Building a Welcoming Website for Your Church Paul Tukey Communication Assessment & Strategy Committee NJ Association of the UCC Oct 16, 2004 Slides posted at:

Reasons for having a website Who will it serve? Target audiences? Members – it’s a communication medium Local community Prospective new members Visitors from “across cyberspace” Your design & content must serve all these simultaneously, with suitable balance

Advance preparation Think hard about what makes your church unique Why would people come to your church instead of others in town? What message do you want to communicate to prospective new members? Review brochures and mission statements already developed for other purposes. Draw as many as possible into this conversation. Try to articulate your unique qualities.

Advance Preparation (cont’d) What kinds of people visit websites to find churches to attend? What would they be looking for? E.g. Many young families look for churches with vibrant Sunday School programs If your church has those qualities, let them know! The key question: Would a person visiting your website think to themselves “Now that’s a church that I’d feel comfortable in!”

Where to find inspiration (cont’d) Look critically at many church websites Which ones would appeal to people you want to attract? Think about why they do or don’t work well Look at websites of neighboring churches (the “competition”!) Look at your favorite non-church websites, for usable design element Constantly collect links to “cool” websites

The Bigger Picture Your website is only one of many forms of communication Aim for a website design that visually links up with your newsletter, bulletins, print ads, brochures, local TV ads, press releases, etc To achieve “brand recognition” Use denomination design elements, for the same reason – e.g. God is Still Speaking Post newsletters, etc., at your website

Who will design your website? See if any members have the required skills Graphical design + website design + advertising + writing Possibly, hire a web-design consultant This will be expensive! Especially one who has built church websites Look carefully at their portfolio If not, try “copying” the design of some website you like – modifying to taste

Some Good Design Principles Pleasing, inviting color scheme Simple, clear organization of content Easy navigation Consistent look-and-feel across website Uncluttered Balance between text & graphics Minimum dependence on scrolling

Some Pitfalls Stale content People promise to help but don’t show up Have contingency plans for this Loss of interest It’s more fun to create it than to maintain it! Plan for the long haul Students as website builders / maintainers They graduate and leave

Some Pitfalls (cont’d) Poor design Inconsistency, excessive glitz, confusing navigation Being too ambitious Creating more content than anyone wants to maintain Creating a design that makes content posting difficult Stale content

Getting Visitors How will anyone find your website? Make sure it gets indexed by Google, etc Make sure all important keywords are present Don’t let Google searches trap people in subpages Get Google to show your website in the first page of hits, for reasonable search strings Get lots of other websites to link to yours! Publish your web address widely – print ads, signs outside church, business cards, stationary, Yellow Pages, telephone answering message, signatures …

Let’s look at some websites Websites to visit, walk thru, critique: All NJA UCC churches with websites Other church websites in/near Summit (“my competition”) A few others NOTE: These slides will be posted at