Creating a Church website requires some technicalities. There are few Essential Pages that your Church website should have. A church website with any of these pages missing has probably not answered all the objective questions about their church.
To begin discussing the essential parts of a church website, I have an article that shows you how to create a website without writing any code. Click here to read more.
Although these web pages are essential, the page naming may vary from one Church website. It also serves to represent the church’s branding and identity. Page elements must include basic information.
THE ESSENTIAL PAGES YOUR CHURCH WEBSITE MUST HAVE
1. The HOMEPAGE
Your Homepage is the Primary and most Important Page that your website must-have. The reason is that it is the first page your website engaged with before they will decide whether to visit other pages. An older study shows that you’re lucky to keep the average reader around for 15 seconds if you don’t grab their attention quickly.
Your homepage should contain all the information that your visitor will like to know about you. And while trying to write much about you’re your church, you should bear in mind that you should not make the webpage very busy. Some of your contains should be while some should contain the buttons or links to help your visitors to read further details if they which.
Some details that Should be on the Homepage.
- The summary about your Church; the Location
- The event of your church.
- The mission and vision of your church.
- Contact Information (organizational email, phone number, contact form)
- Service style
- Services / weekly activities
- Social media Links
- Pictures (the church, members, and other volunteers, organizational and ministers’ images)
- The Church address
One thing you should try to avoid is asking for donations immediately on your homepage. Although the homepage seems like a better place to ask for donations, you should know that you are introducing your church on the homepage.
2. ABOUT US PAGE
The about us page is by hierarchy, the next important page that you must have on your church website. On this page, you should discuss your church’s mission and vision, in addition to a brief introduction on the homepage.
Here you should not forget to mention what makes your church different and why your member loves your church. Therefore, be ready to show your church personalities. Everything about your church should be true without exaggeration.
Start your ABOUT US page in a conversation tune. You can begin by introducing your church, its establishment, mission, and vision. Then you can talk about your church departments/units or aims in your church. That helps your member to have a picture of what your church represents.
Some Sections to help you write a good about us page.
- The church History; the founded year, founding members
- The Vision and mission of your Church
- Introduction to your church staff and leaders ( here you need to write a summary of their biographies with pictures)
- Average Church service attendance
3. THE MINISTRY PAGE
The ministry page contains the list of the entire ministry that you have in your church for example; your church may have Youth Ministry, Women Ministry, and Children Ministry.
The Ministry page should contain so summary of your ministries and their activities. You will not want to keep your visitors to be overwhelmed with you’re the text on your website, therefore you will need to either use the dropdown menu or write a quick overview of each ministry and then link to a dedicated page for each ministry. So that your visitors can decide on which of the ministry they will like to read about.
The importance of this page is to help your visitors know what they will be expecting from your church and also know the ministry that they will like to belong to when they have joined your church.
4. THE EVENT/ CHURCH CALENDAR PAGE
This page can also be called a Church calendar. The purpose of this page is to give your visitors an overview of your events. Your Church member often may forget the upcoming event that your church has particularly when there are a lot of activities in a little space of time.
But with the event page, you get to remind them of the present and as well they can have access to the past event of the church sometimes will also get to be reminded of the upcoming events of your church.
Even though you should post current events on your home pages, such as those happening in the coming week or month, your Events page is the best place to see what’s happening and when.
Ways to organize the event page
- The calendar format
- Organization by type
- Organization by date
THE SERMON PAGE/ BLOG PAGE
The sermon page is the dynamic page of your church in that the content changes and keeps update frequently. It is the page that displays the messages both video, audio, and text of your church. This page helps your visitor to have a feel of what it feels like worshiping in your church. Both your member and visitors can always go back to listen or read your message.
One important of this page is that when you update it frequently, it helps in your SEO. When people are engaging your content, it helps google algorithm to find your website easily.
6. THE DONATION PAGE
It is always essential to have a donation page in a church because it will help keep the organization afloat. With no tithe or other offerings, churches cannot effectively minister to community members.
There is something wonderful about the other pages on your site, they explain what you do, why it’s valuable to society, and how it benefits visitors. Without ever asking for donations, you have built a relationship with visitors.
If you want to encourage online tithing on other pages, then you may want to place a call-to-action button on the sidebar, but do not promote it at all outside of your Donation page. By doing this, your church’s website will not seem more about money than faith.
However, you can consider Soft selling. By having a dedicated page asking your visitors to donate for the evangelism.
7. THE LIVE STREAMING PAGE.
The live streaming page allows you to stream your live services so that your members or visitors can join your service online. Although this page is optional, because you can still stream your services on your social media, it is still an essential page to have on your website. The reason to integrate your live streaming with a website is also to keep people visiting and staying on your website for a longer time. It generates website traffic and increases your ranking.
There are several live streaming services that you can integrate into your website based on your budget and requirement. By giving anyone the ability to tune into your Sunday service or ministry event, you will be able to reach a much broader audience. If you want to keep the video available for later viewing, you can archive it.
The majority of established churches tapped into this technology early on and saw a great increase in membership and Gospel outreach.
