The latest buzzword in advertising is content marketing. Believe it or not, your church can benefit greatly from this new trend. At its core, content marketing is providing valuable content to your customers. Your church does this nearly every week with your pastor’s sermon. Similar examples are most likely around your church. This article will help you identify them and turn them into a great content marketing campaign.
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Category: Church Website
The church website is the bedrock of any digital ministry. It is the hub nearly all digital ministry actions flow through. They may start on social media or an email list, but quickly move to your website for further action. These articles deal with optimizing, tweaking, and fully revamping your website.
Moving Technology Forward at your Church
Many of my readers are tech enthusiasts. You see new technologies emerge and immediately see the benefits. Your brain is spinning with ideas that will benefit the church. In a flurry of excitement, you present your ideas to your church leadership. Then you are hit with excuses of time, budget, and lack of perceived value. I imagine many of us have thrown up our hands in frustration. Why do our pastors and leaders not see the potential? It is not their fault. We as tech enthusiasts must present simple solutions with clear value to the church’s ministries.
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Fixing the Perception of Time
Have you ever heard of the three click rule? It states that all content on your website needs to be within three clicks of the home page. Thankfully many people realize that this “rule” is a myth. The number of clicks does not frustrate a user. It is the inability to find the answers to the question they have. When a visitor lands on your website, they want their questions answered as soon as possible. This article will explore ways to reduce the time it takes to direct visitors to the answers they seek.
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Pros and Cons of Church Mobile Apps
Creating responsive websites and native mobile applications for your church is a massive endeavor. If you decide to create a native application, I applaud you for your desire to jump into this market. It is not easy to determine the scope of your app, nor is it cheap to publish a native application to several markets. However, this article is targeted to those of you that have not yet jumped on this trend.
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When Waiting is not an Option
The Internet does not wait for anyone, and this includes your church. If you are waiting for the right time to move ahead with your use of the web, you will be left in the dust. This does not mean you need to jump at every advancement. Nor does it mean you should not prayerfully and carefully integrate technology. The problem is that latest technology may or may not be exactly what your church needs. Yet the longer you wait, the further you will lag behind. It is a tough decision whether to move ahead or continue to tweak what you already have.
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Make a Mediocre Church Website
The world does not need the perfect church website. What it needs is your church’s website inviting people to experience the Gospel now. If it is not online, no message gets out. Every day you wait for perfection is another day your voice is not heard. Instead of creating the prefect website, publish your best draft. You will make some mistakes along the way, but those learning experiences will shape your future. This article will explore two scenarios your church may be in.
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Creating Great Church Staff Listings on your Website
We often have deep connections to our churches and our faith. If you are changing either of them, comfort is key. When you show up at a church for the first time, you want to feel comfortable and welcome. The easiest way is to walk in already knowing a few people. Unless you have a church staff listing, this may prove to be nearly impossible. This article explores what to include and tips to make them more effective.
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Helping Church Hospitality With Your Website
Your website works hard to get someone through your doors. Does the experience stop there? No. Ushers and greeters are some of the first people a new visitor encounters. What can you do to help those key pieces of the welcoming experience? This article explores how can you use your website to help them, as well as grow your hospitality team.
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Removing Website Clutter
Designers see clutter as too many things in one space. They want the right balance of elements on a page so it is aesthetically pleasing. Website visitors use the word clutter differently. They use it to describe items that impede their task. Unfortunately we are reluctant to remove elements in a design. This is often due to politics, unclear strategy, and/or fear of leaving something out. This article shows how you can use analytics and UX tools to remove clutter without sacrificing functionality. Here are a few “simple” steps I suggest taking.
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Avoiding Dead Ends
The message of this article is pretty simple. Every path on your website should have a purpose and not lead to a dead end. This may seem like a simple concept, but I imagine that many parts of your website do not accomplish this. Never give your visitor the message that it is acceptable for them to close their browser. There should always be another page with more information or a next step to take. In this article I will first explore the mechanisms and treatments that allow you keep the conversation moving. Then I will review the tools you can use to help find any gaps your website may have.
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The Importance of Sitemaps
Sitemaps mean different things to different people, and this article will explore the most popular definitions as well as their importance. The problem is that they all use the word “sitemap” for very different web tools. However when you begin to define what they really are, their purpose, how they are structured, and how to create them; you see they are indeed very different. This article will explore what they are and hopefully give you a better idea of how to use them to make better church websites.
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Forced to Create a Bad Website
It is frustrating to create what you consider to be a great prototype or mock-up for your church’s website, only to have it completely changed by your approval authorities. My advice to you is to first not take it personally. Web teams around the world, both in churches and Fortune 500 businesses need to adjust their designs to suit their stakeholders. Second, realize there are preventative measures you can take to help mitigate these situations. This article will discuss why these conditions occur, and the best ways I have in thwarting them.
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