lifechurch/youversion-web-growth-ideas

Bible.com is a vital component of the YouVersion digital brand. It recently reached a new high in terms of organic search performance. It is going over 5 million organic clicks from Google this year. That’s more than any year in the past! But, we know there is so much more we could be doing or doing better.

YouVersion Web Growth Ideas

This project is related to the web-application of The Bible App found at Bible.com.

Bible.com is a vital component of the YouVersion digital brand. It recently reached a new high in terms of organic search performance. It is going over 5 million organic clicks from Google this year. That’s more than any year in the past! But, we know there is so much more we could be doing or doing better.

We encourage you to delve into Bible.com and offer suggestions on how we could enhance the site to boost organic traffic. We are primarily looking for simple ideas with a high return value. Of course, we’ll take the more involved ideas but may not choose to implement them.

How To Contribute Your Growth Ideas

All growth ideas are tracked and discussed using GitHub issues.

First, check to see if your idea has already been presented. If it has, feel free to add to the conversation by commenting on the idea. If it hasn't, start the conversation by filling out a growth idea submission.

When completing the submission form; be sure to include any examples of the change, indicate an estimated level of effort, and finally tell us how the idea will improve organic search performance for Bible.com

Have Other Ideas or Found a Bug?

We are currently focusing on improving our organic traffic. However, we would enjoy hearing about any ideas you have that could help grow the reach of Bible.com! Please fill out the suitable issue template to submit your bug or idea.

Looking for other ways to contribute?

Are you a Python wrestler? Is JavaScript your primary love language? Do you know how to keep all the Rubies on their Rails? Lend us some of your brain cycles by signing up as a Developer volunteer!

Be sure to also join the discussion on Slack in the #youversion-vol-dev channel!

youversion-web-growth-ideas's Issues

Add Badges to Verses that Friends Have Commented On

Describe the idea you have in mind
I want a badge on those verses that my friends have commented on. Similar to the notes icon seen on some verses (on the NLT). Maybe it could have their profile pictures.

Defense for the idea

• How the idea will improve growth?

I think this app has a way of getting people to read their bible together that no other tool has been able to do in history.

If you can see your friends comments on verses and comment to help them with understanding or to ask a question, you create a community of people reading the Bible together which grows the community.

I know for me personally I am already trying to do this! But the only way I can see my friend’s comments I my go to the community page on the first page, or by clicking into community on the verse.

This feature would be to add visibility to your friend’s comments on verses.

Hopefully you can disable these badges in settings with the default set to “on”.

• What area of growth it will improve?

Visibility of your friend’s comments on verses!

• What do you think is estimated level of effort to implement this?

  • 4 days
    • 1.5 days to plan
    • 1.5 days to execute
    • 1 day to test and confirm

Additional context
I have a lot of iOS experience! I would be more than happy to implement this as a feature based on my almost 2 years of tech world experience :)

Either way thank you guys for being a blessing and working on this amazing app! It’s been a blessing for me and my church friends! God bless you guys.

URL cann't redirect

Describe the bug/error

What happened?
This link http://opennetwork.life.church/volunteer, It cann't redirect http to https
A clear and concise description of what the bug is

To Reproduce

How did you get to that error/ bug?

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Go to '...'
   copy this link http://opennetwork.life.church/volunteer and past in browser.

Screenshots
If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: [e.g. iOS]
• Browser [e.g. chrome, safari]
• Version [e.g. 22]

Additional context
Add any other context about the problem here.

Incorporate a Strong's Concordance

Describe the idea you have in mind
There are countless passages for which the values of our culture influence our perceived meaning of a passage. One way to enrich the understanding of the meaning of a Greek or Hebrew word or phrase is to see all the ways that it is translated BY THE WRITERS of the Bible.\

Defense for the idea

• How the idea will improve growth?
• What area of growth it will improve?
• What do you think is estimated level of effort to implement this?

Additional context
Add any other context like screenshots, white papers etc. (from elsewhere or other parts of the web app) about the idea here.

Enabling open discussion on Bible verses on Bible.com

Idea in my mind

Enabling open discussion on Bible verses on Bible.com.

Phase 1 (like stackoverflow)

• Allowing registered user to ask question on a chapter or a verse of the Bible.
• Allowing registered user to answer the question.
• Allowing registered user to comment thumb up and thumb down the answer

Phase 2 (like stackoverflow)

• Evaluating and scoring the question and the answer associated with each chapter/verse.
• Showing recommended question and answer for the Bible verse/chapter for every user.
• Recommending strategy could base on score and machine learning of user preference.
• Evaluating and scoring each user. Defining certified user by certain criteria.

Phase 3 (Chat room/social network/online study)

• Allowing users that are viewing on a same a chapter or a verse of the Bible to have a real time discussion.
• When a discussion is hot, invite certified user who have credibility on the topic to be involved in the discussion.
• Allowing certified user to organize online public small group study.

Defense for the idea

• How the idea will improve growth?

Open discussion on God’s Word will help participants grow spiritually by thinking, interpreting and understanding God’s Word. Stand firm on God’s Word by sharing, encouraging comforting each other, improve the unity and harmony of the body of Christ.

