Time to return to the perennial topic of what is a good church web site.

One Rule

There is one rule that applies not just to churches, but to all web sites - CONTENT IS KING.

Yes, ideally you would have good presentation too, but good content is your first priority. Information has to be current, relevant, easy to understand, easy to access, and frequently refreshed.

Getting visitors

People revisit web sites that change. They do not revisit web sites that are always the same. This is where most churches go wrong. They spend 90% of their resources getting a pretty looking website, and then only 10% of resources keeping the content refreshed and new.

Web users are busy people - they don’t have time to click on a link. That’s why you have to have your front page changing. Put your most interesting, dynamic content there. Don’t have a front page that’s as pretty as an oil painting, but never changes.

A good church web site

You don’t have to spend lots of money, or even ANY money to get a good website. Here is a brilliant example of a good church website done at zero cost -

http://saturdayev.wordpress.com/

Wordpress.com is a great tool to use for free church websites. By default you have a blog panel in the middle of the page that you can easily add new content to. It’s also really easy to set up static pages for things like “Contacts” and “About Us”.

Saturday EV is already better than 90% of church websites I’ve seen, and all done for minimal effort and cost.

Our Web Site

At Christians in the Media we are trying to do something a bit more ambitious, so we are using a Content Management System called Joomla. We’ve followed the philosophy I’ve outlined on this page, which is to say we’ve focused more on getting fresh content onto the site than on having absolutely slick presentation -

http://www.christiansinthemedia.org/

The template we are using is a free one we found - there are much better templates around and we will probably upgrade at some point. But you can see what we are trying to do on the front page - make it like a magazine page, with columns, lots of stories, lots of pictures.

This is not the end for us by any means - we are continuing to refine it every week. But the focus on fresh content has meant we have lots of visitors and lots of return visits. Last time I checked we were getting 5000-6000 hits/week.

So there are my thoughts on what makes a good church web site. Look forward to hearing your comments.

Craig,

Thanks for raising this topic because I think it is a helpful one.  It is one that I have been thinking about a lot recently as we got up to support the advertising stuff we used for our church plant last month. 

Among all your helpful tips, the one thing that seems to be missing is the need to define the objective of your church’s website.

I regularly hear that ‘we need to keep updating content on our websites’ without hearing what the website is for.  The purpose of the VHCC site was to provide more information for people who we door-knocked with a slick looking brochure so that they knew us better before they walked in the door for the first time.  Hence our emphasis was on lots of photos of real members at the church (as opposed to stock photos) and simple information on what we’re on about so that people got the ‘vibe’.  We tried to make sure that the flavour of the site reflected the flavour of the flyer too.

It was not intended as an ‘evangelistic portal’ or a ‘resource for members’ or a ‘virtual community’.  It is not even designed to achieve ‘multiple visits’.  If it was we would have done different things.  It is purely a ‘find out a bit more about us’ site that will help people feel they know a bit about us before they step in the door.  So far, from the conversations I’ve had with visitors it seems to be achieving this objective.  In the short term, I don’t expect that we will add much more than a simple ‘what’s on’ section highlighting some events that might ‘hook’ a visitor or outsider.

I guess my point is that you can’t define the success of a churches website without defining the objective of the website, and we can’t assume that each site has the same objective.

Yes, interesting points Craig. I checked out your site, and I think one of the strengths is that you’ve kept it simple. Basically “Where are we” and “Who are we”.

I definitely think that is better than having no web presence at all. And given your purpose of providing more information after an advertising drop, it probably achieves that. Although you could probably have easily fit all the additional information on your leaflet.

What I’ve noticed about “brochureware” (the technical term) for sites like this is that they age pretty quickly. Because it is not a dynamic entity, pretty soon the information gets out of date. It is obvious to the visitor that the site hasn’t been updated for 2 years, and that reflects back on your church.

By putting a dynamic element in your web site you avoid this, and it gives people a sense of your church as a living community where things are happening. This makes it much more likely that a visitor to your web site will become a visitor to your church.

Re: Church Web Sites

My version of [quote author="Craig Schwarze"]
One Rule

Less is more

Here is a brilliant example of a good church website done at zero cost -

http://saturdayev.wordpress.com/

Saturday EV is already better than 90% of church websites I’ve seen, and all done for minimal effort and cost.

I’m glad that you like that site, Craig, but I don’t. I find it ugly, hard to read and poorly laid out.

Glad that we can have different perspectives!

cheers,
Andrew

Less is more

Can you expand on that? Less information? Less graphics? Less colours?

Can you link to what you consider a “good” church web site?

[quote author="Craig Schwarze"]

Less is more

Can you expand on that? Less information? Less graphics? Less colours?

Keep it simple.
Easy to navigate.
Less clutter.

Can you link to what you consider a “good” church web site?

It is a while since I went trawling the web looking for what I consider to be good church web-sites, and so I’ll do it over the next few days.

One that I think used to be very good, but has probably grown a little bit too much for my liking is All Soul’s Langham Place
Even so, with all the information that they have, it is still very easy to read and to navigate.

Cheers,
Andrew

I like All Souls too - it’s got a busy, “alive” front page

[quote author="Craig Schwarze"]I like All Souls too - it’s got a busy, “alive” front page

That’s really interesting, Craig. That ‘busyness’ is probably the thing that I like the least about their site.

What I appreciate is the uncluttered look and the ease of navigation.

As I said, over the next few days, I’ll trawl the web looking for good sites. It isn’t going to be an easy task, I know!

