Advice to Create A Web Site For A Church
User-Friendly Website Design for Churches in 2009
Nov 10, 2009
Everybody who’s anybody, and everyone else has a web site or at least a page these days. It’s fun to have one and you can meet a whole slew of people from all over the world. For businesses a web site is a very good idea because they are more than advertising, they do actual business and even banking online.
Some churches do very well online and many others don’t. Usually, a church’s web site is to draw in non-Christians to educate and evangelize to them, and get them to come to the meetings and eventually be saved by Jesus. Web sites are also a good way to advertise a church and its goings on.
But, many of them aren’t doing so well because the overall purpose of the site is clearly for Christians. There’s flowery prose and sweet murmurings for the Lord, prayers and scripture notations and a picture of the front of the church. There’s cold text giving the times, days and locations of their meetings and maybe some testimonials.
The thing is, Christians are already saved, they already know the Lord and they love those scriptures on the web page. It caters to Christians so much that it actually turns curious non-Christians away.
Build A User-Friendly Christian Web Site
There are a couple of ways a non-Christian would be turned away. One of them is the language used on many church sites. Some things can be said in a way that entices someone to click and there is a way they can be said that won’t get them to click, too. Word choice is very important.
Suppose you have a list of links on your church web site that’s on the left of the page. One of them says, “Ministries,” and another says, “Outreach.” To a non-Christian those could be two things they have no idea about and they might sound pretty boring. They might even think they aren’t ready for something like that, yet. A better word to use for the link might actually be a phrase. Like, “Recent Activities,” or “Sign Up to Volunteer.” The sign-up page can be used as a catalyst to conversations with non-Christians, and a lot of times relationships come out of conversations.
Online Churches
Recent surveys show that more and more people are turning to the online site before they actually visit a church. Biblical communications require that Christians go to the non-Christians, not sit back and wait for them to trickle in. So when they go to that web site, it’s got to be optimized for non-Christians so they can be grabbed at that moment, resulting in either their communication with the church or a return visit to the site, pulling them, eventually, into the building on a Sunday.
There are two other classes of people that will look at the web site; they are new Christians in the area and the church’s members. There should be something for both on the web site, but the main intent of the page has to be to recruit the non-Christians.
It’s good to have blog space available to the site, so any visitor could read the blogs of more than one member and see if the overall tone is casual, or a strict orthodoxy, and see that this church has real people involved, not stuffed shirts. They could find out about how the members felt at the festival the previous weekend, or they could read conversations between two members and see how familial they all are to each other. Also, they could join and write their own blog.
Learn To Cater To a Foreign Land
Reaching non-Christians must be the overall priority of every aspect of the web site. Communications with non-Christians has to be intentional and not random. The site’s webmaster must take into consideration the needs and views of the non-Christians because the church cannot cater to something they don’t understand, nor will they benefit by offering something that won’t be understood by all.
If someone were to move to a different country, they would have to take the time and energy to learn the language and the laws of the new land. Online, it is a different country, yet it is all countries. Most of them have English on their pages even if that’s not the language spoken most, but church sites must learn part of the non-Christian culture to succeed.
For a successful site, this isn't all that needs to be known. More advice for creating a web site for a church will follow in the next article, titled, "More Advice to Create a Web Site for a Church."
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