1. Churches often no longer take out ads in the newspaper, or the yellow pages, as they can use the web for free or little cost…so why dont they publish the times of their services, AND keep them up to date? It does no good for a visitor to show up on Thursday, only to find the summer schedule does not include Thursday services.
2. In looking at church website source code, SEO is anathema, yet no ecumenical council has ever ruled on it. I think church sites are the only ones who like to rank way below spammy type community info sites. It does not take a SEO consultant to build a SEO friendly site… google is your friend and works for free… plus some of your youth if given the task can often run with things as well.
3. A Church is a place you visit in 3d, but you may choose to use google maps to assist. A 25 mile error in location is not acceptable, nor is a virtual church located in the middle of a ravine. Google maps is not infallible nor inerrant.
4. I understand the need to maintain some level of privacy online… but for sure, not to include at least the city where the church is located is anything but helpful. And yes, the spam community sites already have your street address, as does the phone company listing. Be upfront with your location, make it easy for people to find you.
5. Showing photos of kids on your church website can make it seem more inviting. However, there are seedy types online.. if you wish to use children in your church website photography, find a photoshop guru, to remove identifying features. A bit of blurryness here or there is understandable. Some sicko stealing a childs photo off of a churches website is not.
6. Navigation should be simple… if you use a third party to provide your bulletin listings or sermon podcasts, make sure folks dont get lost in la la land trying to navigate to it, or worse now that they want to check you out further and visit in 3d, they find that your church site has disappeared into the ethernet never to be found again.
7.Flash can be very artistic and cool, but too much can crash older machines… do you really want to shoot potential visitors in the foot, as they dont have enough computing horsepower? Also, avoid platform specific messages. Ie getting a “this website is best viewed on IE6″ or a scrambled text/graphics on a phone browser is not cool.
Some suggestions as to how to improve your websites ministry.
1. If you are into contemporary Christian music, then tell me about it. If you are into big time organ music, tell me about it. If you are into Gregorian chants, I want to know. If your pastor does a 3-5 minute homily, tell me about it. If he does a 200 minute exposition, tell me about it, same with the stuff in the middle. Often times folks look for a particular worship style, either as an attraction, or as a detraction. Save them time, tell them upfront, and if you have both, let folks know that as well.
2. Be proud of your beliefs… do you focus on the kingdom of God on earth more than the eternal one, or is the focus the reverse, or are they balanced? Are you into hellfire and brimstone, or feel good positive thinking? Is the prosperity Gospel preached, or one of humility and sacrifice? Often times a plain language approach is more inviting than a more rigorous, albeit more theologically correct method. By the same token, dont use canned belief text or gadgets, especially if your theology is counter to them. Ie, a Lutheran church should not have a 4 spiritual laws widget on its website.
3. How do you view children? Are they an integral part of worship or are they split off into their own groups? Do you have unique ministries apart from worship, ie childrens, youth, young adult? Tell visitors what you are up to. This is not high tech intellectual property you must keep only within the circle of bonafide members.
