Church Website Design

The reasons to have a nice church website design are probably as varied and numerous as the churches out there planning to do such. Maybe you're simply wanting a place to communicate with your members of the current happenings of the church. Possibly you're hoping to attract new visitors by letting them familiarize themselves with you before actually stepping foot in the door.

Now those are all good, solid reasons for creating your site, but I'd like to throw in one more...this technological generation is expecting it.

From pricing cars to booking vacations, more and more people are doing more and more things online. This carries directly over to finding a new church. Your beautiful church website design says to the discriminating viewer that you have an active, growing church in touch with the current times. And for the non-Christian who just stumbles upon your site, you meet the needed goal of keeping their attention long enough for them to perhaps peak their interest enough to come back and learn more.

Many potential [young] visitors to your church will visit your website before they ever come inside your building. They will research your congregation and decide whether or not to visit based on what they find online. Is your current church website design capable of handling this responsibility? Here are a few more reasons why having a church website is important.

1. If you're not on the Web, you don't exist.

With such a wealth of accessible information on the Web, it's easy for people to limit their research to just an Internet search. Add to that the fact that younger families are much less likely to use yellow pages or newspaper ads, and pretty quickly you understand that not having a website makes you invisible to most people under age 40. When trying to communicate with young families, not having a nice church website design is similar to not having a sign on your building - how will they know you exist?

2. Their first impression of your congregation will be from the Web and your church website design.

Do you have enough information on your website to give visitors a proper first impression? Pictures are truly worth a thousand words on the Web. Do you have pictures of your worship services, classes and activities? Can a visitor to your site get a feel for what type of people worship with you? What they wear? How you worship? What your focus is? It's not enough to simply say, "Come visit us."

3. A poor church website design can actually deter visits from young families.

People who "grew up" on the Web expect your website to be of the same quality as any other they visit. If your site was built by a volunteer years ago, and hasn't been updated since, that will be reflected on you. Younger families expect your website to provide service information, maps, news, calendars, sermons, and music clips. This type of information is readily available from other organizations' websites. Seekers expect the same things from you as well. Not being able to get this information can sometimes be frustrating to families seeking a church family.

This last point also reiterates a point I’ve made in the past: If your current church website design is embarrassing (just ask the young people in your church if you aren’t sure), then take it down. Now. Replace it with one simple page listing your service times and map/directions, until you can create a better site (we would be more than happy to do this for you).

Follow this link to find out how simple it is to get your own custom church website design.