Church Website Design – Step 1: Start with Why

Welcome  Website Design Month!

Would you like to know how we’ve been designing beautiful, effective Christian business, ministry and church websites for 25 years?

We are going to share our entire custom website design process with you.

Why?

Because our mission is to help Christian organizations live out their mission online.

Whether you have us custom design your church website for you, you build your website yourself with our WP-EZ Website Builder, or build your church website somewhere else, by sharing the insight we’ve gained in more than 25 years of church website design experience, we believe we can help your organization have a better website.

Christian business, ministry, school AND church websites

Before we get started, I want to make it clear that even though our name is ourCHURCH.com, and this series will at times focus on CHURCH websites, we build just about as many Christian business, ministry, and school websites as we do church sites.

We use this same process with the same steps for all types of Christian organizations.

If you lead a Christian business, ministry or school and want a better website for your organization, you’ll find this series just as helpful as someone who leads a church.  Sound good?

Alright, let’s go!

Church Website Design Step 1: Start with Why

We start the first phone call with every organization we work with by getting to know the church and helping them to define the goals for their website.

It’s important to define your goals first, because your website’s appearance, organization, content and functionality should all be designed intentionally to help your church website achieve its goals.

What’s the purpose of your church website?

• To reach out to people in your community looking for a church?
• To help the people who are a part of your church to get connected and serve?
• To help people grow their relationship with God?
• To share the stories of what God is doing in your congregation with your local community?

I pose these as questions because ultimately, your church leaders need to decide and define your website goals. These are questions and possible goals to consider as you do this.

Two additional tips for setting church website goals:

1) Prioritize your goals. It’s ok to have multiple goals for your website – most do. However, it’s important to prioritize your goals, because these priorities will help guide the organization of your pages and your content.

2) Write down your website goals. You will refer back to them throughout the website design process and beyond.

The first step of web design is to define your goals. Every decision after that takes you one step closer to those goals. –Paul Steinbrueck

As we progress through the month, we’ll add links to the other steps of our church website design process below:

• • Step 2: This Should Direct Your Church Website Design
  • Step 3: Don’t Build (or Optimize) a Church Website Without This Blueprint
  • Step 4: How to choose the best church web design
  • Step 5: How to Get Your Church Website to Do More for You
  • Step 6: 5 Tips to Speed up the Content Phase of Church Website Design
  • Step 7: 8 critical steps to ensure you have great photos on your church website
  • Step 8: 5 Church SEO Tips for Optimizing Your Church Web Pages
  • Step 9: Everything you need to know to ensure a successful launch of your new church website
  • Step 10: How to Prevent Your Church Website from Failing After Launch

We would also love to hear your ideas and perspective on church website design in this month’s Listening Post survey.

If you’re interested in talking with one of our church website design experts about designing your church website, complete the consultation request form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop).

Comment and Discuss:

• What goals do you have for your website?