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When's the last time you updated your church website? Learn six ways to breathe new life into your online presence and enhance user experience, all while maintaining the essence and familiarity of your existing website without committing to a full redesign.
As a busy church leader, the idea of trying to find the time to redesign your church website probably feels daunting. Luckily, there are actionable steps you can take today – with just a few hours of time – to give your website a major refresh!
Website Redesign vs. Website Refresh: What’s Right for Your Church?
A website redesign is often a complex process in which site function is taken into account. This may include switching up the site navigation, changing site codes, or even switching platforms (e.g., from WordPress to Squarespace). A website redesign deals with the guts of your site, and it often takes hours of brainstorming around whiteboards and boardroom tables before even getting to updates.
A website refresh, on the other hand, involves small changes that affect your church website’s appearance and usability without making major changes to the structure (think content, fonts, images, etc.) A refresh is far more cost-effective and time-effective, and it can still positively impact your website’s approachability with small, incremental changes.
If you don’t have the bandwidth for a complete website redesign but want to refresh your site to be current, compelling, and easy to navigate, check out the tips below!
To get started with your website refresh, start with some website spring cleaning! (And you can tackle this anytime, not just in the spring.) Take time to scan over your website as if you are a first-time site visitor. Do you notice any communication gaps? Does your site have too little information – or too much? Do you notice any outdated information, incorrect dates, misspellings, or broken links? To stay organized, maintain a detailed list of the changes that need to be made, or make updates directly as you come across them.
The time required for this process will vary depending on the size of your church website. Some websites can be refreshed in as little as 20 minutes, while larger sites may take longer. Regardless of the timeframe, it's crucial not to skip this step. Even if your website has a visually appealing design, outdated or unclear information will significantly impact its effectiveness. By initiating a thorough cleanup of your website, you're taking the vital first step towards refreshing it and ensuring that it provides relevant and valuable content for both your congregants and potential new visitors to your church.
Your homepage serves as the virtual front door to your church. Just like a physical front door, people don’t typically linger for very long before choosing to enter or leave! According to recent studies, it only takes 50 milliseconds for users to develop an opinion about your website – and how long they are going to spend navigating it.
If you only have time to refresh one page of your website, start by making your homepage count! Showcase your mission and values prominently to help visitors understand your church's unique identity. Feature key information, such as service times and upcoming events, to provide immediate value and encourage further engagement. Lastly, make sure users know what to do next! Feature a clear CTA (call-to-action) button that encourages users to do something – whether it's to catch up on recent sermons, sign up for a newsletter, learn about upcoming events, or participate in something unique to your congregation.
When it comes to your church website, featuring images of the people in your unique congregation is always the best way to go. If you don’t have the time or resources to capture these photos just yet, however, you can use free stock footage to help refresh your website’s appearance in just a few minutes!
There are thousands of high-quality, professional-looking images available for free online. One highly recommended website is pexels.com, which offers a wide selection of both photos and videos conveniently organized into categories. This makes it easy for you to find multiple images with the same people, providing visual continuity for your website. Unsplash is also a fan favorite when it comes to free stock images.
When choosing new images for your website, be mindful of stock images that you have come across repeatedly online. If you notice a certain image is widely used, consider opting for a more unique and distinctive option. The objective is to create a website that stands out and avoids the generic look!
Is your church website stuck in the 90s? The typography on your site has a huge impact on the user’s experience. It says a lot about the look, tone, and feel of your church. Because of this, one simple way to upgrade your website’s aesthetic is to switch out your font!
If you have a church brand guide that outlines specific fonts, it is highly recommended to adhere to those guidelines. However, if you are seeking an appealing and contemporary font for your website, consider incorporating a sans-serif font. While serif fonts like Times New Roman, Georgia, and *even* Comic Sans have their place in design, opting for modern fonts can help achieve a minimalist and clean look. Some popular sans-serif fonts include Arial, Helvetica, and Futura, among others.
Are you reading this article on a laptop, a tablet, or a phone? According to recent statistics, roughly half of all internet traffic comes from mobile phones. This means that now is a great time to ensure that your church website is easy to read on mobile.
In some cases, making your website mobile-friendly may require a full website redesign. However, if you are utilizing responsive site builders such as Wix or Squarespace, you have the advantage of seamlessly switching between mobile and desktop views during the editing process. This allows you to ensure that your site looks exceptional and functions smoothly across different devices. Not sure if your church website is mobile-friendly? Check out Google’s free mobile-friendly test to find out!
One of the best ways to help your website visitors stay connected with your church after leaving your website is by directing them toward your social media accounts. If you haven’t done so yet, take a few minutes to add social media buttons or widgets that link to your church’s Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube accounts. Access to these links on your website helps visitors stay updated on the latest news, events, and sermons. Consider adding these links to the footer of your website, allowing easy access that can be edited or removed effortlessly whenever needed.
And there you have it! Improving your church website doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing process. With a few small enhancements, you can elevate your website's aesthetics and user-friendliness, enabling users to stay connected to the vibrant life of your church.
But why stop there? If your church management systems are also due for a refresh, we've got you covered. Click here to explore Breeze's easy and effective ChMS (Church Management System) that streamlines your tasks and reduces your workload, making your life as a church leader much easier.
We'd love to show you what we built!
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Breeze has been incredible. Their customer service, commitment to innovation, and their product are top-notch. I love the features, the ease of use and the mobile applications.
All of our database needs have been more than met, it's easier to use than the last database we had, and the price is amazing - what a value this has been to our church! All of our staff can use this software and they do regularly. We use it to track…literally anything a church could possibly need to track regarding it's attenders.
Breeze has been a great asset to our church and congregation. Especially from an administrative standpoint, it has been the most adaptable and easiest church database I have ever used. The features from blast emails to giving on-line, and texting have been one of our greatest assets. Thank you!
We switched from a major, web-based ChMS to Breeze and our decision is confirmed every day. We are a medium size church and we use Breeze for contributions, member management, event checkin and a few other applications custom to our church. I had trouble getting any staff to use our previous ChMS but almost all staff are using Breeze. The product is very well designed, extremely easy to learn and use and customer service is incredible.
Breeze has opened the communication highway for our congregation and staff, with very little training. Because members can update their own records and search easily for other members - and map their locations, send emails and text right from Breeze, they love it and our data is more real-time accurate. Our ministries are stronger, because they can trust the data in Breeze, which is easily accessed anywhere, anytime.
Breeze is the first ChMS my volunteers have actually embraced. That's because it's so easy to use. The software is very flexible and gives us the opportunity to make decisions based on actual data we've collected and not just hunches or stories we believe to be true.
I cannot say enough about Breeze. Their customer service is so friendly, you feel like you have friends and family helping you get started, they're prompt to reply and will do whatever they can to help you get things sorted out. It's been so easy to learn, our staff is loving it and best of all even our staff who are not computer savvy find it a breeze (pun intended). We are just thrilled by our choice.
From the start of our process looking for an online solution, Breeze has exceeded all our expectations. Fast data import, fast and friendly customer support, and we can’t say enough about how much we like the program itself. Very well designed and user friendly. On a scale of 1-10, Breeze gets a 15 from us!
