Church Sites

We are getting started today with our church website makeover. I wanted to show you today what the church website looks like now. Basically you can call this the "Before" video and over the next few days we will have the after videos, documenting each step of the transformation.

2 important things to mention in this video

1. There is no link back to the homepage... 2. The homepage of the church website is just one big image. Remember search engines need content.  If you want them to pick you up, you have to feed them some content.

Enjoy the Church Website Video #1  

 

Just started last night on the new website for River Community Church in Wichita, KS. The site is coming along nicely and will be completed within the next few weeks. I'm working closely with Nate Hart at River and am really excited to be providing a website for them. 

Some of the things that I noticed on their old site, like not having their service times on the home page and no link back to the homepage from the interior of the site will be nice to get cleared up. Overall their old site looks fine, they just need something that they can update more frequently and have a fresh look.

Again, really excited to be building their

We had church service this morning obviously... since it was Sunday and we had several visitors. I think about 5 guests in total. I didn't to chat with all of our guests but I did talk with one gal. It is probably not appropriate to give you her name... let's just call her, Jill. As I talked with Jill, I asked her... "Have you been to the Bridge before?"

Jill's answer... No - I used to go to church but, I haven't gone to church for a while. She told me that she met with a friend in our neighbourhood who "talked some sense into her" Next day, Sunday, she woke up and thought... "I think I'd like to go to

Your homepage is the most important page on your website but is does not have to say it all.

Many homepages you see are cluttered with information because people know that the homepage might be the first page that someone visits to they are are looking to say everything before people leave the site. For this step I would encourage you to grab a scrap of paper and just start writing. Turn it sideways and sketch out some boxes where things should go.

What should your homepage do, If it doesn't need to say it all?

Contact Information (also on everypage!)

The contact information should be prominently displayed. I

What must your Website do?

Now that you are clear on the purpose and vision of your church website, lets focus our attention on what features your want to have on your church website. Please bare with me as we go through these foundational stages. It might seem tedious but it is important.

From my experience: My tendancy is to think, "I want to build a website." so let's get to building a website. Jumping to the tasking of building before I consider the vision and lay a foundation has just led to disappointment. I start building and then discover halfway into the endeavor that I'm headed in the wrong direction

What is the Purpose of Your Church Website? 

The purpose of this section is to get clear in your mind what purpose you want your church website to fulfill. Your church website is really an extension of your church. It is more than just a brochure. In some cases your website will be the front door of your church especially if you are a church planter or if you don't have a building for your church. You will find that your website is the primary public why that your church will be before the public eye. Your Church Website is a Ministry in Your church Can you take a minute and make a list of all the ministries in your church? 1.

Managing a church website can be a headache, but every time someone comes to church and I ask, "How did you find out about the Bridge?" and they say... "From the website." It makes your hours of tweaking and writing and cropping worth it. With that said here are 2 things that are absolute musts if you are going to launch a successful church website.

1. The Site Must be Easy to Update. If you have to know HTML or PHP or even use FTP to update the site, it can be a drag to update. In my experience you need to have a site that is a some content management system of sorts and one that is easy enough for your church secretary to update

This Easter our church tried something new. In years past we have sent out postcards to our neighbourhood. With the postcards, the results were minimal and hard to measure. In our team meeting we decided to do an email campaign. Our church email campaign had two parts. 1. The primary purpose was to email out an invitation to Easter. We sent it to all members of the Bridge and asked them to forward it on to their friends.

2. We gave people the option to subscribe to our daily Easter devotional.

First question... How many people forwarded the invite to their friends?... The stats told us 5 people sent it to their friends. This stat can

Data and graphs - you got to love data :) Most pastors and church leader types want to know. How many people were there on Sunday? Are people getting plugged into small groups? The denomination might send a report asking how many were baptized last year or how many attended the vacation bible school (assuming that every church has VBS) what's up with that?

I like data as well. Just yesterday I was having a look at some of the analytics data for www.bridgechurch.ca and an interesting piece of data stuck out to me. It was the graph showing the visitor trending. The question it answered is, "Are the people coming to your site 1st time guests