When you think of church ministries and websites, you probably thought of one church with multiple ministries all in one website. It is a rare gem to find multiple churches partnering with one ministry; along with a good website to support it. So how do you handle this sometimes politically charged task of creating and managing a site that has multiple hands in it? Let’s examine some possible approaches to this delicate matter.
If you build it, they do not always come. The novelty of the web has worn off and the fact that your church has a website will not make you unique anymore. So how can you bubble to the top of search engine rankings? I talked about some pro-active measures you can take to get yourself known, however there are plenty of strategic decisions you can make that will give your site the high ranking it rightfully deserves.
If you are a return visitor to my site, you will notice that my top logo changed. I took away the colors for the sky & ground. Why? I was doing too much and was not providing enough focus. This blog is about growing church websites. So I drew attention to just that, a growing plant. Much like fasting and isolating yourself for prayer helps you focus; taking something away from your church’s web pages can help users focus.
When discerning the future of your church, many people would suggest asking yourself “What Would Jesus Do?”, or WWJD? When designing your webs site, you need to consider it from your user’s perspective. One question they are undoubtedly asking is WIFM?, or “What’s In It For Me?” Your website should always be communicating the value that your church and a Christ-centered life can provide them.
If you are a church that was founded before the late 90’s, you probably have some printed material that you wanted to move to a website. However, your church website is not just an electronic brochure you can hand people. As many studies have suggested, the majority of website content is skimmed, not read. Because of this, the content you may have developed for a printed brochure is not suitable to copy and paste to your website. Plus there are many limitations brochures have that websites do not. In this article, I will compare and contrast content strategies for both mediums.