Website Front Pages

[StubbyD]

So .... all things being equal....

What do you wish should / could / must be on your websites front page?

Also, what message, if any should be there?

[flutem3]

So .... all things being equal....

What do you wish should / could / must be on your websites front page?

Also, what message, if any should be there?

Hi, Stu,

This is only one woman's opinion of what needs to be on the Home Page. You need the name of the church, the address, the phone number, email address or contact us page, country. Since I am a Methodist and we have such a nifty logo, I would say use a logo if it is decent looking. If it is ugly, don't use it? :D

Now, this is just my specific view on this subject, and many people disagree with me. Our church website is about our church, for our church, and to teach others about our church. It is NOT set up as an evangelical tool except in the sense that it introduces people to who we are. I have become convinced that an outreach website needs to be separate from a church website. At least I do not know how to combine the two well at all.

Therefore, our home page is set up to stress what we do...worship. Therefore, it tells the times of services, sermon title, scriptures, and scripture verses which go with the sermon...typed out. The entire scripture for the Sunday is found on a different page.

Then the page needs to have an easy to use navigation menu. It needs to take a person where it says. For example, the "Church History" link should take me to Church History...not to something else and then on to church history. Most things on our website are found with one click.

There should not be a hit counter or web statistics that others can see. There needs to be, only on the home page, an "updated on" line so that people will know that someone is paying attention at least to the home page. If any kinds of attributions or permissions are needed, they should be there as well as copyright information.

And if the website is viewed at one resolution which is much better than others, that can be mentioned as well as any browser which works better than others.

If music is placed on a page, it needs to be in the off position so it doesn't scare people to death or get them run out of a library. If pictures are used, people are preferable to pictures of churches since the church is the people...not the building although the building is certainly nice to have. But it is not "the church".

That's about it. I need to go to bed!!!

Carol

[StubbyD]

Hi, Stu,
Now, this is just my specific view on this subject, and many people disagree with me. Carol

Carol - thanks for the response and it is precisely what I want - your view, your opinion, etc.

I want to try and distil any knowledge I can get from as many others before we finally commit to an improved site.

Perhaps I should of expanded my question though. Most of the things you mentioned are givens - the menu, the logo, address, etc, what I was really interested in was the opinion of what should be in teh central box (so to speak). Put it this way - what should be in the non-standard items on the page?

Should one go with a fixed "welcome to ..." message? Or a rolling flash presentation? Or fill it with adverts? Or fill it with ...? You tell me.

As to music - for me that is an absolute turn off to any site. For one I never normally havemy speakers turned up so it is wasted. For two it can seemingly hang the website whilst the spam (for that is what I consider it) is downloaded in the background. For three it is almost always polyphonic representation of some worship song I've never heard of, or if I have it is a very bad rendition of it. I don't even want the option of being able to turn it on. And please note, all of this does not include the totally seperate function of listening to music you are about to buy or similar.

There - got that of my chest, now back to the front page theme ...... :D

[Faithhb_lutheran]

Content needs to mirror your congregation in my opinion. So the question can only be answered by you. If your congregation doesn't even use powerpoint in worship then a flash slideshow wouldn't be the best, but if you do drama and theater ministry projected up on big screens then it would fit right in. You have to look at what the prominent features of you church are and display them.

[StubbyD]

Content needs to mirror your congregation in my opinion. So the question can only be answered by you. If your congregation doesn't even use powerpoint in worship then a flash slideshow wouldn't be the best, but if you do drama and theater ministry projected up on big screens then it would fit right in. You have to look at what the prominent features of you church are and display them.

I understand what you are saying but I am not sure I agree with them.

Why not use flash if you don't already use powerpoint?

Anyway - I wasn't talking about content but the all important front page that everyone lands on. Perhaps I'm asking a question that can't easily be answered.........!

[flutem3]

Why not use flash if you don't already use powerpoint?

Anyway - I wasn't talking about content but the all important front page that everyone lands on. Perhaps I'm asking a question that can't easily be answered.........!

Hi, Stu,

You mentioned that the things I mentioned are "givens". It is given to you and to me. However, there are many websites out there that do not have that information on them. One of the things that I should have added is country. Here in the USA we are so arrogant that we think that everyone who sees "Indiana", for example, would know that Indiana is in the USA.
I have seen a number of websites from other countries, and most of them include the country. We are the ones who don't.

The focus of your front page is who you are. If you are ads, place ads, if you are flash, place flash...but it should be evident in just a couple of seconds who your church is because most of the time that is all we are given. I want our home page to say, "Worship!" That is what we are about. But every church will have its individual personality which needs to be reflected on the home page. For example, if you have a traditional worship service but place liturgical dancing on your home page, you are misleading anyone who might want to attend. I know that is a weird example, but it is the only thing I could think of. If you put lots of ads on your home page, could people think what your church's main interest is money. Personally, I dislike ads on a home page. We had a link to a job opening on our home page, but I was not thrilled about putting it there. However, it made no sense to place it anywhere else.

Think of the way you look at website or I look at websites. Sometimes I am there and gone in an instant. I do agree that a WOW factor might keep a person there a split second more. However, I cannot imagine what kind of WOW factor would make a person return. And I have yet to see two equal websites so that a WOW factor would be involved. :D However, if I could come up with a terrific WOW factor, I would use it. But it would have to reflect the church.

I know this isn't particularly helpful. Perhaps I am too short-sighted; not on the "cutting edge" which is true. I am not at all.

