Effective Church Websites

I really liked the links, Gib. Especially the second one...lots of good info. Thanx.

In Christ,
Trotter

 

A church I really like is www.Mecklenburg.org. It is a non-denom church in Charlotte, but I think the site is very good which has a lot of info on the front page. I hate websites that have a front page that doesn't tell you anything. If you have to make three or four clicks to find anything out, it is useless.

Like one site off the first link (www.ghbc.org) has an opening page and a link that says "Click here to enter our website." So what was the first page? To me, that is an unnecessary move. Just make the second page the first page. People aren't going to spend a lot of time looking. Then when you click that link you get a page that looks designed for people who already agree. They have this three point mission statement that means nothing to people outside the church. Those inside the church already know it.

It just seems strange.

 

I agree with your commit that that people aren't going to stay long. Our church website used to have a first page that required a person to click on an image to enter. It wasn't clear that that was what a person needed to do. I wonder how many people came and left without entering the site. The statistics for our current website show that most users visit the index page and then leave after a few seconds. There are a few people that visit other pages as well, but if we don't get their attention with the first page we probably won't get their attention at all.

You may be interested in my Website Design Ideas site when has some information that is useful to people working on church websites.

 

In my experience, that 3% is inflated.

One thing I like about our church's website was when we thought we wanted to try it out, I went there and found their covenant and a few other documents that showed what they expected of members. However, I don't think I've been there since the first week we went to church. Most of the info is for non-attenders.