• What area of growth it will improve?

God’s Word, unity of the body of Christ.
Popularity and vitality of the community

• What do you think is estimated level of effort to implement this?

  Not sure about the effort, since never worked in a community.
  But every phase is doable and have a successful business model to follow.
  As an engineer, implementing is never a time consuming task for me. Spike and POC is hardest.
  This is my estimation for 4 engineers working full time:
  Phase 1 - 1 month
  Phase 2 - 2 months
  Phase 3 - 2 months
  BTW, I didn’t put globalization and localization into consideration for this estimation.

Additional context

• Why reinvent the wheel? we already allowed people to share on social networks such as facebook and twitter.

  Key is Bible focused, At least I don’t know a place you can dedicatedly study, share, discuss Bible online.

• How we judge the question, answer and malicious users?

  We don’t judge. The Truth will reveal itself.
  Think about stackoverflow, for a popular question, a wrong answer will finally corrected by the community.
  That also applies to any other discussion. Zhihu is a Chinese platform like quora. (https://www.zhihu.com/question/28564647) You can see the drama of a credited user losing/earning his public credit depending on if he is respecting the truth not anything fake.

• Why do we need online Bible study?

  I don’t know, I feel it’s pretty in need and popular in China. Not sure about other countries.

Verse sharing update

Describe the idea you have in mind
Currently on bible.com, when you click on a verse, there's a section that slides up from the bottom of the screen. That popup has 4 actions: Share, Copy, Bookmark, Note. My idea is, what if on top of that sliding section, we have a share popup that shows up right on the verse but highlights Twitter sharing. There could also be some other actions on this popup, see attached for some of my ideas. The concept was based on what medium.com does when you highlight a paragraph.

Defense for the idea

• How the idea will improve growth?
  • Currently, it takes about 3 clicks before you're actually able to share a verse. This will allow for fast sharing and ideally, grow organic traffic through social platforms.
• What area of growth it will improve?
  • This feature will improve the user experience and shareability.
• What do you think is estimated level of effort to implement this?
  • Since the sharing functionality has already been developed, It would just be a matter of creating the popup and adding some styles. I would say medium to advanced level of difficulty.

Additional context

This is something I mocked up on photoshop. 🖌🎨

WP/CMS Verse Display Plugin

Describe the idea you have in mind
WordPress is the most ubiquitous Content Management System on the interwebz today, for better or for worse. Independent bloggers, reputable news outlets and various publishers use WordPress to facilitate their publications every day.

Further, the crux of SEO is {good, legit} backlinks. Even with a great site structure and amazing content (which, obviously, bible.com has), SEO is base on both your reputation and relevance. Both of these signals are calculated by the contextual links back to your site...

Hence, after some research, it seems that other Bible text sites are offering {outdated} plugins for WordPress that are facilitating pulling bible verses into a page, with the appropriate link back to their source sites. Bible.com, however, is not. (important to note - these other sites, particularly BibleGateway.com are outranking Bible.com in several key searches - primarily specific scripture book:chapter:verse searches)

There is a Bible.com plugin to offer a Verse of the day 'widget' - which is a constantly changing value on a website that a GoogleBot cannot effectively grasp consistently to provide relevant backlinks to a specific Bible Verse (a specific URI). This is a great plugin, but may not provide a great SEO boost, as it's content is constantly changing - and is also broadcasting the same text across many many websites, which may incur redundant content penalties. This plugin, therefore, is great for users, but may not be providing SEO benefits.

So - the idea is simple - to provide a WordPress plugin that would be facilitated by a visual UI in the WP admin to pull a shortcode, which would display a Bible Verse in a user-customizable method to track back to Bible.com.

Eg. A publisher/author 'cites' John 3:16, and can simply select that book, chapter and verse in a visual UI in the WordPress editor, and based on their settings, this will display the verse according their preferences, or simply link to it.

This may require additional resources exposed by the Bible/YouVersion API (book, chapter, verse return), but will yield great benefit - if the plugin is distributed appropriately, and marketed to the Bible.com users effectively.

I am happy to develop this plugin if the team so deems this idea worth it.

Defense for the idea
- How the idea will improve growth?
-- Should trigger increased legitimate backlinks to Bible.com, which will increase both popularity for specific URIs, and overall site Authority.
- What area of growth it will improve?
-- Organic Site Traffic and increased page rank on SERPs, over a measurable period, commensurate on user/publisher adoption (goes beyond scope of plugin, marketing efforts will be necessary to evangelize the tool to influential publishers and bloggers)
- What do you think is estimated level of effort to implement this?
-- Once the API is exposed {which I'm guessing is already exposed privately} it's a WordPress plugin - most likely developed within a few weeks from scope determination to deployment. It's a pretty light lift if the API is exposed. If not, 'screen-scraping' is an option, but that's yucky. :) Either way, it's a relatively light lift, that brings benefits to publishers, their readers and Bible.com (in my opinion).

Additional context
Can provide upon request if necessary. Again - I volunteer to write the plugin if desired.

Further - this plugin can most likely be migrated to other relevant content management systems.

edit 28 (:D): I would imagine that we can limit this to Public domain, if applicable... and if necessary/required.