You Deserve the Best Church Websites Award!

Yes, I believe no matter what the size of your church or its communications budget, you can have an award-winning website, one of the best church websites. (And no, I’m not trying to sell you anything)

However, the way I see it, there are 2 challenges

First, many church websites are pretty bad.

This is unintentional, of course.  Most church web administrators are either volunteers or super-busy staff for whom the church website is their 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) hat. If their website looks poor or or is difficult to use, it’s because they just don’t know and don’t have the time to really learn good design and usability principles.

Second, most Best Church Websites lists are filled with mega church sites.

I understand web designers want to recognize the “best of the best.” Additionally, I think it’s good for church website developers to be inspired by the creativity of others. However, many church web admins see these lists and try to mimic high-end features of websites that cost 10s of thousands of dollars to develop. Or worse, they get frustrated, thinking “We’ll never be able to compete with that!” and give up.

But I believe…

The best church websites aren’t the flashiest but those that help connect people to the info, resources & people they’re looking for.

So, we’ve come up with a

3 Part Plan to Help you Create an Award Winning Website

It’s 3 part plan to help you as a church website admin, ensure your website helps people connect and get the information they’re looking for.  Ready?

1) 10 Point Website Checklist

Do you know the 80-20 rule? Often 80% of the results come from 20% of something. 20% of volunteers do 80% of the work. 20% of clients produce 80% of revenue. Along those lines, we believe 80% of church website problems are caused by 10 basic issues.

So, we took the 10 most common issues we see with websites and created a 10 Point Website Checklist.

If website administrators addressed these 10 issues, it would eliminate 80% of the problems we see with websites.

2) Best Christian/Church Websites Awards

Next, we want to recognize the churches whose websites address all 10 points on the checklist by giving them the Best Church Websites Award. And similarly we want to recognize other Christian websites (schools, ministries, businesses) with the Best Christian Websites Award.

By giving out these awards we hope to show that any Christian organization – no matter what the size or budget – can have one of the best Christian websites.

And we hope that when your church website or Christian website wins the award (that’s right, not if but when…), you will inspire other website administrators to address these 10 common issues so their websites also are among the best.

After you nominate your website, we’ll review it as quickly as possible. Within a day or two you should receive an email either congratulating you on your award or letting you know of any specific issues we noticed. If there are any issues, we hope you’ll fix them and let us know when they’ve been addressed so we get you your award.

This will be an annual award, so web administrators are inspired to keep their website going strong and be recognized each year for doing so.

3) “The Best Church Websites…” blog series

We’ll be updating the articles and discussing each of the 10 points on the 10 point check list to give further clarification and answer any questions you might have, so that you can make your website the best it can be.

1. Have a Memorable Domain Name
2. Are Mobile-Friendly
3. Have Contact Info in the Header or Footer
4. Have a Clean Header
5. Are Not Incomplete
6. Have Images Above the Fold
7. Limit Text Colors and Fonts
8. Are Easy to Read
9. Use Quality Images
10. Use Accessible Media Files

Finally, we crave your your input, ideas and feedback in this month’s Listening Post!

Comment and Discuss

• Do you think the 10 point checklist will help you and other website administrators to address common problems and make their websites better?
• What are your thoughts on the Best Christian/Church Website Awards?