The best church websites focus on the gospel
When it comes to church websites, the gospel is rarely displayed. Church websites are often a big ad to get people to come to your physical church building. While you want as many people to come to your church as possible, don’t miss out on the bigger picture. Can people come to Jesus by simply being on your church’s website? Is the message of Jesus displayed anywhere on your website? Are there any resources or videos available that people can use to help them in their faith walk? We have to design websites with these questions and more in mind.
We treat church websites like our physical church buildings. Unlike a physical building, church websites never close. The internet is open 24/7 and it can be accessed almost anywhere. As a church, we can reach more people than ever because of our church’s website. There’s never been a time in history where we could accomplish that. Because of this, we must have resources for people that they can use whether it’s 10 AM on a Sunday or 11:38 PM on a Thursday. Your church needs a page that explains the gospel. Sermon pages, event pages, small group pages, etc., are all important pages, but the most important page is the page about the gospel. Vous Church does a great job of this on its website. They have a Spiritual Formation page that breaks down the following: following Jesus, the word of God, what sin is, sanctification, water baptism, communion, prayer, and fasting.
Another thing that is often missing from church websites is a testimony section. The Bible says that we are overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony (Revelation 12:11). How powerful is that? Someone that knows nothing about God, can stumble upon your website and watch a testimony video about someone who overcame drug addiction. Seeing that video can motivate that person to surrender their life to Jesus.
The best church websites are designed well
This one is a no-brainer. If you want good church website design, you have to design a church website well. So many churches have beautiful physical buildings. They have state-of-the-art everything, but when it comes to their website, it looks terrible.
What makes a well-designed church website?
- High-quality pictures: You can design the best website ever, but if the pictures are pixelated, blurry, dark, or random, this will drive people away. There should be at least one person at your church that is good with a camera. If you can’t find anyone, hire a photographer to take pictures on a Sunday during service. Make sure to use pictures that are welcoming to visitors (people smiling, people talking, kids playing, people worshipping, etc.). Stay away from stock photos. People want to see your true authentic church.
- Mobile-friendly: Over half the people that will be on your website will be viewing it from a mobile device. If you have to pinch your fingers to zoom in on words and pictures, your website probably isn’t mobile-friendly. While people still use desktops and laptops, your designs should cater to mobile devices first. A website that isn’t mobile-friendly will cause people not to leave your website as soon as they get on it.
- Clear navigation: Your navigation bar shouldn’t have a million links. Try and aim for no more than 5 links. Make sure to put your most important links up there too.
- Less words, more media: A website with a lot of words will drive everyone away. Most people just glance at the content on your website. Pictures, videos, and animations are what keep people’s attention.
- Consistent style: You must maintain a consistent visual style across your website. Make sure you use similar colors (colors that match your brand), fonts, buttons, spacing, and image styles. Your mobile site should also have everything that your desktop site has.
Look to other websites for inspiration
- Google best church websites: There are plenty of articles on the internet that have compiled a list of the best church websites. Check out our list of best church websites.
- Dribbble: A Pinterest-like tool for designers to use for inspiration
- Landbook: A web design inspiration gallery
- Landingfolio: A website for landing page inspiration
- Made in Webflow: Inspiring websites that were built on Webflow
The best church websites focus on SEO
What is SEO? It stands for Search Engine Optimization. It's the practice of optimizing a website to improve its visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (Google). SEO for churches can be a beast but it will be worth it in the end. Good SEO on a website can cause more people to find your website because it will appear higher in the search results.
Ways to improve the SEO on your website
- Use of proper headings and subheadings: An H1 heading doesn’t mean the biggest heading. An H6 heading doesn’t mean the smallest heading. There should only be one H1 heading on a webpage. After that, the next heading should be H2. Don’t jump to H3. Heading must go in order. H1 headings should have your most relevant keywords in it. If you are on the Sermons page, it’s a good practice to put that word somewhere in the H1 heading. If you are trying to get people to find your website by the phrase, ‘non-denominational church in Dallas’, it’s a good practice to include that phrase in your H1 heading on your homepage.
- Use Alt Text on all your images: Google cares about accessibility. If you don’t describe every image on your website, this can hurt your ranking on Google. It can be very tedious, but Google wants to make sure people with disabilities can navigate your website with ease.
- Blog writing: Most churches don’t use a blog, but it can help your website get a lot of traffic if the proper keyword research is done. I think every sermon should be transcribed into a blog post.
- Optimize images: Images that are too big can slow your website down. A slow website can hurt your SEO. Anything above 200kb is normally deemed a large image file. Use an image compression tool like TinyPNG or FreeConvert to make your images smaller. Make sure you don’t lose quality when you compress it.
- Meta tags: Write effective meta titles and descriptions that include target keywords and encourage clicks.
- Internal linking: Linking to other pages within your website to help search engines understand the structure and importance of different pages.
- URL structure: Create clean, descriptive URLs that include keywords and are easy to read by both users and search engines.
The best church websites cater to visitors
This might sound crazy, but your church’s website isn’t for the members of your church. In fact, the majority of the members at your church rarely go to your website. Everything that they need comes from other avenues at your church. They give on an online giving platform. They go to YouTube to livestream or rewatch sermons. They find out about events through announcements at church. They stay up to date on other happenings through social media. They don’t need to go to your website. So if they don’t need to go to your website, what is the point of having a website? Who is a church website for? It’s for visitors. Most people find your website from doing a Google search or from seeing an ad on social media. Because of this, you need to design and structure your website in a way that caters to people who know nothing about your church.
