What you intend to do with your church site?
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One of the first things you should think about is what you intend to do with your church site? Why did you actually build it?
There may be more answers to this question, and each of you may have his own motivation for building a site for his church. What is important is to actually have at least one strong reason for building a site. You should also have a development strategy for it on the long term.
If you don’t have such a strategy, the site will probably remain underdeveloped, unknown or ignored.
What I mean is:
Define your needs for your church site
Let’s see what would be some of the reasons people build websites:
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| It is trendy to have a website (or at least you need to be on the internet these days)
Wrong motivation. Really, a wrong reason to build a website, because if you think like this, you probably don’t have a development plan either, what is close to dissaster on a long term. It may be trendy to have a site these days, but this should not be the reason why you spend your money building it. Remember building a website is not a cheap thing. Art costs and it may cost you thousand dollars to have a decent site for your church.
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I know you can just download a low cost Christian template and save a lot of money, but even so, you should really have an other reason for building a website than the one above.
Other churches in my area have sites
This may be a good reason if you strip it of the first reason in this list. I mean it is good to make you known and take advantage of the media the others are using and look over their fences, but don’t fall into the trap of building a site for your church just because other churches have sites. Instead try to understand why the other churches have websites. What advantages they have, how this helped their development. Research this, ask them, it will help you understand.
I want to communicate with people coming to my church through my site, to give them a common place to visit when they need to, a virtual church
Well, this is a really good reason for building a church website. Indeed, if you do it, you give your people a place where they can come and feel at home, exactly as in your church. Because of this, try to give your church site a common look and feel with your church. Same colors, same look, so they identify your site with your church. Publish prayers, help them request prayers, communicate one with the others, etc.
Install a forum where everybody may join, even if they are not yet in your church and help everybody communicate using it.
I want that people coming to our church to stay informed all the time about new events that we publish on our church site
A really good reason also. Install a mailing list, send mails to people coming to your church to inform them about meetings, events and anything they may interest them regarding your church. Always keep the information about your church accurate and up to date. Add on your site clear dates for meetings and clear contact information.
I want that people coming to our area to find out that we are here and we could be their church of choice
Good reason. But for this you should invest time in promoting your site for queries related to church in your area, meaning that if you are in Manhattan you should promote your church for queries such as “Christian churches in Manhattan”. Invest a lot of work in search engines promotion and put good, valuable text on your church website.
People will be interested in finding as much as possible about your church when they visit your site. Remember, they are there because they are searching for a church, they may be relocated to your area and they are not aware of what possibilities they have to go to a church in their neighborhood.
There may be other reasons also, but remember that always establish your need for a website. Don’t just throw your money building an expensive website without having a strong plan.
Always consider using a church template for building your church site. Templates are way cheaper and the quality is very high due to the fact that they are designed by professionals.
Also consider downloading free Christian templates, and build your church using one of these templates. This way you will not spend a lot of money on designing your website but you will get a quality work that will be comparable to any other church site you know.
And remember the development plan I spoke about in the beginning of this article. I will speak about it in details in my next article.
Until then,
God Bless Us All!
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