Click here to download your free copy of The Church Website Self-Evaluation.
One of my tasks as a church communicator is reviewing and evaluating church websites. Those sites have included many Rio Texas United Methodist churches and a few from other conferences and denominations. These started to take up a bit too much time. So, I developed a tool that anyone could use to evaluate their own church website. Taking the outline that was used for evaluations and adding everything learned from developing websites, evaluating websites, and consulting churches looking to have great websites.
The Church Website Self-Evaluation Tool will help you review your own church website step by step. It will guide you through evaluating your website’s first overall first impression. Then you will be led through a checklist of essential content to be sure your website has everything it needs. Next, you will review some additional content that your site may or may not have and explain why this extra content will make your site even better. After that, you can check out your website’s navigation to make sure it is helping your website visitors find what they are looking for. To make sure people can find your website, you will get instructions on performing your own Search Engine Optimization Check. Finally, you will get a chance to quickly check to see if your church website is optimized for mobile devices.
To assist you in getting some honest feedback on your website from other people, I include a form to use when asking others to review your website. I recommend you give this form to as many people as you can and ask them to review your site. It is best if you ask people who don’t already go to your church.
The Church Website Self-Evaluation is not intended to grade your site. It is designed to help you review your site while considering a number of church website best practices. Every church website is different, just like every church is different. However, there are design and content elements that are common to all great church websites.
Click here to download your free copy of The Church Website Self-Evaluation.
The tool and the results are all yours but, if you like, I always love to see the results. I can learn how to improve the tool and gain more data to share about great church websites. Feel free to send your completed form to will@pastorwill.net. I may not necessarily have time to reply but I may follow up if I find something particularly interesting.