you your very own site. We’ve put a lot of time, money and energy in making sure that when you demo Clover, you are seeing exactly what you will be getting. You can actually design your site in our demo, and see exactly what your site would look like if you purchased it.

The fact that you can create your entire site in a couple hours with no training will hopefully tell you something.

You will commonly see with other possible website solutions that either 1) you have to call them for a demo or walk through of their product, 2) they have a video online that “shows” you how easy it is to edit their concoction, or 3) there’s an online demo that is extremely limited in tools or in what you can actually edit.

All of these really should be red flags when looking for a solution.

The underlying reason for this is that their management system REQUIRES someone to walk you through it. This means that their solution is not as easy as they claimed it was.

Funny story… A couple of years ago we were trying to set our church up with a website solution that would allow them to edit their site. With Ben and I starting our web company, the best option for the church was for them to be able to have admins edit their website, rather than paying a programmer or web company to manage it for them.

The best possible solution we found (keep in mind we had a pretty big budget) did a “custom” front end with a standard CMS that they used for all their sites. We felt that with a 5K member church with some unique needs, this would be a great fit.

Our first red flag went up when they made us sign up for a demo. This video “demo” made it look easy, and like it would be a good solution for the church, so we pulled the trigger. After already sinking thousands of dollars into this solution, we finally got our “walkthrough” of how to use their CMS. They mailed us a huge handbook of how to use it, and then gave us a 3 hour training session on their product. This was our second red flag.

After the training session, Ben (a web programmer for 12 years) started putting all our church’s info into this management tool for the site. He was on the phone constantly during this time asking questions about why things were glitchy, or why he couldn’t do certain things. Determined to make it work, though, he kept selling the church on the fact that “all the features” that they offered made up for the fact that it wasn’t intuitive or easy to use.

Unfortunately, once Ben handed it over to the church to start using, they couldn’t take it. It’s remarkable how important “ease of use” is for website solutions. Our church lost thousands on this mistake, but even despite Ben’s recommendations, they didn’t want to use the clunky CMS.

Needless to say, this was great motivation in creating Clover absolutely open and honest.

So the moral of this story (and blog post) is this:

COMPARE CLOVER TO OTHER SOLUTIONS BY DEMOING THE SITE’S EDITOR.

If they won’t let you, or they require a blood sample, there might be a reason for it. We really believe that Clover’s CMS, “The Greenhouse” is that good. It’s made for people, not programmers.

Oh yeah- Our church just recently launched with a Clover website.

Posted on May 14th, 2009 under Company News by Jim with 1 comment.