Spring is in the air and everyone is busy cleaning up from the Winter, now would be an amazing time to update your website and even consider performing a major overhaul to its look and feel.
Below, I am going to provide you with 15 different things that you should focus on when it comes to modernizing and updating your ministry website.
So what exactly is responsive design? That means whatever content you have will display properly across mobile devices. In the current world we live in, nearly 90% of all website traffic is coming from a smartphone or tablet.
It is crucial that your ministry or church website’s content is viewable on all screen sizes.
The biggest complaint I hear form members of various churches, is that the ministry website of their church is hard to navigate and find what they are looking for.
This is where it is important for the church’s person in charge of the website to ensure that the navigation presents an easy-to-use structure of the most requested pages or features that your members may access on a regular basis. This would be particularly true, in addition, for someone who may be a first time visitor to your website.
Now here’s one that seems to be a struggle for nearly every church or ministry that I have ever done a website design for and that is providing ongoing and engaging content that will draw the person to come back in search of more.
While we’re talking about 15 ways to update your website, we might as well as focus on searching on your website.
If a person cannot find what they came looking for, do you provide them with a clear path to being able to search for it on your website and be taken to a page of search results that may come close to what they are looking for?
This has to be one of the areas that a lot of churches today are not taking advantage of. Let me assure you, if you make this as an available option, people will begin taking advantage of it and you will begin to see an increase in your overall monthly giving.
Many churches during the pandemic implemented this, but once in-person church was back on, a lot of them seemed to have dropped it from one of the most vitally important tools that may be available to churches today.
Churches have finally begun to realize the important of incorporating social media into their online presence. However, what isn’t present are clear and precise links from your website to your various social media accounts nor from your social media accounts back to your main website.
This is an absolute must.
This lends towards you having social proof and creds. I’ll jump off more into the creds aspect in a later article.
With many churches now taking advantage of live streaming to provide a way for those who are unable to attend in person to still be able to get God’s word, for some it can be challenging on exactly how to find your online sermons.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of church congregations are over 50 years old, and may not necessarily be as technically adapt as you may take for granted.
Make sure and provide a clear path to your live online sermons so that people can get joined up with you whenever you go live.
Here’s one that even I struggle with. Obviously, it is important to keep people up-to-date with what’s going on around your ministry campus. Where I struggle with this is that not enough people come to the website and click on our events page, and we all know what happens to the church bulletins. If you don’t, go around with your janitor or person responsible to cleaning the church during the week and look in all the pews or even under them.
Talk about a waste of trees.
None the less, having a calendar of events available is important to help keep everyone on the right footing in knowing what’s going on around your ministry campus.
I can assure you this is one area that is heavily missed on nearly every ministry website I visit before I begin doing a re-design or even a fresh one.
Before people become interested in interacting with you face-to-face, they’ll oftentimes utilize an online prayer request form to see how you will respond, or if you will respond at all.
Failing to respond to an online prayer request is a sure fire way to keep them from coming back and visiting with you again online, and in worse case scenarios, if you have a Google My Biz profile, they may even find their way to it and leave a negative review, which you certainly don’t want.
if you’re going to offer an online prayer request form, make certain that those emails will be delivered to someone within your ministry who is responsible for responding to them and will do so in a timely manner.
What are some other ways that you can update your website to keep things fresh and going strong.
Let’s continue on below….
You may think of creating your very own social media space upon your ministry or church website where people can share prayer requests with one another, have a friendly conversation or other things.
Many people want to be involve socially, but will shy away from such things as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the likes.
Having your own private community may provide them with the sense of security they need to begin interacting with other people within your church.
However, having your own online membership community, does require that you have a couple of people who are willing to commit to being moderators of all content that is displayed upon it.
Most pastors that I know plan their sermons months in advance. With that being said, why not provide your people with the study or reference material they may need for any upcoming sermon or Bible study that you are beginning to embark upon.
Again, this is about getting people to interact with your ministry website on a more personal leverl.
Now here’s one that is truly missed by nearly every church website I have ever been involved with, excluding my own church, and that is optimizing your website for the search engines.
Again, in today’s world, people are going to look you up first to take a peek and explore your website before they ever step foot inside of your building.
Properly optimizing your website for local search is an absolute must.
You almost must think exactly the way that any advertising agency would when it comes to promoting a local business.
It’s about getting your wares out to those who may not even be aware that you exist.
Again, it’s about people find you.
Have you ever visited a website and clicked on any contact link only for it to tell you that link is broken or just won’t work?
Now there’s a quick way to send someone packing to another website.
Take time to ensure that all of your contact details are current and more importantly ensure that your links actually work.
Testimonials? Why? This is extremely valuable to your church or ministry. Everyone wants to know before they even think of visiting as to whether or not its worth their time based on what others had to say about the interaction with you.
Have you ever heard of Yelp?
Trust me, people talk. You want a variety of testimonials from folks who have either visited with you or are recent members and what it was that attracted them to your church and make the decision to join.
In addition, incorporating pictures with your testimonials will make it for newcomers to possibly identify someone they may have seen on the website and will make them feel more comfortable in knowing that these are actually real people who attend with you on a regular basis.
It’s a real issue for so many churches today. Trying to get people to volunteer to do anything can at times be nothing short of a hair pulling event.
However, for those who may be more apt in wanting to volunteer but just don’t know where help is needed, do you provide them an easy way to find out about these opportunities as well as a way for them to get in direct contact with those who are in charge of a particular area.
You can either provide a form that will direct itself to the right person based on the position someone is inquiring about, or something a a link to create an email with the subject already provided to make this even easier for those seeking out volunteering opportunties.
and tada….. finally, we have reach the last and final idea that I will be presenting to you.
Now I realize that many churches may not necessarily have an extensive library of things to put in an online store, however, even creating something like a swap-shop, or trader joes isn’t entirely a bad idea.
People love supporting other people and lending a helping hand.
What a better way of enabling your congregation to be able to do just that.
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