Sep 22 2008
Does Your Church Website Suck?
I’m doing research on church websites for an upcoming article I’m writing for Church & Worship Technology Magazine (I write on technology for this mag monthly), and I realized that there are still a whole bunch of churches out there with no website, or really crappy websites. Frankly, there’s no excuse. There are so many church web design firms out there that offer really great tools for very small monthly fees, even free if you have a small church and just want to get started at no cost.
I spoke today with ElementFusion, a web design firm out of Oklahoma. They are growing like wildfire, and are currently working with Church Community Builder to offer more options to churches. Their product, SkyCMS is there main offering for churches, and for just under $500, churches can customize their design and get all ready to post content. Basically, they can have a brand-spanking new, web 2.0 site in a matter of hours.
I was looking for a new content management system for my public relations consulting business, and built a new site with ElementFusion in a couple of hours today. I’m still working through a few edits, and need to have a little bit of custom design work done to make it perfect, so I’m not posting the link yet.
What about you? Does your church website suck? Are you just ignoring this fact and hoping that no one will notice? Well, they will! If the whole purpose of having a web presence is the draw people in – new people, members, attenders, youth – how will you ever reach the younger generation if you don’t keep your site fresh and looking good. Most of all, is it purposeful? Share with me, please!
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Hi, I’m 
Compared to where we were just a few years ago, we have a come a long way. We still have a long ways to go.
Part of the problem is that we have outsourced our design and partial maintenance to a web company that had been bought out by another company that had a different philosophy and way of doing things than the previous.
A lot of the original people we had worked with from the original company have moved on. We actually hired one of them! We now have an inconsistent site with various design concepts from all of the different teams and designers that have been through it.
I think we are finally getting on top of it now with someone who is designated to the site from our church which makes a world of difference. Before, it was two pastors who were extremely busy within their own ministry duties and me working on the streaming page. A lot of the decisions that were made were done just to keep things moving and establish a new web site, not necessarily because it was the right decision.
I will say that my church’s website unequivocally sucks. It’s made in DotNetNuke, a open source CMS. Between the CMS’ performance and the huge graphics and Flash animations used to convey basic information (like service times), it takes too long for the site to load. Worse, the modules on the page expand and contract as content loads, leading to a very unpleasant first impression.
The site has some useful aspects – sermon notes and audio files, event calendars, basic info about the church, etc – but the clunky and overbearing design kills its usefulness. For instance, to simply email a staff member, you have to wait for a Flash module to load and scatter several photos on the screen. Click on the photo of the staff person you want to email, and another picture opens. Finally, you can get the email address.
You said there is no excuse, and I agree. But the amazing truth behind my church’s website is that we are not a small church or one that appeals primarily to an older audience. We have 700 people in attendance every week; we have a $1 million plus annual budget. Our pastor is under 40, and we have a large number of young adults who faithfully attend.
I’m not employed by my church and haven’t ever helped with their website. However, I work full-time in marketing and media at the headquarters of a denomination. It bothers me that my otherwise fantastic church has such a lousy website, but how can I convince them to go in another direction?
Lauren, it is amazing to me that in 2008 there are still a lot of church websites that “inhale sharply!” Remember the early days at Starwire/C.com? We have definitely come a long way since then but there remains a long way to go.
Church Community Builder (CCB) is really impressed with the solution that Element Fusion offers to the local church. It is a very professional looking offering that also happens to be quite easy to use. It also integrates well with the public website tools that we offer as a part of our web-based Church Management solution. Check out the website below for an example.
http://www.capecodchurch.com
See how the CCB Calendar and Group Search feature seamlessly integrates with the Element Fusion design? That is what we would love to see from all of the churches that utilize our solutions!
Another great example of this integration can be seen at http://www.lifelinkchurch.com. This church is using all 5 of our integration points (Calendar, Group Search, Community Login, Forms and Online Giving). This is not an Element Fusion site but it is a well designed website that truly helps the Lifelink community connect to the ministry more effectively.
At the end of the day, churches must recognize that, with today’s generation of churchgoer, the public website is often the first impression. People that use the web to manage much of their daily lives expect to do the same with their church. If churches can help people easily connect and communicate with those that they are in relationship with, not only does the church website become more relevant, the church itself can become a “stickier” place for its’ members and attenders.
- S. Caton
Hi, good post. I have been wondering about this issue,so thanks for posting.
I have to say that our church website sucks. Though there is quality information, it is not web 2.0 ready. It hardly gets updated and it looks bad as a first impression. There is other problems too! If you try to log into the members area using Firefox, it tries to download the login file!
I can’t really complain too much because we actually have a site up and running, but when one of the elders of the church, which is at least 40 years old and has a bunch of children and does not have time to update the website is building the website… there is much to be desired.
I am very good at building websites, making them usable and web 2.0 ready. I have built many websites that are easy to navigate, and they are made for multiple browsers instead of just IE7! I have offered my help, even offered to build the website from scratch! I am a member of the church, I am not seeking a job of it, I just want our website to make a lasting impression on our guests!
The point being, our website sucks… and there seems that there is nothing I can do about it because they won’t use me for the Lord’s work!
I have developed some pretty good websites for some churches in the Vancouver area. Well, the graphic designs were done by Hale Marketing in Vancouver, but I did all the coding in XTHML and then converted that to be used in a CMS.
The CMS I like to use is called Website Baker. I chose that above other CMS applications because it doesn’t include a lot of excessive plugins, and it’s simple for an administrator to figure out how to use. In addition to that, I’ve figured out how to program my own modules, such as a complex sermon file upload and search system.
I don’t know if the links will work in here, so I’ll just try to type them in in simple form, and then the whole link in parentheses. The sites are stjohnsvancouver.org (http://www.stjohnsvancouver.org/), artizo.org (http://www.artizo.org/), and stjohnsrichmond.ca (http://www.stjohnsrichmond.ca/).