5 Tips to Speed up the Content Phase of Church Website Design

Continuing our series of articles on our Christian ministry, business and church website design process…

Now that you’ve got all of your plugins installed, it’s time for…

Step 6) Create and Enter Content

Unfortunately, this is the phase of website development where things tend to get bogged down.  Some churches take months or even years to put text, images and other content into their website.

5 Tips to Speed up the Content Phase of Church Website Design:

1) Use your content map.

We discussed what a content map is, why it’s so important, and how to create one in step 3.  A content map is like a blueprint for your website. If you don’t have one, you’re going to get lost in the weeds during the content phases. So, if you skipped this step earlier, do it now!

Going back to the blueprint analogy, if you created a blueprint for a building, you wouldn’t just throw it in a drawer and start building from memory. You also wouldn’t use it for “inspiration” and then build “freestyle.” You would build exactly what is drawn up in the blueprint.

Therefore, once you have your content map, refer to it frequently throughout the content creation phase of the project.

2) List content to reuse and to create.

If you already have a website for your church and you’re going through the process of creating a new one, you probably have content on your old website you can reuse.  Go through your content map.  For each piece of content, decide whether you can reuse something from the old site or want to create something new.

Create a “Reuse” list and a “Create” list.  Don’t forget about photos and video.  You’ll probably want to take some new photos and shoot some new video for your new site, but not everything has to be new.

3) Consider a website transfer service. 

 If you’re planning to reuse a lot of your existing content, consider hiring someone or purchasing a website transfer service like OurChurch.Com offers.

4) Delegate.

Just because you’re overseeing the church website development doesn’t mean you have to create all the content.

Try to add a photographer and/or a videographer to your team. Perhaps there is someone else who can write the copy for your pages.  Teams are always better than flying solo.  Just make sure expectations are clear, deadlines are given, and people have proper training and oversight.

5) Interview ministry leaders. 

Sometimes people take the delegation thing a little too far and ask every ministry team leader to write all the copy for their ministry’s pages.  I recommend against this because often ministry team leaders will miss deadlines, and you’ll end up with totally different writing styles on each page.

A better option is to have one person write all the content but to interview each ministry team leader for the information they need.  By interview, I mean talk with them in person or by phone and write down all the info needed.

Bonus Tip: Don’t wait until after your theme is selected and plugins are all researched and installed to start creating your content. You can start on this immediately after your content map is created.

While it is important to get your content done in a timely manner, keep in mind your content has a big impact on whether the people who find your church website decide to visit your church in person, so don’t rush it: Proof read. Edit. Make it good.

SEO Impact of Website Content

And speaking of finding your church website, the content of your website has a big impact on search rankings and church SEO. Therefore, try to include keywords – your city, nearby cities, denomination, ministries people might search for – in your content wherever possible.

There’s no better way to improve search rankings than creating great content, and there are no shortcuts to great content. -Paul Steinbrueck

Actually… there is a shortcut to great content…

In Tip 4 above, we talked about delegating content creation to others within your organization.  But, the ultimate shortcut is to outsource your content creation to someone outside your organization.

OurChurch.Com offers a Content Writing Service as an option with a custom-designed website.  We also have an innovative way to write personal, authorative blog articles on your behalf with our SEO services.

If you’d like to work with our experience team of experts on your church web design or church SEO, complete the consultation request form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop).

Comment and Discuss:

• What questions do you have about creating content for your website?
• What tips and advice would you give to others?

Continue reading… The inside scoop on our 10 step church website design process