Carol

PS Does anyone know what makes a tape player turn into Jaws and destroy a cheap tape...but play a good one fine? Happened with the church service today. It is gone!! And I am irritated.

[mrbelfry]

I whole heartedly agree that the church website should reflect the church itself. As to what takes prominent place on a home page I'm going to act a little hypocritical!

My church site has a little welcome from our Pastor (it's been there like forever) however I think this is to a certain extent a waste of real estate. Once you've read the welcome then you've read it so I'd like my home page to be a little more useful and have some kind of content that is relevant but changes regularly. One idea I had was to have a little synopsis of the weekends sermon but then that might throw off first time visitors. So now I'm thinking some combination of upcoming events and a welcome and this weeks message

mrbelfry

[mrbelfry]

I whole heartedly agree that the church website should reflect the church itself. As to what takes prominent place on a home page I'm going to act a little hypocritical!

My church site has a little welcome from our Pastor (it's been there like forever) however I think this is to a certain extent a waste of real estate. Once you've read the welcome then you've read it so I'd like my home page to be a little more useful and have some kind of content that is relevant but changes regularly. One idea I had was to have a little synopsis of the weekends sermon but then that might throw off first time visitors. So now I'm thinking some combination of upcoming events and a welcome and this weeks message

mrbelfry

[flutem3]

Hey, Mr. Belfry,

How be thee? I think making a home page for a church is tricky business. We say that we don't want to scare people away, but we want to reflect our church.

I hate to say this, but to me those concepts seem to be diametrically opposed to one another. Therefore, my choice is to reflect the church. Our Home Page changes every week...part of it. I want scripture to be on the Home Page because it is our church website. It is a testimonial in a way of who we are and what we, as a church, consider important.

I do not know of any way to use the name First United Methodist Church and the cross and flame logo so that a person who is an aetheist or an agnostic won't go running in the other direction if he/she accidently ends up on our site. Therefore, I stress the worship aspect with the scripture, the name of the pastor who is preaching, sermon title, and links to the entire scripture for the morning which I type out every week.

Outreach is essential. How we do it depends once again upon those to whom we are reaching...people who have not been to church, agnostics, backsliders, etc. I think to reach these people takes a website which is specifically design for this purpose which can then link eventually to the church website. People who do not attend church, think about church, have never heard of going to church, etc. are not going to end up on a church website unless it is an accident. Therefore, it seems to me that a church web site, not ministry, needs to reflect the church well for new-comers who are looking for a church in the area as well as to provide good solid content for its own members...and hope they check it out!! :)

Carol

[mrbelfry]

Hey, Mr. Belfry,

How be thee?
...
Outreach is essential. How we do it depends once again upon those to whom we are reaching...people who have not been to church, agnostics, backsliders, etc. I think to reach these people takes a website which is specifically design for this purpose which can then link eventually to the church website. People who do not attend church, think about church, have never heard of going to church, etc. are not going to end up on a church website unless it is an accident.

Hi Carol - I be very well thank you. I tend to agree with you here. If you try and do too much with the website then the danger is you dilute key information in order to make everything fit in - we've had people come to our church simply because we have service times and directions on our home page - if I took them off and replaced them with a box about who Jesus is would I be adding or subtracting value to my site? The key purpose of my church site isn't to attract people to Jesus it is to attract people to my church where they can experience Jesus. There are great bible study resources and great evangelistic resources already on the internet and I can't really compete with any of them except where they apply to my church

mrbelfry

[pmburrow]

Well said Mr. Belfry.


Several years ago our team sat down to decide the “purpose” for our web site. Our mission statement at Discovery is “Helping searching people discover new life in Christ.” Like you, we decided that the Web Team’s mission should be “Helping searching people discover Discovery”. We felt that it was our responsibility to point people to Discovery and aid them in discovering as much information about us as possible. It was then Discovery’s responsibility to point them to Christ.



Phillip

[StubbyD]

One idea I had was to have a little synopsis of the weekends sermon but then that might throw off first time visitors. So now I'm thinking some combination of upcoming events and a welcome and this weeks message
mrbelfry

These sound like the sort of things I'm thinking of.

Let me know what you eventually settle on. I will do likewise once we start moving forward with it all.

[StubbyD]

The focus of your front page is who you are.


Agreed - but it is how to represent that?

I guess part of the question is - how, given no budget, ability or time limitations would you represent your church on the all important landing page.

I think a personal welcome is good but would soon go stale - unless we set up a rotating script which has a half dozen or so welcome messages from the pastor through other key church members for example.

What I'm trying to get down in my head is what I need to include on ours.

We too are built on worship as a key ingredient and used to utilise Psalmody Intl's training until we developed our own and now we offer a short course entitled "Created to Worship" on a regualr basis for our newer members.

[flutem3]

Hi, Stu,

I think your "Created to Worship" is what your index page needs to be geared to...including that statement...and from there you can go into how your church is created to worship...means, methods, programs, and of course, the worship itself.

I can see right now in my minds eye the name of your church with created to worship under the title kind of like "To Know Christ and to Make Him Known" is under the name of our church.

In my opinion, you have your path set before you.

Carol

[StubbyD]

In my opinion, you have your path set before you.


Thanks for your confidence Carol, I, in this case, do not share your optimism :)

[flutem3]

What are you trying to do then? I don't understand, I guess, what it is that you are looking for. If "created for worship" isn't a path, I don't know what you want.

Let us know more of your thinking so we can help...maybe. :) And if we are lucky, maybe one of us will have an idea which is helpful or will stimulate your thinking so that you have an "aha!" moment.

Carol