Need help figuring out what church website content is essential for your church? Keep reading.
We are getting to the point where it is safe to say that most churches I relate to
If your church is trying to reach the mission field, if you really want to reach new people to introduce them to Jesus Christ, the primary audience for your website is people who are checking out your church for the first time. If that is the primary audience, the main purpose is giving them useful information and insight into your church. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have other things on your website. It doesn’t mean that it can’t have some other purposes and functions. It just means that the main objective, the lens through which you will evaluate how functional it is, is about answering two questions:
- How well does it speak to people who are checking out your church online?
- How effective is it in converting people from website visitors to church visitors?
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To reach this objective. Here are some things visitors will need to see:
Church Website Content: A Clear Call to Action
For your church website to encourage new people to engage with the church, it needs to be designed around that purpose, and it needs to have a clear call to action.
What Is a Call to Action?
A website call to action or CTA is merely a prompt that invites people to do something. In an effective CTA, that prompt is visible, specific, clear, and manageable. CTAs are usually written as a command or action like: sign up, buy now, download, subscribe, register, join, try, etc..
Read more about the call to action here:
Church Website Content: A Prominent Place for New Visitors to Click
If someone is getting to know your church for the first time through the website they shouldn’t have to wander around looking for what they need to know.
Church Website Content: Worship Times and Location
Seriously, I keep running into churches who don’t have this in a prominent place. If the purpose of your website is to help website visitors become church visitors, it would really make sense for them to know where and when to show up.
This should be right up front on your website. It should be on the home or landing page, and it should be above the fold, meaning I shouldn’t need to scroll to find it. Seriously. If the hoped-for conversion is people coming to church, make sure they know where and when to arrive.
Church Website Content: What You Believe
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People investigating your church want to have a general sense of what you believe. Are you a snake-handling church. Are you mission-oriented? Do you believe in Jesus? Do you speak in tongues?
Read more in What Does Your Church Believe?
Church Website Content: What to Expect
If you want people to come to worship, it helps to tell them what they can expect when they get there.
If you are wired in a certain way, you may have trouble believing that, for some people, visiting a new church can be an anxiety-producing experience. Some people in the world love new experiences, enjoy the unknown, and are thrilled by walking into a room where they know absolutely no one. Then there is the rest of the planet. There are lots of new studies on introverts and extroverts and many different types and degrees of each. But without going into detail, many people find new things a little nerve-racking.
So what are we to do? What if we did all we could to remove the barriers that keep people from visiting our churches?
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How to Contact You
Your website may catch the interest of a first-time visitor. But what if they want to know more? Help them get in touch with you via phone, email and even text message, Twitter or even plain old postal mail.
Pictures
On the web, a picture is worth more than 1000 words. Fortunately, with digital photography, this is cheap and simple. Find someone at your church who is a decent photographer and make sure you have photos. Photos of your building and worship space are fine, but more importantly, show your people and show them being the church.
This is Only the Beginning
There is a lot more that goes into a great church website. Click around the website for more ideas
Want to review your own church’s website? Download my free Church Website Self-Evaluation Tool.