Your church or ministry website is more than just fancy graphics and flowery text.
It should be a catalyst for action.
When visitors land on your home page, they should be prompted to do something. We call these prompts “calls to action.”
Calls to action can come in many forms, most commonly graphic banners, ads, buttons, and linked text. Calls to action will often direct users to other pages on your website where they will complete a web-based task. Sometimes it will lead to action off the computer.
Here are four calls to action every church website should include:
1. Learn
The key to every website is to teach visitors who you are and what you do. For churches and ministries, explaining how others can get involved is equally crucial.
One of the most visited pages on any church website is its About section, where your mission, beliefs, and individual ministries are detailed. Direct visitors here immediately by displaying a graphic on your home page banner or making it prominent in your menu navigation. This is the one area of your website people might actually read (instead of skim), so make sure every word is carefully chosen.
2. Visit
A church website’s ultimate goal should be to encourage users to physically visit your ministry. You can do this by making your service times and address easy to find and writing with a welcoming tone on your Location page. Make it even easier on potential guests by including a Google map, directions, and a picture of your church.
3. Contact
Plaster your phone number, address, and e-mail address in as many places as you can on your website–your footer, Contact Us page, Location page, We Believe section, and any other page that might provoke questions. Creating a contact form also encourages interaction. How available you are shows how much you care (or don’t care) about your visitors.
4. Give
Another big reason people visit church websites is to donate. Many times, giving is a spontaneous, emotionally-driven action, so your website should not hinder someone from satisfying that urgent desire. Make it easy for visitors to find your giving page and create an enjoyable giving experience with easy-to-complete forms.
While not a church, the website for Basecamp shows how the call to action works in the best possible way:
Which call to action needs to be added to your churches website?
D says
Did I miss the Churchmag comparison of online giving platforms? I thought Eric said that was coming at some point earlier this year.
Eric Dye says
Nope. You haven’t missed it.
:-/
Thank you for the reminder!
Bryan Chalker says
This is a great post Bryan – but it would be with the great, strong, and focused name that you have. 🙂
One thing to clarify on #2…may want to hide the email address behind the “Email Me” link, to protect from the SPAM harvesters. The point was great though. Make yourself available. There are those who, on a whim, feel the urging to talk with someone from the church, and if the info isn’t readily available, then it can be a missed opportunity or counsel for someone.
Great advice, though. Helps remind us that online church still needs to reach and touch as a traditional one does.
Bryan Chalker says
Hey Bryan – great post. One clarification on #3 though – make sure the actual email address is only in the link, and don’t place the address in “readable” form on the site. SPAM harvesters and the like will eat that up.
Very nice points though – making it easy and accessible for visitors at the online level like the traditional visitor is essential.
Bryan Young says
Bryan, thanks for the tips on the email address. It can be difficult to avoid spam. Many spam robots look for the code (HTML) on the site and not the text on the page. So, it can be OK to place the email address as long as the code is written in such a way to hide the email in the HTML.
Marcus Williamson says
Solid post dude. Churches I’ve dealt with in the past miss out on the giving part…they also miss out on the “don’t put everything on your website” part too. That’s another post though. Again, solid stuff 🙂
Bryan Young says
All too often you see churches put every single thing that comes to their mind on the website. Simple, short, concise, and well-written content is a churches best friend. Keeping it simple makes everyone happy.
Jermayn says
A call to action is about getting the user to do something and get their personal details for something worth the hassle of giving it up. It has to be worth something = sermon from someone known, book etc.
To me these are great ideas for secondary or third level CTA’s but not the main one.
Eric Dye says
What should a main CTA be for a church website be, in your opinion?
Jermayn says
All websites should have a number one aim and the CTA should be related to that. A churches website should be to encourage users to physically visit your ministry (article quote) which I totally agree with but a CTA to give is not helping the viewer (a potential customer) to reach that aim of coming to church.
A side question: What is the aim of a visiting pack that churches give? To get them connected/ joined into the church and that also should be the aim of a CTA on a church website.
So the question then is how to do it.
One possible solution (not testing fully yet) is to give a virtual visitor pack which could consist of any/ all of the following:
– voucher
– ebook/ book
– sermon
– information
and then with the name/ email/ address you ask for, you set up an email funnel with the aim of them coming physically to church/ and or connecting with someone.