Recently, my church put out a call for help in a variety of different areas.
One of which was our church website whose design was lagging behind a bit compared to modern standards and was missing a few features that could really help.
I realized that I possessed a particular set of skills which I had acquired over a long career (well a relatively short one) that meant I was the perfect person to get the job done.
So I thought I’d offer my help to sort out the website. I also realized that it might be useful for the ChurchMag reads for me to share my experience as I’m sure many members can relate to this experience.
So with that in mind.
It’s time to get started.
Step One: Identify the Church Website Need(s)
As I’ve already eluded to, our church felt there was a need for a design update (it was approaching 5 years old and starting to show), but more importantly, there were some specific ideas for functions that could help improve the site for our current church members and not just making it a big advert.
In your instance this need might be less clear, the need for a design refresh despite last years update might seem a little pointless, or the desire for new functions maybe a case of keeping up with Jones’.
Then again, there may be a specific purpose for this update which will help and bless the church.
Loosely I think you can label this as the purpose behind the goal. The goal is “what” you want to do, the purpose is the “why” for it.
So in our case, we had refined our purpose from just attracting new members to also wanting to serve our current members too, this meant that we wanted the goals of a design refresh (to show we’re hip and trendy) and providing better access to resources for church members, including sermons, and blog posts.
Finally, there was also the goal to create an events page that would help inform members of upcoming events and give a window into the church life for people checking us out.
These were our goals and you may have similar or different goals depending on your church but this is a vital first step. You don’t want to get to work and then find out that you’ve gone down the wrong route.
Stay Tuned for More
More to come in this series. But if you’ve got some questions, leave them below and I’ll do my best to answer them.
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