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There are some really great church websites out there. There are some really terrible church websites out there. Some church websites look like they’re stuck in the early 2000s. (Some haven’t even been updated since then!).
Building a good website that is helpful and informative can be daunting. There are many similarities between a website and a social media page, but there is way more work for you to do to make things look uniform on a website versus your Facebook page since the overall design work is taken out of your hands on social media pages.
Fortunately, even though building a website is admittedly a harder venture than starting a Facebook or Instagram page, building your church website doesn’t have to be impossible, and in many ways, the maintenance can be less time-consuming on a website than a Facebook page because you don’t need to post/update quite as frequently. There are some mostly simple best practices that can help your website be a great reflection of your church.
The Importance Of Building Your Church Website
The Internet is your church’s new front door. Potential visitors will look for your online presence before they ever make a physical appearance in your building. While you can sort of get away with only having a social media page, it’s far better to have a great website where people can get the information they’re looking for without having to wade through your social media posts.
Search engines will prioritize your church’s website over your pages on social media when providing people with answers to their searches. If someone enters “churches in my area” into a search engine, churches with websites will populate before your social media page, which means you’re immediately at a disadvantage for introducing potential visitors to your church. You may be exactly what someone is searching for, but if everyone else pops up first, how will they find you?
More than social media, your website visitors are looking for specific information. This information may be on your Facebook page or YouTube channel, but it’s often easier to find on a website that has clear web pages devoted to each ministry, who you are, etc. Church members and potential visitors alike benefit from a great website. They may not look at the same web pages, but they can all quickly find what they’re looking for when your website is set up well.
What Do People Look For In A Good Church Website?
People visit websites for specific information, so a good church website will have that information, and it will be easy to find without having to necessarily dig through pages and pages and pages of text.
People want to know the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the church.
Who
They want to know who you are. If you’re part of a denomination, they may want to know more about that denomination. They want to know who is a part of your church – the pastor and other staff, maybe even the leadership. They appreciate contact information being easy to find.
What
They want to know what you believe so they can decide if your beliefs align with theirs. They want to know what you do. Are you active in the community? Are there ministries they can be involved in? Can they get an idea of what your church community feels like? They want to know what to expect if they come to your church.
When
They want to know when services are. They want to know when different upcoming events are happening (especially around Christmas and Easter – make sure that information is easy to find!). They want to know when different ministries or groups meet.
Where
They want to know where you are. Sure, map apps are a thing, but it’s also helpful to share some information about where your church is located in regard to any notable buildings or landmarks in your community
For example, we share our address and then expand on that to say we’re surrounded by the middle school, high school, and career center, and just down the street from the high school. It helps put our building in more mental context than just giving the street address.
Why
They want to know why you do what you do. Your church’s mission should be easy to find (and if you don’t have a mission or you aren’t living your church’s mission out, maybe it’s time to hammer that out so you have a clear picture for yourself of why you do what you do).
How
They want to know how they can get involved. How can they serve? How can their kids be fed? How can they give?
A good church website will answer those important questions, but it’ll also look good.
8 Tips For Building A Church Website
1. Visit Other Church Websites And Take Notes
Before you do any building of your own website, you need ideas. You need to get an idea of what looks good and what doesn’t. You need to get a feel for what’s helpful to have and what feels too much, like information overload. I suggest visiting the church websites of churches in your area, churches that friends and family members attend, other websites of churches in your denomination, etc. Take notes about what you like about each site. Take notes about what you don’t like. Ask others if they’d be willing to do the same.
As you take notes, see what patterns emerge from what stands out to you and what you found helpful. You’ll probably see themes that you appreciated across several web pages and things that turned you off to certain web pages. For example, I was drawn to sites that didn’t have an overwhelming amount of information on the front page but had separate pages that were easy to navigate. I found the “Plan Your Visit” pages and information about different ministries very helpful in getting an idea of what those churches were about. I liked bright colors (but not a vomit of excessive colors) over boring beige. Others who evaluated websites with me agreed.
2 . Pick A Good Church Website Builder
I’ll admit that I’m not well-versed enough in the website-building world to tell you “This is the best church website builder out there.” And even if I could make such a statement, chances are, that information would be outdated faster than my kids disappear when I tell them it’s time to clean up. What I can do is share some great options for website building and hosting.
