{"id":81,"date":"2012-03-23T18:46:06","date_gmt":"2012-03-23T18:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/?p=81"},"modified":"2012-04-23T20:11:46","modified_gmt":"2012-04-23T19:11:46","slug":"155-making-the-church-website-a-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/155-making-the-church-website-a-success.html","title":{"rendered":"155-making-the-church-website-a-success"},"content":{"rendered":"
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5 ideas to improve the church website<\/h1>\n

The church website is arguably a necessity for every church.\u00a0 Certainly in the developed world it’s a necessity.\u00a0 The church website is often the place people new to an area will start their search for a church.\u00a0 Making your church website an interesting place to visit should be a top priority.\u00a0 In this blog post I’ll suggest 5 things you can do.\u00a0 Just five that will improve the church website – your church website. A website offers:<\/p>\n

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  • Immediate dissemination of information<\/li>\n
  • Better interaction with church members<\/li>\n
  • An information portal for the church members<\/li>\n
  • Private areas to distribute sensitive information<\/li>\n
  • A well known and trusted way to reach out to potential new members<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

     <\/p>\n

    These features of a church site are the foundations.\u00a0 However like many church buildings these features aren’t looked after.\u00a0 Many of the church websites have pages that have fallen by the wayside.\u00a0 Like a church building that’s not been looked after the pages haven’t been attended to for years!<\/p>\n

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    I want to help avoid church sites falling into disrepute.\u00a0 If you look around this site you’ll find lots of ideas about church websites and what can help make them work.\u00a0 You don’t have to buy anything from us.\u00a0 You can simply read our ideas and implement them yourself.\u00a0 In fact we offer free advice with no catches.\u00a0 You really can phone up and ask us how to build an effective menu page or how to achieve some of the effects shown in this site.<\/p>\n

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    I want to avoid finding church sites that are forlorn.\u00a0 If this makes you think of your site why not try one of the five following ideas to give an instant pick up:<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Change the banner.<\/strong>\u00a0 It’s at the top of the page and generally on every page.\u00a0 It is the branding that your church has chosen.\u00a0 It’s the thing everyone sees so changing it immediately gives the feel of a new website.\u00a0 It’s a fast way to make everyone feel the website is taking on a new lease of life!<\/p>\n

    Add content<\/strong>.\u00a0 Content is king on the web.\u00a0 People come to websites to read and view content.\u00a0 Whilst pictures are nice in general people want text and lots of it.\u00a0\u00a0 They want to read about your church what’s going on and who’s doing it.\u00a0 Why not ask each of the deacons or elders or church officers to write you 300 words – just 300!<\/p>\n

    Write a series<\/strong>.\u00a0 Since content is king why not add a series about a certain part in the bible.\u00a0 Often this simply means transferring the sermon into a series of web pages.\u00a0 I’m sure your church will have done a series on Acts or Romans or similar.<\/p>\n

    Add a audio sermon<\/strong>.\u00a0 Why not record your sermon and make it available as an MP3 file.\u00a0 This isn’t difficult.\u00a0 I know of churches that simply have a tape recorder at the front and they tape what’s being said.\u00a0 No fancy sound system or computers just a good old fashion tape recorder.\u00a0 It’s simple quick and add a new breadth to your site.<\/p>\n

    Add some slides<\/strong>.\u00a0 Often you’ll find that the person leading the service will use a PowerPoint presentation so why not simply add it to the church website?\u00a0 Why not add it beside the audio of the sermon?\u00a0 You’ll suddenly have a media rich site.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    These five ideas don’t require much work and are straightforward to implement.\u00a0 All it needs is a bit of time and effort on the part of someone in the church.\u00a0 Implementing them should take no more than 1 hour a week from someone in the church, not a lot of the potential reward for the church family!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    5 ideas to improve the church website The church website is arguably a necessity for every church.\u00a0 Certainly in the developed world it’s a necessity.\u00a0 The church website is often the place people new to an area will start their search for a church.\u00a0 Making your church website an interesting place to visit should be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}