If a website for Church is poorly organized, dull, unattractive, incomplete or outdated, it can create wrong impression about Church. The website will also unable to visualize and communicate the most important and basic information. Digital presence is an essential thing to reaching a modern-day audience. But it should be with effective, easy to navigate and user-friendly websites with correct content. This slide show contains characteristics of great church websites or say features every church website must have.

1. Essential features that every church website must have
By: Ashish Ajani

2. ❖ This slideshow is about essential features every church website must have.
❖ If your church website is unattractive, outdated, poorly organized, dull or
incomplete, then it creates an impression that your church also is dull, out of
touch, dowdy, disorganized, or unable to visualize and communicate the most
important and basic information.
❖ Digital presence is an essential to reaching a modern-day audience. But it
should be with effective, easy to navigate and user-friendly websites with
correct content.
❖ Following characteristics of great church websites or say every church website
must have can be applied to fix what is broken on existing website or can be
followed in building new website.

3. Essential features that every church website must have
1. Mobile responsiveness
2. Secure connection
3. Easy and simple navigation
4. Present worship information
5. Is a ministry in itself
6. Choose easy to remember domain name
7. Look for outreach
8. Fresh content
9. Sunday services
10. Christian faith explanation
11. How to find church
12. Church website must have contact details
13. Leader profiles or say staff information
14. Welcomes visitors
15. Integrated with social networks
16. Sermons
17. Events calendar
18. Easy to find links for online
giving or donation
19. Church calendar

4. 1. Mobile responsiveness
- This is not a suggestion but it’s a
must have feature of any website
to reach targeted audience. Nowadays
higher percentage of website traffic
comes from smartphones.And your
website needs to be user-friendly when
viewed on a mobile device
- If visitors find it difficult navigating your site or reading its content from their
smartphones, they will simply move on and forget about your site.

5. 2. Secure connection
- If your website is not running with the
secure connection, visitors to your
website may now see warning,
such as “Your connection to this site
is not private. Information you submit
could be viewed by others (like passwords, messages, credit cards, etc.)”.
- Alongside with warning, there will be a “Not secure” label next to website URL. Instead
of compromising visitor’s security, a website should have installed security certificate.
Every church website must have SSL if they’re taking donation online for their church.

6. 3. Easy and simple navigation
- To create great user experience, church
website must have easy and simple navigation.
Website should be cluttered with difficult
language or too many menu options. Fewer
options with clear navigation will make easier
for visitors to find information they are looking
for.
- For easier navigation, place menu consistently across all pages, label content properly
and clearly, show and highlight top priority and most useful content up front. The most
important information about your church must be available in plain view and should be
present in an attractive manner to keep website visitor engaged for sometime.

7. 4. Present worship information
- Every church website must have
section with worship location and
time. It should be in a place which
is easy to find and highlighted.
Make sure that website visitors
can find these crucial information
on your website easily before they
move on.

8. 5. Is a ministry in itself
- Nowadays peoples are looking
for support and spiritual
education online. Many peoples
said that the website helped in
their ability to share their faith
with others. Every church
website must have learning tools
that invite interaction with church
members, ideas, and church.

9. 6. Choose easy to remember domain name
- The domain name is most basic
element of an informative and
successful website. Domain name
should be easy to remember and
related to church. After all easy to
remember domains get more traffic
than complex domains.

10. 7. Look for outreach
- Current members and peoples
related to church will obviously
visits the website for information
and this is the most important thing
most church websites forgot. So the
aim of church website should be to
outreach those who never heard of
the church or visited the church in
person.

11. 8. Fresh content
- If you want to keep peoples interested
then you need to keep your content
fresh and updated. Always share
something new with peoples to show
and present activeness.
- Update your site with sermons,
community updates, news, blog posts, and quality content often as possible. These are
characteristics of a great church websites.

12. 9. Sunday services
- Provide basic information about
Sunday services. Probably most
of visitors will like to know about
Sunday services and special
seasonal services happening on
Sundays.

13. 10. Christian faith explanation
- It can be really useful if your
website shows that what
church believes. If you are not
looking to write something
unique or own explanation
then you can put the link to an external page written by someone else like “Christianity
Explained Here”.
- You can also provide the testimonies of church members explaining the difference
Christianity makes.

14. 11. How to find church
- Every church website must have easy
to find location information on their site.
Show website visitors where your church
is so they can visit the church easily.
- For local community, it’s easy to find the church based on address and other landmarks.
But you should also include information on travel via train or bus with links to local
timetables of availability of those.
- To make it easier, show your address on every page in footer or header, create a page
with address – direction – map, show address on homepage, etc…

15. 12. Church website must have contact details
- Every church website must make it
easy for their visitors to contact them.
Most common places of contact
information are footer, header and
contact page. Contact details should
include contact form, email address,
phone number, full address of church,
map (or an image of map) with routes.
Additionally, there can be social media links and contact information of staff.

16. 13. Leader profiles or say staff information
- Leader profiles give newcomers a
feel for who’s already there and for
regular attendees it can be a source
for contact information. In leader
profiles, you can list ministerial staff,
their positions, short biography and
photo, contact and social media
information, etc…

17. 14. Leader profiles or say staff information
- Generally, church websites have two
type of audiences. Existing congregants
and peoples looking for a new church
home. Commonly most people looking
for new church home are trying to find
on the web that where to go next
Sunday morning.
- Every church website must have information on common questions of visitors, like do I
need to dress up? where the church is located? is there Sunday school? Where is
parking? etc… Welcoming visitors will force them to engage with the site for some more
time.

18. 15. Integrated with social networks
- Social media sites is a new way of
communication, being in touch with
friend – family and most importantly
to share information amongst their
group.
- Information shared about church on
social media will get new visitors for the site. For example if there an account of church on
Facebook, people can easily share link to their profile and share their views on it.

19. 16. Sermons
- Every church website must put
sermons online no matter it’s in
audio, video or plain text format.
- Few reasons why this is important
is that church can reach peoples
anywhere around the globe, regular
attenders of church can listen to the
sermons they missed and most importantly potential visitors can listen sermon before
they decide to attend it first time.

20. 17. Events calendar
- Providing the right event calendar
cannot only help you grow, it can
streamline your internal operations
as well. When it comes to planning
an event for church, several things
to consider including coordinating all
of the details to making it a success
and raise awareness about it. Instead
of listing all information in plain format
there should be an event calendar.

21. 18. Easy to find links for online giving or donation
- Every church website must have a
clear, visible and easy to find link for
donation. After all this is the main
feature of non-profit websites.
- There should be an attractive and large call to action on all pages of the site from where
visitors can quickly initiate the donation process.
- WP Church Donation Plugin can help you setting up donation page. Alongside with it
there should be a good donation form on separate page and one setup of sending thank
you email notification to donors.

22. 19. Church calendar
- With an online calendar, you can
list as much as information you
would like. Therefore the most
important information is weekly
calendaring meetings. It can be also
useful to show information including
timetables, Sunday services, special
seasonal services, etc…

23. ❖ Church websites need to be maintained by someone that is experienced.
Person who handling church website must have experience in making changes
in graphics, edit content of website, manage things from backend, integration of
social media platforms, basics of search engine optimization, etc…
❖ Even if the website is up and running well there should be someone who
makes changes in content of website and tweak the site regularly to compete
with other sites and maintaining the presence online.
❖ These are my personal opinions based on reviews/requirements I often
received for church sites I worked with. And my personal views to make good
and usable church websites.

24. Thank You
You are most welcome to suggest any additions to this list of Essential features that
every church website must have. You can drop an email to me with your
suggestions.