5 Features Every Church’s Website Must Have
Updated: Dec 29, 2020
The features on your Church's website should be driven by the goals of your Church. So let’s first define our goals; increase membership, retention, volunteerism, and donations. We've developed a strategy to help you curate a functional website to help you meet your goals.
Here are 5 Features You Need on Your Church's Website:
Your Homepage Should Lead People to Make an Action:
Your homepage serves as the front door of your online presence. It’s your introduction to the world! Yes, the homepage of your website should be welcoming, but what we must consider is the attention span of the average person.
The average person takes only 5 seconds to decide if they will stay on your website. You are competing with the internet here so we must use our 5 seconds wisely.
What does that mean? Now that we've defined our church’s goals, we need to make sure the actions you’d like your visitors to take be “above the fold”, hence, at the top of the page. The marketing term for these actions are called, Call To Actions. Your CTA’s can be displayed in the form of buttons, links, or clickable images.
Make Giving Assessable and Simple
A Clear path to give is an absolute must. Your Giving CTA needs to be displayed in your menu bar and needs to link to a page on your website. I would even go as far as to say several Giving CTA’s throughout the website would be highly beneficial. This does not mean to place a button on every page, please use your discretion, but it’s important to remember people often take different paths while browsing your site.
For example, let’s say you had an upcoming event for your congregation to feed the homeless. It would be a good idea to place a donation button on that page.
We also recommend you to have your donation form embedded on your Giving page because we want to limit the number of clicks needed to make an action. That extra step can be the deciding factor on if they complete the online transaction. We want to make actions as simple as possible.
Sermons On-The-Go
Your sermons should be easy to access on your website and be available 24-7.
Be sure to place the Watch Live button “above the fold”. You can also embed your live sermons directly on your homepage. Ideally, it’s a good idea to include both options on your website.
We recommend having a Sermons page on your website as well. You can categorize past sermons based on the subject matter or simply list your best sermons based on what you’ve discovered from viewing your social media insights and Google Analytics account.
Adding a CTA to the Sermons page to generate online membership or donations would be an excellent addition to your Digital Transformation Strategy.
Email is King
Add an email subscription form to your website to build your email contacts.
Emails are still the highest converting online medium. Similar to Church mobile app notifications, your emails allow your subscribers to receive direct messages from your organization.
Emails also give you an opportunity to deliver a more personal message allowing you to build and nurture your connections. This will bring them a step further through your marketing funnel! MailChimp is a popular option and they offer free email subscription accounts.
Include Social Media Links
It is very important to include your social media links and icons on your website to encourage people to follow you because it will help grow your following.
Growing your social platforms is a key way to engage with your current audience and increase your reach.
If you are producing valuable content on social media, it’s very likely that your followers will share, repost, or retweet your posts, which can expose your church to new people.
We Can Help
Get a beautiful website for your Church to ensure you meet the goals of your organization. We’ll create your Church a customized website AND provide you with support and training so you can manage the website yourself.
About Us
TechChurch is a full-service creative and software development agency, servicing forward thinking faith-based organizations globally, who are ready to elevate their brand presence. We work with organizations who are ready to stand out digitally, with a mindset to succeed and excel.
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