Does Your Church Website Measure Up?
Summary: This isn't a Top 10 list, or about comparing your site to another church website, or even to any kind of website. It's about applying some basic principles to your web presence to best represent your ministry online and connect with people. Point-and-click and drag-and-drop web publishing systems make make things seem easier, but that doesn't always (in fact, almost never) make those websites better. In this article, I survey the sites listed in our site showcase and share the results with you.
I started wondering "What makes a good church website?" and I found millions of search results that only raised more questions and didn't answer the first. Websites bridge the technical and the aesthetic, form and function, art and science. That's what I find so intriguing about them. In much the same way that Ansel Adams used a scientific approach to photography to produce very artistic results, a web steward must master their craft to produce an effective web site. In the end, you must set some specific goals in order to measure your effectiveness.
As I began to analyze the sites listed in our Site Showcase, patterns began to emerge that church web stewards need to address. Most are quite easily done, others will require some thought and discussion with your ministry leaders, and none are beyond the reach of any web steward.
As a final preface to the results of the analysis, no sites are singled out as examples, good or bad, that's not the point. Nor is the point to lift up a web site over the ministry it serves. The survey results will only be shared in aggregate to serve as benchmarks and points of discussion among your web and ministry teams. I'll also be focusing on dimensions of your web sites that are easily measured - they either do,or do not, meet the criteria. It's rather cut-and-dried, even in some areas that may seem to have degrees of complexity. The goal is to get you to look at your site and see it through new eyes and begin to understand what goes on behind the scenes to make your site effective.