Why Having a Great Web Design For a Church Is So Important
Having professional web design for a church website is very important. If your church does not have an inviting design, that accurately reflects your message, it is likely turning away prospective visitors looking for a new church. Many people now check everything online prior to making a decision, whether it involves buying a product or even choosing their next church. If your website design is completely outdated, or not reflective of who your church is, you are likely losing out on potential traffic. Below are some important points to consider.
1. Changes In Behavior
The last 30 years have changed how we as a society connect with each other through our spirituality. We live in a very fast-paced society, we are always connected to our devices, and many times our decisions are made very quickly. When listing your church online, having a website that is mobile responsive and provides accurate and quick information to reach your target audience can make the difference.
2. Information
Another reason it is so important is that many prospective followers might be seeking out information that you can easily provide on your website. Without a proper design, they might be turned away from your church because they cannot easily find what they seek. Not only is it important to get people to your website, but it is also critical to keep them on it.
3. Traffic
As noted above, if your website is not getting people to it, it is not going to be an effective tool for your church. In order to recruit new members to your church and gain more followers, you will need to get more web visitors. So many times finding the right church is a matter of finding a church that has an aligned belief system, this does not mean that your immediate geographical location is where your new members will come from. For the right church, people are willing to travel a bit, and there are so many options for churches throughout your own city, so the competition is high. Be the church that stands out for the right reasons! There is a great value in providing online many of the things you provide in-house, by having sermons, podcasts, or audio files you could potentially reach people around the world. If your site is designed with the user interface in mind, you could easily expand your reach right from where you are now!
4. Show Off Your Church
A beautiful website design is a very effective tool for showing off your church and getting people interested in going to it. By being able to display beautiful pictures of your church and show what you represent through your members, this could be the home church your visitors are looking for. Do you engage in many different social activities? Are your small groups available many times throughout the week, and open to various people? Do you provide an engaging environment for youth and children? People want to see what you are offering, and we all know a picture is worth a thousand words.
Overall, having a great web design is not only important for businesses, but it is important for churches as well. Not only do you want to give off a good first impression to prospective followers of your church, but you also want to try to achieve a high search engine ranking in order to maximize traffic as well. More and more people are actively using their favorite search engines in order to complete their research and find new things such as churches to visit.
Do I Need A Website For My Church?
When you start a new church, you may be wondering: “Do I need a website?” There are a lot of reasons you would need a website for your church, and you may be wondering whether you need to use a website builder or web hosting service. First of all, it’s important to remember your church’s culture and style. While you can use stock photos, you must use them sparingly. You’ll want your website to convey that culture and style.
Web hosting
Churches need to make sure that they choose the right web hosting provider. A weak server or unstable internet connection can take a church website down. This will affect viewership and can even lead to low rankings in search engines. A good provider should provide an uptime of at least 99.5% and should offer speedy loading times.
Wix offers hundreds of website templates designed especially for churches. Wix also offers plenty of apps for your website, such as the ability to create a mailing list, upload sermon videos, and open a members-only section. Squarespace also has attractive templates that will make your church website stand out.
Social media integration
When it comes to building a church website, social media integration can be a great tool for marketing your church. After all, it’s where people live these days, especially millennials. Adding social media integration on your website will enable you to easily link to your members’ favorite social media apps and websites. This will allow your members to post and share content right from the website.
Most churches have a Facebook page, and it is imperative to ensure yours is there as well. If you don’t have a page, you’re missing out on potential followers. Ensure your page is active and interesting by engaging with other church pages and engaging with the content shared there.
Easy to use
If you’re trying to create a website for your church, there are a number of easy to use options to choose from. Some services offer a free trial so you can see what the software looks like before you sign up. Others charge a fee, so check the features carefully before choosing a platform.
Many churches use templates to build their websites. These are available in a variety of categories, and you can also customize the templates to fit the needs of your congregation. Many of these templates include built-in calendar and email tools. Many also come with a branded email domain.
Cost
If you’re looking to start a new website for your church, you’ll need to consider the cost. Depending on the type of website you’re going to need, it can be expensive, but a quality church website can help you reach new people and increase engagement. If you’re not sure how much to spend, you can find a free trial website builder, like Nucleus, for 30 days. The free trial is a great opportunity to test out a church website builder without having to provide your credit card information.
A church website can run you anywhere from $1000 to $3500, depending on the amount of content and features that you’ll need. You can choose to develop the website yourself if you’re technically inclined, or outsource it to a professional web development company. But remember, you typically get what you pay for.
About Salterra Digital Services
Salterra was started in 2011 by Terry and Elisabeth Samuels; nothing fancy and nothing pretentious. Quality work at a fair price. Starting with a web design focus, they both quickly learned that while having an amazing website to highlight your business is a great start, marketing is intrinsically foundational for our clients. When several clients were not seeing results through the search efforts of other companies, Terry took it to the next level. While digging into SEO and marketing, he found something he was very passionate about. His inner geek pushed him to focus solely on the data and analytics side of the business while Elisabeth built on her creative and visual strength and expanded the design side. In the industry, it is not always common to have both designers and digital marketing so closely connected, but to them it made perfect sense. Salterra’s World Headquarters is in Tempe Arizona
Terry and Elisabeth are the Hosts of Roundtable SEO Mastermind Series and SEO Spring Training Conference.
