Church Website Builder Must-Have Features!

One factor to consider when selecting a church website builder is the features (or functionality) you want to have in your website.

What features do you need in your church website?

To answer that question, we start by thinking about the purpose of the website. What do you want it to accomplish for your church?

Most churches want their websites to:

• Provide information about the church to potential visitors
• Provide information about events, groups, and ministry opportunities to members

But there may also be other things your church wants to accomplish with its website:

• Provide materials for discipleship
• Provide an easy way for members to send their tithes and offerings to the church
• Help people connect with the church via email or social media
• Help people get in touch with staff, ministry leaders or other members
• Help people sign up for events
• Sell books, Christian gifts, or church merch (branded shirts, coffee mugs, etc)

Once you know what you want your church website to do, you can then consider the features and functionality to accomplish these things.

We looked at the features most requested by our Custom Web Design clients, feedback from our WP-EZ Church Website Builder users, and church website trends to put together this list of:

The Top 5 Must-Have Church Website Builder Features

1) Calendar

If you want church members to get more involved and better connected, they need to know when things are happening.  A calendar is essential.  Additionally, not every new person starts by coming to a Sunday service. Sometimes people start by going to a bible study, Celebrate Recovery, or some other event.

While it’s ideal to have a calendar feature provided by the website builder, another option is to integrate a 3rd party calendar like Google Calendar. If your church is already using another calendar system, it may easier to continuing using that. If you do, make sure that calendar can be embedded into a website, and make sure your website builder can embed the calendar.

2) Sermon Manager

Putting audio, video, and/or notes from your sermons online can accomplish several different goals. It helps prospective visitors get a better idea of what to expect, it helps members stay connected when they miss a Sunday, it can help with discipleship, and it can even help with outreach if you encourage people to share sermons or snippets of sermons online.

The best option is to us a website builder that has a sermon manager built into it. However, if your website builder doesn’t have a sermon manager, it’s also possible to use a blogging feature to blog sermon audio, video, and/or notes each week.

3) Online Giving

Most people pay their bills and manage their money online. By facilitating online giving on your website, you can help your members give more consistently.

Online giving is another feature where it is ideal if its integrated into the website builder. However, if you’re already using an online giving system, it may be easier to continue using that system as long as you can embed a “Donate” button into the header of your website and/or a give page.

4) Email Subscription

The number one form of communication for many churches is email. Yes, most churches still do announcements during their gatherings and most hand out a printed bulletin, but many people don’t hear/read these. Plus most people miss one or two Sundays every month. Email is the most reliable way to communicate with people during the week, so providing a way for people to subscribe to receive your emails is important.

While we used to advocate for choosing a website builder with a built-in newsletter feature. Today, 3rd party email service providers like MailChimp provide do a better job of combating spam and managing subscribers. So, we suggest using an email service and then embedding the “Subscribe” and “Archive” features into your website.

5) Social Media Integration

Another good way to help people stay connected with your church is through social media.  Having icons/links to your social channels on your website helps with this. And having social share buttons on pages and posts helps people share things from your church with their friends.

The bottom line is…

Make sure your church website builder has the functionality to connect and communicate effectively with visitors and members.

Build a website with website builder that supports all these features!

If you are searching for the best church website builder, we’re pleased to inform you our WP-EZ Church Website Builder has all these features and more.  Save yourself time and start building your church website now!

Or if you would rather have OurChurch.Com build your website for you, fill out the consultation request form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop).

Comment and Discuss… What are the most important features you want in your church website?

Continuing reading Church Website Builder Tips and Tools