Have you ever wondered what people who aren’t regular attenders at your church think about your website? The easiest thing to do is to find someone who fits in that category to look at your website and tell you, but that’s not always possible. We don’t want to jump on people who visit the church on Sunday morning and bombard them with questions.
Instead, here is a list of questions to ask yourself as you look at your website to try and get an outside point of view.
1) What is the first thing your eye is drawn to? A picture? A logo? Does this represent something that’s important to the congregation? Is there too much going on to focus on one thing? Maybe you need to break the homepage up into multiple pages
2) Is there a clear navigation tool if you have a multi-page site? If there is, is it clear what each page is about? The page labeled “JOY!” may point to your church’s retired person’s group list of activities, but to someone who doesn’t know joy stands for “just older youth” it doesn’t mean much
3) Where is your contact information located? Ideally it should be in more than one place like on the home page and on its own separate page labeled “contact us.” (Also a good idea to check and make sure all the contact info is up to date for the church and staff/volunteers.
4) Is the font consistent throughout the site and large enough to be readable? You don’t need to only use a single font; but make sure all the page titles have the same font, all the links have the same font, etc
5) Where are your worship times listed? Many people browsing online for churches want to know when your church worships. Worship times need to be on the front page and easily seen in the first look at the screen. (No scrolling.) You can have all kinds of information about the style, the music, and the dress on another page
Hopefully these questions will help you start to see where or if your site needs to be updated. Knowing what needs to be done is the first step!
