By Darrel Girardier
Your church’s website is typically the first impression people have of your church. It is not enough to simply have a website. You must be sure that your church’s website is effective. Effective websites all share one major theme: a clear call-to-action.
It is easy to overload you website with many different calls-to-action. Your natural tendency is to broadcast everything that your church offers on your website to pull in traffic. However, this only confuses people and ends up turning away people. Give one simple call-to-action rather than overwhelm your audience.
Think Guests, Not Members
The majority of the people that visit your website are visitors, not members. When building your church website, remember who your main audience is and build your website to speak to that group of people. Since your website should target first-time visitors, your one call-to-action should be for your main church service.
Although this may seem like an oversimplification of everything your church has to offer, it will actually boost your involvement because less people will turn away from your page frustrated with how many things you are asking them to do. People want things to be as simple and spelled-out as possible, so when you provide them with one clearly defined thing to do, they’re more likely going to do it.
What About Church Ministries?
Other ministry leaders within your church will most likely be frustrated with this change in marketing. Reassure those ministry leaders that their ministries are important to the overall functioning of the church. However, since your website is targeting first-time guests, you are going to readjust the where other ministries are advertised.
An effective church website is much different from just an average church website. In order to be effective, your website must focus on one clear call-to-action and always keep the target audience in mind.
Adapted from Training Pathway: Church Communications. Check out more training videos on Ministry Grid.
Darrel Girardier is the Digital Strategy Director at Brentwood Baptist Church in Brentwood, TN.
