Building and maintaining good, useable websites are a struggle for churches of all sizes. Large and small alike have websites that don’t accurately represent who they are and don’t help people better connect with their church. There are many reasons why websites don’t reach their potential, but here are three things I think churches commonly underestimate about the web.
1) Pictures Have Power
There is little doubt in my mind that visually-driven websites are becoming more important. As the quest continues to build simpler, easier to use websites, the need for visuals becomes more important.
The easiest thing you can do right now is to add more pictures showing the real people in your church in action. From a visitor’s perspective, this is how you show them who you are. All of us are more aware of stock photography. We see it every day in so many places. So if a visitor comes to your site and sees a bunch of clearly fake people, they’ll wonder what you’re hiding. Or they’ll question your authenticity if you care more about showing perfectly posed people than your real members.