Cheers,
Andrew

Craig S

Can you recommend any good outlines/cheat notes/pro formas I can use for our church’s website (i won’t tell you it’s www.wscbc.org.au as it fails many of the tests outlined above!) because we’re extremely low on cash and resources, but despite that I want to a) keep it regularly (and easily) up to date and b) upload our sermons onto it ie it’ll have to be done by us/me without assistance (and no knoweldge (yet....)) of technically building a webpage.  I’ve got no idea where to start, so any tips in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Re: Church Web Sites

[quote author="Craig Schwarze"]A good church web site

You don’t have to spend lots of money, or even ANY money to get a good website. Here is a brilliant example of a good church website done at zero cost -

http://saturdayev.wordpress.com/

My problem with this site is that I looked at it and it took way too long to figure out what it was all about. It just looks like one more blog site. If I can’t work out what the site is about relatively quickly (and if there’s nothing there to really catch my attention), I’m not inclined to stick around.

Of course what it takes to catch my attention may not work well for the target audience (slabs of palaeo-Hebrew script or the odd Thunderbird)…

[quote author="Kathryn Roach"]Craig S

Can you recommend any good outlines/cheat notes/pro formas I can use for our church’s website (i won’t tell you it’s www.wscbc.org.au as it fails many of the tests outlined above!) because we’re extremely low on cash and resources, but despite that I want to a) keep it regularly (and easily) up to date and b) upload our sermons onto it ie it’ll have to be done by us/me without assistance (and no knoweldge (yet....)) of technically building a webpage.  I’ve got no idea where to start, so any tips in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Kathryn,

I’m not Craig, but …

Do you use a windoze or a real computer - ie, a Mac?

If you use a Mac, you will have access to iWeb and all of its neat web-site building tools. In it you’ll also have the ability to upload podcasts which you can use for your sermon uploads.

HTH,
Andrew

i’m not going to get into the mac vs pc debate.  who cares!
but i think iWeb is clunky and generally ugly.  i’m yet to see one that looks any good.

kathryn - i think wordpress is a good one to go for.

hey and stop bagging saturdayev website… it’s still in the process of being made!!

www.ccecyouth.com is a well-good site!

Thanks David - wordpress looks like a good place to start, and it has bits on podcasting which I want to do (we’re not yet anywhere near the league of my old church Christians in the Media who are now doing moblogging or mocasting or whatever it’s called). 

Andrew - I have a windows PC.  QED. Therefore, end of debate. 

Any other thoughts or suggestions gratefully received.  Except from iMac users, of course :)

a totally shameless plug for St Faiths Narrabeen , designed cheaply and changed often and rebuilt on wordpress by a person who uses both macs and windows.

Ms Roach, I wish you the very best with your design work. One thing you might like to do though is tell us more about how your trip to Turkey ended.

...very off topic....I was very sick for a week after I got back from Turkey and couldn’t write the final concluding blog about Gallipoli - by the time I was better I felt the world had moved on so I didn’t prepare one for submission.  If there is a level of interest, let me know (send a PM) and I will write a conlcuding one for Mark to post.

I shall have a look at St Faith’s website, the fact it even has one is a far cry from the days in 1992-1994 when I used to attend that august institution.

[quote author="Craig Schwarze"]Yes, interesting points Craig. I checked out your site, and I think one of the strengths is that you’ve kept it simple. Basically “Where are we” and “Who are we”.

I definitely think that is better than having no web presence at all. And given your purpose of providing more information after an advertising drop, it probably achieves that. Although you could probably have easily fit all the additional information on your leaflet.

Our flyer was a clean, professionally designed and produced DL.  We used it for door-knocking and for handing out at a community event.  There is no way that we would have even considered putting all the stuff on the website on it.  Much better to go with an integrated brochure / brochureware campaign.

What I’ve noticed about “brochureware” (the technical term) for sites like this is that they age pretty quickly. Because it is not a dynamic entity, pretty soon the information gets out of date. It is obvious to the visitor that the site hasn’t been updated for 2 years, and that reflects back on your church.

This is the danger with a static site, and we designed with it in mind.  I literally sat down and said ‘can we produce a site that accurately communicates what we’re about but won’t need to be updated for the next two years?’ The intention is that we do add some stuff over time, but I wanted a site where our objective for the site would be achieved if we didn’t and which I didn’t have to worry about maintaining if things got busy.  The objective was to accurately and ‘winsomely’ communicate the vibe of VHCC to a non-Christian so they felt like they knew what it would be like if they came along.  As we add a dynamic dimension, it will be about furthering that objective.

By putting a dynamic element in your web site you avoid this, and it gives people a sense of your church as a living community where things are happening. This makes it much more likely that a visitor to your web site will become a visitor to your church.

This is true and a strong point and why we intend to add some dynamic dimension over time (again largely integrated with print marketing campaigns).  Again it seems to me though that it come back to the need to define what your site is for.  Who is the site designed for?  Who is the visitor to the site.  Are they really looking for a place where lots of things are happening.  Is that the key message for them?  What is it that they really want to know from visiting your site?  What is the key message that you want your site to communicate about your church?

I see lots of church sites that are frequently updating the content and yet visually bland with that standard blog style look that seems to be taking over everywhere.  I wonder if in our focus on rapidly updating content we are neglecting the importance of the visual dimension in effective communication.

I’m no expert in this stuff and I agree in general that ‘content is king’ but I’m not sure that automatically means ‘the best website for every church is one with frequently changing content’.  It’s all about objectives.  And I’m not sure that the direction this idea seems to be leading church sites is without drawbacks.