Without trying to make your head spin too much, there are a few parts to building a website. First: You have to use a company to buy and host your domain (the web address people type in to get to your website). These are places like Bluehost, GoDaddy, and Wix. You’ll pay a yearly fee for them to keep hosting your domain. You can also purchase your website through WordPress or Weebly (which are considered to be content management systems but do provide the option to purchase and host through them, though costs may be slightly higher for this convenience).
Then: You’ll need a content management system or website builder. This includes companies like WordPress and Weebly. These often offer themes that you can use as your base for building your website so you don’t have to start from scratch. These also occasionally have a free plan option if you’re just starting out and aren’t ready to sink a lot of money into a manager since you’re already paying for the domain hosting.
As you consider ease of use in your website hosting and designing, you may also want to purchase a plug-in (I really like Elementor) that allows for more simple drag-and-drop design work for the website – no coding knowledge needed. Again, you can sometimes start with a free plan to dip your toe in and get a sense of if it’ll work for you before you invest your church’s hard-earned resources.
I will be honest that for some of you, the best church website builder is going to be a person who builds websites for a living. If you have the finances, your church website will outlive you, so it may be worth paying someone $500-$1,000 to get you the base you need to ensure your website gets off on the right foot. If you go this route, the best way to find someone qualified to build your website is to reach out to a church whose website you visited and really liked in Step 1, and ask them who built their site (some may even have this information at the very bottom of their homepage in the footer).
3. Pick A Theme And Stick With It
You can try to create your own theme or you can use pre-made themes available to you through whichever hosting platform you go with. Whatever you do, stick with one theme throughout the whole website. Stick to a handful of colors and 1-2 fonts. If you need to emphasize something, adjust bold/italic/underline and font size instead of having a kaleidoscope of fonts and colors.
It may take a while to get a theme you like that matches the feel of your church. That’s okay! Take the time now to do it. It’s not impossible to change the theme/building blocks later, but it’s not easy. This is one of those “it’s better to do it right the first time than to try to fix it later” moments, so don’t just pick the first theme option available just so you can move on to the actual “put content on the website” process.
4. Start Small And Remember Less is More
Your website does not have to be complete to be published. You can always add, subtract, and adjust pages later. Our church currently has 21 pages (some are private, some are password protected, but most are linked in the header and/or footer of the page). We have pages for watching online, filling out a connect card, information about our church, a staff and leadership page, ministry pages, information about discipleship and groups, ways to get involved, online giving, etc. However, when we first launched our website we had 4 pages – the Home Page, About Us, Ways To Give, and a Connection Page with links to social media and our connect card. It’s okay to start small!
“Less is more” is generally a good mantra to have when working with visuals/ graphics and things online. Many of us have short attention spans and even those of us who get overwhelmed when there’s too much information in too little of a space. Don’t put everything on your homepage. Split it into different pages dedicated to the information you’re trying to present.
Don’t list every single page individually in your header or footer. Pick broad categories and utilize drop-down menus. It’s a good idea to make information easy to find, but don’t put it all on one page because if everything is important, then nothing is important. Make your page names brief but descriptive enough to make it clear what information someone will find when they click the tab.
5. Put Your Real Church On Your Website (Avoid Stock Photos)
Your church website should be an accurate reflection of your church. You need pictures of your church. Not the building – the people. Avoid using stock photos as much as possible, but if you must, make sure even the stock photos are a good representation of the people. If your church is predominantly comprised of caucasian couples in their 70s, don’t use pictures that feature culturally diverse, young families. You may want to reach culturally diverse, young families, but don’t make it seem like they’re already there. The ones who come will feel like they’ve been lied to and won’t step foot in your church again.
6. Schedule Time To Update Your Site Regularly
It’s almost worse to have an out-of-date website than no site at all. It’s definitely not good to have a website with broken links.
If you list upcoming events on your website or have a link to a web calendar embedded in your site, keep that calendar up-to-date. You can do this at the end of each month in preparation for the following month’s activities so that someone visiting your site knows what’s happening.
If you have specific dates listed on your site (for example we have monthly men’s and women’s meetings that meet on a specific day each month), make a note to update those dates as soon as they happen.
If you create a page for a special event (like if you made a page for your VBS or Christmas services), take it down or make it private after the page is over to avoid confusion.
If you post Sunday’s sermon or a link to watch the service live, make sure you change that each week so it remains current!
Click through the various pages on your site once a month or every other month to ensure that you don’t suddenly have dead links that don’t work. And any time you put a link to another page or website on your site – check to make sure it works!
