Most church growth today comes from the 18-to-18 range – people from 18-years-old to families with 18-year-old children – and they are the most frequent internet users of any demographic group. They’re more apt to use the internet to find your church than to look in the yellow pages or newspaper. And if you don’t have a website, they may not even know you exist!

A church website must communicate with three different groups, each with its own needs and expectations.

• Members - They want details about upcoming events, listen to a missed sermon or find notes from a Bible study. They may want to see photos of a recent event or find specific contact information for the pastoral staff or group leaders. Members-only content, like a church directory or business meeting minutes, should be in a private section only available to them.

• With a high percentage of potential visitors viewing your website before they visit your church, you can't afford a poor quality one

  Christians looking for a new church - Families relocating to a new city will often make their ‘first cut’ church list before coming to town. People interested in changing congregations want to know your church’s beliefs, worship style and activities.
• Non-Christians - According to faithhighway.com, the church website is the #1 outreach tool. It’s perfect for people wanting information anonymously. Online sermons and photos of services and events go a long way toward making them feel secure enough to make a first-time visit. They want to know you understand life problems; you are ‘family’, and there is an unconditional welcome waiting for them.

Design

How you present your ideas is as important as the ideas themselves – an uncluttered design with a layout directing attention to the most important information. Get ideas from other sites targeting the same type of audience, using a pleasing balance of graphics, text and ‘white space’. Things to avoid include distracting blinking text, animated pictures, background music, garish colours, run-on pages, scrolling text and pop-up messages.

Most people prefer to look at pictures of people, not buildings; people actively enjoying church activities, not head-and-shoulder shots of your pastor or church staff. It can be helpful to include a photo of the inside and outside of your church, but always include people in the shots. Include identifying captions with your photos, such as the name of the event. It’s not necessary, and possibly unsafe, to identify the people.

If you have many photos of an event, they should be placed on a special ‘pictures’ page so people can choose whether or not to view them. Be sure to learn about the different image formats, resizing and how to compress images so they don’t increase the load time of your pages. This is especially frustrating for those with dial-up connections. If images are in any way blurry, grainy or distorted, they look unprofessional, reflecting badly on the website as a whole.

Navigation

A basic menu, with obvious page titles, helps visitors navigate to the most useful sections of your site. If it is difficult to find information, the visitor will get frustrated and leave, generally within five seconds.

Avoid vague or churchy phrasing. Calling the Youth Ministry page Quest Outreach may work for your members, but visitors may miss learning about your dynamic youth ministry.

Interactivity

Interactive elements separate the web from other media. It helps your visitors to participate, not just spectate. This can be done through such things as message boards, real-time feedback, blogs, etc.

Functionality

Visitors to your church would be surprised and disappointed if you turned them away for a silly reason. Yet many church websites do exactly that, requiring visitors to have a certain ‘plug-in’ or a high-speed Internet connection.