Most visitors come to your website to find out 4 things:
- When are the services (day of the week & time)
- Where are the services (address)
- About the church (leadership, beliefs, history)
- What about my kids? (kids ministry, youth ministry, safety)
Since this is usually what visitors are looking for, you have to structure your website in a way that this information is easy to find.
Here are some ways to make this information easy to find:
- Your church’s address and service times need to be close to the top of the homepage.
- There should be a call to action button somewhere on the homepage that points visitors to the About page.
- There should be a section dedicated to kids on the homepage.
- Having a FAQ section on the homepage can be beneficial to visitors.
- Put a section on the homepage with a heading that reads, ‘New Here?’ or ‘I’m New’.
Another thing that you want to be mindful of, is how things are worded on your website. Try to avoid using church jargon. You can use Growth Track for example. Most people active in the church know what Growth Track is, but to visitors, that sounds like a foreign language.
Instead of saying, “Join us for Growth Track Sunday after church,” say this, “Want to grow deeper in your walk with God? Attend Growth Track, a 3-part class designed to help you grow your relationship with God, discover your gifts, and ultimately decide to be a part of our ministry.”
By changing the wording and explaining what Growth Track is, visitors get a better understanding of what it is and have a higher chance of attending Growth Track.
The best church websites stay up-to-date
I can’t tell you how many times I have been on a church website and I see an upcoming event that happened months ago. It will be March and the Christmas Eve service is listed. Or it will be Thanksgiving and the Trunk or Treat event will still be up there. Or it will be the Tuesday after Easter and the ‘Join us for Easter’ popup will still be on the website. If your church just moved to a different location, change it on your website. If your church added a new service or changed the service times, update it on your website.
When a church’s website is not up-to-date, it doesn't look professional. It doesn’t look like the church cares. There’s a standard that we abide by in the work world. Churches should have an even greater standard. We should strive to be excellent as much as possible. It’s not about being perfect, it’s about doing things as if Jesus were coming to our church as a visitor.
Ways to keep your website events up-to-date
- Do it manually: This is the route that most churches take. If you go this route, you need to set a reminder in your calendar to remove the event after the event has passed.
- Have your web design agency do it: If your website has been built through a web design agency, let them know that you need the event to be off the website by a certain date.
- Set it up to where it is taken off your website automatically: This is the best route to go. You are relying on people going the other routes. Things will come up or people will simply forget. On the church websites that I make, I add a function that removes the event as soon as the event ends. This makes it easy for me because I know I will forget.
Things that you should check and update every few months
- Pictures: It’s always good to see fresh pictures. Companies like Apple, Target, Nike, etc., always have new pictures. It’s also good to go through your pictures to see if people have left your church. If they no longer go there, it’s good practice to change those pictures. If you have a big church this might be hard to determine.
- Website copy: For SEO purposes, you should constantly be checking to see what pages are performing well. Tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics can help you. You want to write in a way that you can get found easily on Google. Use Google Keyword Planner to see what words people search for the most when it comes to your church. Incorporate those words throughout your site.
- Links: Check to see if all your links still work.
Best platforms for building websites
There are so many platforms to use these days. Do you want a platform that is used by industries all over the world, or do you want to use a church website builder? Do you want an easy drag-and-drop platform, or do you want to be able to write complex code? Do you want to be able to make updates yourself, or do you want to go through a church website design company? Here’s a list of popular website platforms and church website builders that can help you decide.
Popular website builders
Best website builders for churches
- The Church Co
- ShareFaith
- Clover Sites
- Subsplash
- Nucleus
- Tithely
- Ministry Designs
- Ekklesia360
- Maisey
- GabrielSoft
- FaithConnector
Church website builder vs regular website builder
So should you choose from a popular website platform or from a church website builder? It depends.
Popular website platform route
The website platforms will be more robust with features. There will be a larger learning curve though, especially if you are going the Wordpress or Webflow route. If you are building a site yourself, you have a greater chance of running into problems with website platforms. On the other hand, there are plenty of web design companies that specialize in these platforms. If you go through them, you will have a greater possibility of having a better-looking website. Just know that you will most likely have to fork over a lot more money going this route. Some companies might charge as little as $500, while other companies can charge $20k+.
Church website builder route
A church website builder will have features out of the box that caters specifically to churches. Features like: sermon library, podcast, giving, events calendar, livestream, etc, tend to come with church website builders. This can be accomplished by going the website platform route, but it will take more time to make and cost more. Church website builders for the most part are fairly easy to use and navigate. Church website builders are also more cost-efficient. Some of them start as low as $18/month.
My choice
I use Webflow for my church website design company, Two Ten Creatives. I prefer Webflow because you can create anything. While the same can be said for Wordpress, I found Wordpress to be a nightmare. Webflow is no cake walk though. There is a steep learning curve and if you aren’t good with tools like Adobe Creative Cloud, you will probably struggle with Webflow. Some key Webflow features are: It's secure, it’s great for SEO, it has fast and reliable hosting through AWS, and it can even make online stores. One of the downsides of Webflow is that it’s a bit expensive, but I think it’s worth it.
At Two Ten Creatives, we don’t just design church websites, we also manage them. We know that running a church is hard. As a leader you have to prepare for sermons, visit and pray for sick people, counsel married couples, lead small groups, etc. The last thing you need to worry about is keeping your website up to date. At Two Ten Creatives, we can handle it all for you, so you can focus on making disciples and being the light in your community. Check out some of our church website templates and also our custom church websites.
Evan Smith is the owner of Two Ten Creatives, a creative design company specifically for churches. He strategically finds ways to bring more visitors to churches by designing church websites and focusing on local SEO. He is a follower of Jesus, a husband, and a father.
