Build A Church Web Site Tips

Why Build A Church Web Site?

To build a church web site requires some planning to get it right.  The right web site solution for your ministry or church can get across a strong Christian message that reinforces and complements your overall mission. In most cases a church web site should be more than a yellow page ad. It should be a web site that people can find through search engines and Christian directories. For more and more ministries their web site is their ministry. A well designed and maintained church web site hosting solution can provide many tools for ministries to include:

Attract Visitors, Members, and Supporters

Search engines and web directories are quickly becoming the number one way people find local churches, ministries, and ministry resources. Even for a local church, search engines can provide a lot more information about a church such as address, distance from home, directions and church web site. For example, Click Here to see how Google Local Search provides search results for churches nearest zip code 28377.

Provide Fresh Ministry Content

A web site page can be published or updated in minutes with content such as calendars, bulletin board updates, devotionals, events, message boards, Bible study notes, ebooks, online newsletters, e-mail services, online ministry book store, and more... Soon the majority of ministry members and supporters will be online.

What Is Needed To Build A Church Web Site?

Hosting

When most people think of getting or building a church web site, they immediately think about which church web site hosting service they should get to host their web pages. Key factors in evaluating church web site hosting services include price, ease of use, system up-time, and hosting features. Key hosting features include allowable disk space, allowable bandwidth, developmental tools, system log tools, and business services such as e-mail, newsletter services, webmaster tools, and even shopping cards for donations or the church online book store.

Fresh Web Content

Many churches create web pages using a variety of tools and services. This includes such web publishing tools as FrontPage, using an in-house product that comes with your church web site hosting service, or hiring web designers to create your web pages. Key factors when determining how to build a church web site include price of tools, flexibility to grow with the ministry, and cost of in-house vs. outside services to create and maintain web content.

Attract Visitors (Internet Marketing)

Many churches and businesses think that they are Internet marketing if they get a couple of web pages online that describe their church. If this is all a church or ministry does for their web presence, then this is just like having a church in the middle of the desert or having your church in a back alley with no sign. With this approach, your church web site may never get listed with major search engines or your church listing ends up on the 30th page of search results. Key components of Internet marketing includes search engine positioning, linking popularity, e-zines (newsletters), and traditional marketing such as advertisements, fund raising, etc.

If your church or ministry does not get it right with all three of these web site components, it will be difficult to justify or for your church web site hosting solution to complement your ministry or church.

Do I Need A Web Site or Is the One I Have Good Enough?

The short answer is yes. You do need a web site. Almost all churches and ministries can benefit from their own web site. But if a church does not follow best practices when building their church web site, it can be a liability and a waste of money. A good way to follow best practices when building a church web site is to go with a turn-key web site solution. Even if you are not technically-minded, there are now turn-key web site solutions out there that are affordable, can save you time, but are flexible enough for any type of web site. A turn-key web site keeps you from
having to get involved in all the technical details, but it seamlessly integrates hosting, a web site builder program, and marketing tools all into one business solution. If a business can afford the price of a yellow pages ad, then there are a lot of advantages with going with a turn-key business solution for your web site. The best program out there is Site Build It! (SBI!).

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