Does your church need a new church website? As a pastor and web designer, many folks have asked me what goes into an effective web design for a church site. After dwelling on this topic for a while, I came up with the following suggestions. Please be aware that these tips are for churches and ministries that are targeting people outside their respective congregations.

Church Design Tips

•An ideal and suitable church website should be designed to be welcoming to visitors. After all, what good is having an awesome looking site if no one from outside the church finds it on the web? Therefore a good design should have search engine optimization (SEO) in mind.

•Any information on the website should be useful and relevant for its potential visitors.

•The look and content of your site should look enticing. The reason for this is that studies show it takes only 7 seconds for a visitor to decide to stay or click through to another site. A suitable church website will have pictures of its congregation and colors that are inviting and pleasing to the eye.

•successful church site have basic layouts with a simple navigation system. In regard to this it is very important that your average visitor is easily able to find the information they are seeking without having to search more than 2 clicks off the home page.

•Make a list of what you feel are the top subjects visitors would be seeking on your site. After this, make sure you provide individual pages with good content on these subjects. Things such as contact information and what's going on currently at your church are very popular things to have on your site

•Another way to design a suitable church website is to allow visitors to be able to comment their opinions, ideas, and suggestions about the church and what it offers. That way, you can get a better idea of what people are looking for in a church

•One last way to design a suitable church website is to set up online donations. A church relies on donations to keep it going. Regarding receiving online donations, if not using Paypal, there are many Christian online giving services (like Easy Give, for example), that will help integrate this valuable service directly into your church website.

Overall, if you follow the above tips on what to include in a well designed church website, you will help your outreach efforts, and be a success.