Helpful tips for your website

Good Pages to Have

Of course, each church is different, but if you are having a hard time knowing good pages to have, here are the basic guidelines:

Get To Know Us
– What to Expect
– Who We Are (Mission & Vision)
– Our Beliefs
– Our History
– Meet the Staff
– Times & Directions		 Ministries
– Children
– Youth
– Men
– Women
– Outreach (and/or Missions)
– Small Groups		 News & Events
– Calendar
– Latest Announcements
– Newsletter		 Media & Resources
– Watch Live
– Sermons
– Bible Search
– Resource Links
– Forms

 

Visitor Page

Below is a sample of good visitor pages to use as guides for writing your own content

 

 

Content Tip

Make sure there is meat to each ministry page. An example would be a children’s page that just says generalities like ‘we love Jesus and want to teach our children about Jesus’. That kind of general text is okay for one sentence but if everything on that page is like that, it doesn’t help a parent/visitor to the website. Parents want to know what exactly goes on for my kids? What age groups are they grouped in? Is there a checkin system? What do they do (activity wise) specifically in each age range? How do I know the people watching my kids are okay? Any safety mechanisms in place? Think from a visitors point of view who might have kids. What questions would YOU want to know. Those are “raw meat” questions and the answers to those kind of questions are what best make up a children’s page.

One option to get the content from people (if they aren’t replying to email) would be, on a Sunday morning, take a piece of paper with 3 questions on it (ideas below) and ask each person that is head of the ministry. Either write down answers or take your phone and record their answers with a voice record app. It should only take 1-2 minutes of each person’s time. Questions to ask:

  1. For children: What ages do you have activities for on Sunday morning? What ages are grouped together on a Sunday morning? Do you have stuff for children during 9:25 and 10:30? What kinds of activities does each age group do? Is there a check-in for kids? How does drop off and pickup work? Do you have children’s stuff for all services, even on Wednesday (if you have Wednesday services)?
  1. For youth: What age range/grades do you cover? What times and days do you meet during week? Where do you meet? Do you have any upcoming events you want people to know about? Do you have any repeating events every year? Do you have youth activities for all services, even on Wednesday (if you have Wednesday services)?
  2. Other ministries: What is purpose of you existing? When do you meet? Where do you meet? Who is contact person and what is contact email of each person in charge of group? Do you do any ongoing activities? What do you do normally when you meet?

 

 

Photos

Personal photos go a LONG way in helping people decide on visiting a church. Ideally you can find someone who is a professional photographer and have them come on a Sunday morning to take photos. If you can’t find someone who is, you can always have an existing staff member who has an Iphone or Android from no later than the last 2 years and take photos with that. Normally those newer phones all take good high quality photos. You would want to take photos of:

  • worship service (all different angles)
  • pastor speaking
  • people talking together before or after service, looking friendly or smiling
  • people hugging each other
  • people shaking hands
  • small group meeting together for bible study
  • picture of children doing fun activities  (as long as you have permission).

 

Here are some ideas to show what good photos would look like:

  1. https://fntchurch.org/about/new  (they also have photos for every ministry https://fntchurch.org/ministry/  )
  2. https://www.screencast.com/t/BaBydWvGtA    and https://shilohcm.org/about/new
  3. https://affinitymbc.org/get-to-know-us/new
  4. https://mychurchwebsitecompany.com/css/catalina.jpg (may need to zoom in inside your browser to see them all. view on desktop for best view)
  5. https://visioncf.org/about/new
  6. https://fbcmanassas.org/about/new
  7. http://southbelt.org (photos on this page)
  8. https://fpcnorthshoreipswich.com/begin/first-visit   (photos on this page)

 

Photo tips for your photographer

  1. You want most of your photos to be in landscape mode (16:9) instead of portrait mode. This way the photos can fit nicely as a banner graphic for a page on your site and the user doesn’t have top scroll down a lot to get to the actual content.
  2. Don’t zoom in so close to one or two peoples faces, but try to show a few people in a shot at once and what they are doing (show the action, whether standing together or hugging, or shaking hands)
  3. Show the fun activities kids do and not just a photo of a kid
  4. Show people doing candid (not posed) things like talking, hugging, smiling, speaking, singing, etc. Basically shots that show the “life” of something.

 

Photo tips for your own photos you put in at a later date

  1. Photo should be at least 2000px wide.
  2. For images you put inside next to text, they can be square shaped. But, if they are, put them to the left of the content and make it so it only fills up about half the content space. Help on aligning images…
  3. It is better to have no images than poor quality images on a page.
  4. Try to keep the images in the style of the website. So if the website is using bright and vivid colors, your photos should too.  If your site is earthy and desaturated, then desaturate the colors in the photos so they aren’t so bright.
  5. Lighten up photos if they are too dark You might need Photoshop for that to work the best. You can also try a site like https://www.psdfiddle.com/ if you don’t have Photoshop. Light is important because you want to give the appearance that your church feels upbeat and isn’t depressing :-)

 

 

Videos

Videos can really help bring a church to life for the visitor of the site much better than any photo can. The 2 best places for videos are either the homepage at the top in place of the slideshow or on the visitor page as a welcome video.

 

HOMEPAGE EXAMPLES

(no sound, 15-20 sec long, looped), landscape mode (like 2000×600), shoot in HD:

https://aampca.org/

Sample Site

Forest Hills

Columbiapresbyterian.org  (doesn’t have to be this long though)

Homepage Video Example

 

Best things to capture for homepage video:

  • worship service
  • pastor speaking
  • people talking together before or after service, looking friendly or smiling
  • people hugging each other
  • people shaking hands
  • picture of children doing fun activities  (as long as you have permission).

 

WELCOME PAGE EXAMPLES

(sound, around 60 seconds long, landscape mode, shoot in HD):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwTrMRPazcA&feature=youtu.be
https://vimeo.com/80327273
https://vimeo.com/84824117
https://vimeo.com/26371533
https://vimeo.com/190927406

 

 

Free Christian Photos

In addition to your free access to www.christiancollages.com (just send us an email to request a membership), you can also access our curated library of christian stock photos at https://unsplash.com/@mychurchweb/collections

Once you go live, you can also request photos from www.lightstock.com that we can purchase for you and use in your site, up to a certain limit.