Recruiting for the Road Team

Converting a multi-page paper application to a web-based application

Life Action Ministries (LAM) is a ministry passionate about bringing revival to communities, churches and individuals. They have multiple outlets for these revival venues ranging from camp retreats to on-location revival events with speakers, bands, and prayer teams.

In particular, the on-location events require large road teams to keep things rolling. LAM found over the years that many of the folks willing and able to assist on these road teams are younger folks and singles. These are the kind of people ready to live the exiting and sometimes grueling life on the road; they are also the people of the smartphone and web generation. The problem, however, was that until the summer of 2010, applications for this fast-paced lifestyle were still handled with paper printouts and mailings.

The time had come to change that.

Managing Director of Communications Aaron Paulus approached us in July of 2010 about developing an online application and promotion website for their road teams.

Aaron's a creative guy who already had the website mockup files 80% complete and had started a general website outline. All of pre-planning was a huge help, since the project had a shoestring budget, and his input helped shave costs.

What he needed to know from Five Q:

Could we develop administration tools to handle the application form, since the current form was 12-pages long?
Could we keep the project under a specific budget?
Could we get the accompanying website done by the end of August/beginning of September, since this was the peak registration period?

Working with LAM on a tight budget and schedule

First, Aaron and I needed to be on the same page regarding the scope: which of these requests could bend and which could not. LAM had determined that the budget was fixed, so we all agreed that we may have to slim down the application form accordingly. Once we reached a consensus on the project parameters, we were off and running.

One of the key things that gave us a boost on this project was Aaron's willingness to do some of the leg work on the front end. Most importantly, his strength came from previous experience. Some well-intentioned people we have worked with in the past have tried to create resources like this, but if you do not have experience understanding web-based needs, this could be a recipe for disaster.

Aaron also was flexible in his approach to how the project unfolded. Since the budget was inflexible, the rest had to be negotiable.

Another benefit was that we had helped LAM redesign their main website a year earlier using Django. Django is a fast and flexible web framework that we use for many of our projects that had the tools we needed already in place. Now we only had to focus on the custom application form, and the rest would be a snap.

We simply built the standard website pages out of the pre-existing LAM website code. LAM was able to administrate all the pages of standard content in the main website admin, which kept the project running smoothly...

The Application Form

And then there was the main reason for this website: the online application form. The "abbreviated" application form was condensed to eight pages, including personal info as well as questions on references, medical history, educational background, employment history, etc. And that was the "short" version!

Remember the web is the place where people are really impatient. I have not heard one person ever reminisce about the “good old days” of dial-up. So we naturally were a bit concerned as we calculated both the complexity of building this online form and making it user friendly enough to be fill it out and not just clicked away.

We worked with Aaron to get the abbreviated form slimmed down even more. In the end, it took quite a bit of discussion and compromise to remove some fields that were not vital to the application. We also invested a little time on our end to polish up the form layout, since the design and user interface can make all the difference in a large, daunting online form.

Finally, we benefitted by knowing our audience, who were young and tech savvy. This knowledge let us direct the project course without too many surprises.

Out Just in Time...

In the end, we got the website launched before the end of September, which was just slightly later than hoped for. However, the launch date was ok to flex because we kept the project under budget and with the necessary features: working application form and all the related road team promotional pages.

Since the launch, we have further sharpened up the website with additional budget that Aaron was able to acquire. Now we could add some of the original questions that were originally left off of the form. We continued to polished the user interface even more, making error messages clearer, and updated the application reporting tools in the website admin for the staff. In all, it goes to show how partnership and flexibility can bring a project to successful completion.