There is no denying that the internet has become an everyday part of today’s society. Some refer to it as a basic necessity or utility, like electricity, running water, transportation, or clothing. Recent statistics indicate that over 54% of the world’s population now has internet access. That is equal to around 4.1 billion people! In North America, that percentage jumps to 95% of the population that has internet access. With the internet having such a dominating presence, there is no denying that having an online presence for your church is also becoming a necessity.

The internet is allowing the local church to expand beyond the physical walls of a building to a global audience of billions of people. By creating a strong digital presence, not only will your church have the ability to create and grow an online community, it will also help your church grow its local congregation.

Trends are indicating that over 70% of people will search the internet for an organization before visiting. This gives churches an opportunity to engage potential new visitors before they even step foot on the campus; letting visitors know what to expect, the church’s core values, service times, available resources, and introducing the lead pastor. That is huge! The Church is literally able to engage people in their homes, at their workplaces, in their cars; pretty much everywhere.

Where to Start

The foundation of your online campus needs to be a good website. Don’t panic, you do not have to be a web developer to create an awesome website. New applications and software have lowered the technological threshold for website development. At James River Church, we have built our website on the WordPress platform.

In a recent study by W3Techs, WordPress now powers 30% of the entire internet. The popularity of WordPress has forced other software development companies to create plugins and seamless integrations to ensure they can engage this large portion of the internet. The popularity of WordPress has also created a vast support community of users and developers posting tips, tricks, walkthroughs, and how-to videos.  WordPress even offers an integrated hosting solution so they can also take care of where your website will live as well.

While WordPress is a solid platform to build a website on, there are also other options out there, such as Wix and Drupal. While we chose WordPress, I suggest you do a little research on the available website platforms to find the one that suits your needs, capabilities, and goals the best.

No matter which platform you choose to build your church website on, there are some key characteristics that make up any good church website. Here are 5 tips for creating a successful church website:

5 Tips for Creating a Successful Church Website

1. Keep It Simple

Information is everywhere, especially on the Internet. With so much content out there, everyone is competing for the attention of internet users. This is causing the average person to have a shorter and shorter attention span. Therefore, it is important to keep your website simple, especially your homepage. Pick the most important aspects about your church that you would want people to know in about 10 seconds (or less). You may find this hard, but it will be a good exercise, as it will help highlight the core values and purpose of your church.

2. Clear Navigation

Piggybacking off of the idea to keep your homepage simple is to make sure your website navigation is clear and logical. You don’t want a navigation bar that has dozens of items that will make it feel cluttered and overwhelming. A good website will include the top 4 – 6 aspects or elements of an organization’s brand in its navigation bar to help people understand what is important on the website, and to the organization.

If one of your church’s core values is kids, then have a “Kids” link on the main navigation. If it is supporting world missions, then have a “Missions” link up there. Again, it may seem difficult to pare down to only a few words that define your church’s core values, but it’s a good exercise to understand what your church is about.

One other major aspect of your website navigation is to make sure you include a search tool. This will help ensure people will be able to find any content on your website, even if they don’t know where it is or how to navigate there.

3. Engagement

As mentioned earlier, a majority of people search the internet for a particular place or organization before actually going. This means that your website could very well be the first point of engagement for potential new visitors. While digital engagement cannot replace a good ole handshake, the goal is to try. Be inviting. Make sure you build in ways for people to easily interact with the church throughout the website by including a way to ask questions, contact you, or even just say hi. Some examples of what this looks like on your website would be:

• Having your contact information clearly visible and easily accessible
• A way for people to easily send in a message to the church or lead pastor
• A place for website visitors to enter their email address to find out more information
• A way for people to schedule a visit, let you know that they are coming, or what to expect when they get there

4. High-Quality Visuals

Everyone has heard the old adage, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This holds true for websites as well, and a video is worth ten thousand! One big question many new visitors to your website are wanting to know the answer to is what to expect when/if they come visit your church. The best way to tell them is to show them.

Make sure you have high-quality pictures and video content that accurately depict the culture and experience of your church. Include pictures of the lead pastor(s), videos of your worship experience, pictures of your building, a video of one of your church events, things that make your church, your church. If you are struggling to determine what to highlight, refer back to what you chose as your navigation bar elements. Those core values you chose should correlate with the type of pictures and videos that are on your website.

5. Responsive

Responsive web design is the term created to describe how mobile-friendly a website is, or is not. A very responsive site will perform seamlessly, and as effectively, on a mobile phone or tablet as it would on a computer. In Hootsuite’s 2018 Global Digital Report, they found that 52% of website traffic is from smartphones. That is more than all other devices combined! There is no indication that the growth of smartphone usage on the internet is going to stop anytime soon, so that makes it critical to ensure that your website performs as good, or better, on a mobile device.

Many designers are now approaching web design with a “mobile first” mindset. Considering how a website will look on a smartphone is becoming more important than how it will look on a computer. The good news is that all of the major website platforms have responsive design built into their software inherently, to some degree. Some do it better than others, but a big factor in building your website will be how you choose to layout and design it.

When laying out your website design, consider how elements will look on mobile screen sizes. If you have a large, extravagant photo collage that looks great on a large computer screen, will it still look great on a small mobile screen? Are people going to easily be able to fill out your web forms on a mobile phone? Also, be sure to do research on various themes and plugins that will be used on your website to ensure they work seamlessly on mobile devices as well.

Next Steps

Once you have a solid church website as the foundation for your online church community, you can then utilize other digital marketing tools to supplement and support your church’s website.  Social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter can be used to direct traffic to content on your website. Your church can engage users by emailing out church announcements for events and direct them to your website to RSVP or find more information. You can also upload resources such as sermons, Bible studies, helpful articles, and sermon discussions. These are just a few examples of content you can include on your website that can help people and can be accessible from anywhere.

The internet is an extremely powerful tool that can be utilized by churches to spread the Gospel all over the world. It is becoming increasingly important, and even necessary, for churches to have an online presence in order to be effective and grow. With today’s advances in technology, pretty much anyone can build a website if they have the desire and willingness to learn. We have seen James River Church’s online campus and presence play a part in our growth and advancement of God’s kingdom, and our hope is that it does the same for your church.