Church Marketing

How to Amplify the Impact of Your Church Website in Under 30 Minutes

posted by John Falke | February 10, 2017 | 0 Comments |

How do you optimize your church website for amplified impact?

In this training I’m going show you how to make your church website more effective so you can attract more visitors, lower your bounce rate, and reach your community. This training is packed with visual examples and I’m even going do a website speed test between Hillsong, Life Church, Elevation Church and North Point… you may be surprised who wins!

Church Website Effectiveness Assessment Tool

1. Check the Essentials

Your website is the front door to your church. If you are not getting many visitors, chances are our website is outdated, or not compelling. You need make your website really shine so it showcases your church. Check to make sure you have the basics covered:

Be authentic, be yourself
Use short, easy to understand language
Make address and service times easy to find
Keep your home page load time under 3 seconds, check your church website speed here
Make sure your website is mobile responsive

2. Be Purposeful

Don’t just have a website to have a website. Be purposeful about your website by having goals and measuring them. Here are a few tips:

Have clearly defined smart goals for your website. If you need ideas, read this article about creating church website goals
Use tools like Google Analytics to help you track your goals
Make sure your website is part of a broader communication strategy
Keep your website consistent with your brand
Have a clear call to action
Capture guest’s information in creative ways
If you are not updating your social media accounts regularly then remove them from your website

3. Prioritize Visitors

Let’s be honest, if you’ve been going to a church for a while, you don’t go to the church website very often. Visits are few unless you’ve been out of town and want to watch a sermon, decide to make a donation online or want register for an event. However, most visitors will check out your website before they come visit your church. So prioritize your visitors on your church website. Here are some ways to do that:

Make sure children’s ministry information is easy to find and detailed.
Use language that is visitor friendly and does not include insider jargon
Create a welcome video that gives an overview of your church or a welcome message from your pastor
Use photos of your church people that are life giving (and avoid building images and stock images)
Utilize video to give a taste of your church
Have a visual calendar that only shows events with broad appeal that are open to guests

4. Be Helpful for Members

Of course you don’t want to completely ignore your church members on your website. Here are a few things that they utilize the most:

Online giving option, make it easy to find and as few clicks as possible to donate
Make sure your email database is larger than your weekend attendance
Volunteer and service opportunities so they can get involved
Recent sermon videos available consistently online

5. Ways to Drive Traffic

Be intentional about driving traffic to your website. There are a number of ways you can do this. Here are a few ideas:

Church has over 5 positive reviews on Google and Facebook
Utilize live video on Facebook Live, Periscope or YouTube
Run paid ad campaigns at least quarterly (we recommend Facebook Ads)
Send a regular visual email newsletter to everyone on your list that drives traffic to your website
Do a Google search for “Churches in Your City, State” and make sure you are on the first page.

6. Best Practices

Make sure you are following website best practices and user experience trends that make it easy for people to navigate your website and share it with others.

Thin header
Sticky navigation as you scroll down
Provide tools for sharing content
Make it clear when you’re leaving the site when they are not expecting it (i.e. going to the Youth website)
Serve up content based on the user

Let us know in the comments which tip was your favorite or leave your favorite idea for church websites so that we can all benefit. Do you want to see how effective your church website is? Try our new Church Website Effectiveness Assessment Tool. It free, only takes a few minutes and will give you recommendations specific to your church website.

Church Website Effectiveness Assessment Tool