Growing Churches
Helping churches reach out to their communities
 
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Websites for Churches


Your church website is one of the most important ways that visitors find you.  I think it needs to accomplish the following goals:

  1. Convey the spirit of your church
  2. Be able to easily be kept up to date
  3. Be search engine friendly
  4. Look nice

Convey the spirit of your church.


People who are looking will come to your church site to determine whether to actually visit your church.  This is becoming more true every year as more and more people turn to the web for information.

You have 3 to 5 seconds to capture their attention so make sure the website is clean and quickly captures their attention.  Consider adding a video to your home page from your pastor or a Animoto slide show that quickly tells people about your church.  The site should have information about all the services that you provide along with a calendar of events.  I recommend video and Animoto slide shows to capture attention.

Be able to easily be updated. 


Most churches face a problem: How to keep their website up to date.  I see so many church websites that still have information on them that is six month old or more.

There are basically two options for creating a site.  The first one is to use a program such as Front Page or Dream Weaver to create the website.  This is a good option for a larger church that has someone on staff that is responsible for the site.  It does not work well for most churches because the person who is updating it is volunteer and to many times the information does not get updated.

The second option is a content driven site that you can keep up to date without having to know a particular program.  This is what I recommend for most churches.

Be search engine friendly. 


If people can't find your site, then you are just wasting your time.  Some of the content management sites walk you through the steps and help make your website as SEO (Search Engine friendly) as possible.

Look nice


Beauty is subjective but your site needs to be clean and look like it was not created 10 years ago.  Most content management sites have templates that you can pick.  They also have the advantage of separating the content from the design so if you want to change the design you can do it without having to spend thousands of dollars upgrading.
 
I have two recommendations depending on your budget and the amount of work your team can do themselves.

First is websites offered by Network Solutions.  I've created 20 sites over the years and I really like the way they have set up their website builder program.  It has the following advantages:

  • Clean templates that you can change in a variety of ways.
  • Don't need to know HTML but you have the ability to use it if you want to.
  • Multiple people can update the site.
  • Can quickly add video and images
  • An 800 number that knowledgeable people answer promptly
  • Reasonable pricing starting around $13 per month.
  • Search engine optimization built in.

It will take a little bit of time to get used to all the features but you should be able to get the site up in less than four hours depending on the number of pages you want to publish.

For more information visit their site by clicking  this link: Network Solutions.  We have also worked out an offer where you can take $10 off any purchase of $100 or more at NetworkSolutions.com by using code GCXXX02979.

Website Recommendations


The second service that I recommend is one developed specifically for churches by North Star Marketing Communications.

North Star Marketing-Communications provides a range of website services for churches, including site planning, graphic design, content management system integration and web hosing.  They design websites that are attractive, intuitive and easy to keep current.

Every church site includes a user-controlled content management system that enables non-technical staff to create new pages, news items, calendar events, photo galleries, links and more.

Their content management system includes:

  • News, calendar, and featured content
  • Site pages
  • Photo galleries
  • Form builder to create forms on the fly
  • Search engine optimization
  • Site statistics
  • Password protected pages
  • Rotating home page images
  • Custom headers
  • On-line audio

The standard plan is $1,750 and will be built upon an existing template and then customized for your church.  Your church would put in the content.

Option #2 is a complete custom site built based on specific design ideas that your church has.  The cost for this option is $3,500.  To find out more about either option complete the form below.
If you would like to discuss options for your website complete the form below.

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