7. Utilize Basic Search Engine Optimization
There’s a joke among those who do search engine optimization that goes, the best place to hide a dead body is on page 2 of Google search results. Why? Because no one looks there. Think about it – how often have you gone past even the first couple of results on the first page of your Google search? You’re truly desperate if you click on page 2.
Search engine optimization (SEO) means putting in keywords and phrases, and jumping through a handful of other “hoops” in order to make search engines find and show your page more often. SEO can easily be a full-time job, and I’m guessing you already have one of those. Fortunately, there are small things you can do that aren’t as time-consuming but do help optimize your website to be more easily found by search engines.
The URL (domain name) you use for your church website should be close to your name. You don’t want it to be too long, but you don’t want it to appear to be a jumble of letters because you chose your church acronym that no one outside of the church would know.
Utilize titles and descriptions for each page. The title and descriptions are what will show up if someone searches something specifically and the search engine directs them to a page on your site instead of the homepage.
Make sure the headings on your webpage match the title and description. Accuracy matters!
Put a brief description in the “alt text” of your photos. Search engines read the alt text, they don’t analyze the picture.
Link to other pages and websites (and make sure those links work). When you include links to other pages within your website or you link to other websites, this provides search engines extra pathways to follow. It’s a good goal to have links to 3-4 other pages on each page of your website (not including the header/footer).
Pick the right keywords. Especially if you choose to include blog posts on your site (maybe your pastor’s weekly reflection or even a transcript of the sermon) keywords help search engines accurately index your page so that they can direct people searching for specific things directly to the correct pages. When people stay on a page longer, that tells the search engine they picked the right page to show that person, so they’ll do it again and again.
Utilize an analytic service (such as Google Analytics) to track which pages get a lot of hits and which ones are ignored or never shown on search engines. Make adjustments and improvements so poorly performing pages better match the higher performing ones. This can (and should) be part of your monthly website updating.
There is so much more to SEO, but utilizing some of these basic tips is a great place to start.
8. Get Feedback From Others
Everyone has different tastes and appreciates different aspects of a website. Make sure that you ask people both in the church and outside the church to look at your site and give you feedback. You might not be able to make everyone happy, but it’s helpful to know what they appreciate in a site and if your site meets those appreciations.
It’s also a good idea to check your website from mobile devices, too. Even though we build them on computers, chances are, most people are going to be looking at them on a cell phone, so it’s important to ensure they look good on a phone, too. Good website builders give you the option to look at and edit your page from a “phone view,” so you may have to toggle that view and make some tweaks so that it looks good from a cell, too.
A Few Things Every Church Site Should Have
As we talked about before, the essential features of your church website will answer the questions, “who, what, when, where, why and how.” When you first publish your website, you may not have all of these things on your site, or you may not have them fully fleshed out, but making sure you have the answers to these questions somewhere on your site eventually is a great way to ensure your site is doing what it should and that it has the qualities of a great site.
Your website should be a living, breathing thing that ebbs and flows with the life of your church, which means that once you’ve fleshed out the who, what, when, where, why, and how, they’ll still change over time.
In practical terms, if you’re eager to launch your site, make sure you have the following information (these don’t have to all be separate pages, but some of them should be):
- Church Name
- Church Mission
- Location
- Service Times
- Contact Information
- About The Church (at least who your pastor is!)
- Watch Online
- Ways To Give
- Ways To Connect (at least links to your social media pages)
Other great things to eventually have include:
- Individual pages for your various ministries
- Specific Christmas/Easter pages that are only visible around those holidays
- Small group/discipleship information
- First Steps for visitors interested in getting more involved
- Ways to serve
- Past sermons
- A “Plan Your Visit” page so people get a clear idea of what to expect
- Blog posts
Your Church Website Is A Valuable Tool
Building a great church website is not for the faint of heart, but it is a vital piece of your church’s online presence. As you seek to reach those who are curious about God and the church and as you try to keep people up to date with what’s happening in the church, a great church website is a valuable tool to make that happen.
Get the essentials of who, what, when, where, why, and how on your site and keep it updated. You don’t have to go overboard and give them the entire 175-year life story of your church and all the ministries you had once upon a time spread across 57 pages, but you can share what life is like in your church and invite people to join you on mission for God.
Be intentional. Be observant. Be diligent. But don’t be afraid to take the leap into launching your church website. You can do it – you’re not alone!
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