9 steps to writing good content for your Church Website

Content is king on the web.  Quality church website design is only the beginning.  The better your content is, the more you see positive results on your church website.  There are a couple things to rember when writing content for your website.

1. Write content that builds trust
2. Answer questions your users may have
3. Create content that brings value to your readers
4. Try to spark conversation with your content
5. Make sure your content is search optimized so people can find it
6. Always add links to provide further resources to your topic
7. Write content that is clear and concise
8. Think of how to move the reader to return 
9. Double check your sources and site them

These pointers will set you on the right path for writing great content to compliment your great church website design. 

Making your Church Website Banners Count

It is very common to see rotating banners on church websites.  They are great for communicating your recent sermon series podcast or upcoming events.  Website Banners can be both a blessing and a curse.  If you select the wrong photos or poorly edit them, it can cause more damage than good.  A banner can bring you web-cred (respect) if you do them well, or it can discredit your church website.  Make sure you find great designs and get a second opinion... from someone who will be honest.  

Here is a create resource for finding free website banners, Creativemyk.  Just remember to crop them to size and not squish them down. 

I would recommend investing in Adobe Photoshop (PSD) to edit your banners.  Here at Sheepish Design we provide our clients with PSD templates of their banners so they can make future changes.  There are plenty of great tutorials on how to use the program.  A little Photoshop can go a long way for your church website design. Here are some great link for online tutorials; Lynda and Creative Live.  I hope these free resources help you create amazing banners for your church website.  or church wordpress themes 

Three Keys to Writing Church Blog Posts for Church Websites

Blogs are a great way to connect with the younger generations to your church website.  It is also a powerful way to build your presence online with search engines like google, bing and yahoo. 

When writing a blog for your church or organizations website it is important to write with the audience, keywords and resources.  Your audience will determine your tone and coverage of content.  The keywords will guide your blogs along the desired search ability you set. Your resources (outbound links) will help your users dig deeper into your topics and reaffirm your topic relevance to the search engines. 

"When it comes to blog reading, online men and women are equally as likely to have browsed the blogosphere. Again, those ages 18-29 are much more likely to have read blogs than their elders: 36% of online younger adults have read blogs compared to 18% of those who use the internet and are 50 and older." -Pew Research

The most important thing to remember is to stay continent.  This takes work but will help your church website in the end. 

The Reach of Video on Websites

A picture can say thousand words.  How much more can a video say on your church website.  Video is a powerful way to communicate your vision and mission as a church.  "More than half of online video viewers (57%) share links to the video they find with others, and three in four (75%) say they receive links to watch video that others have sent to them." -Pew Research.  This means your videos have the potential reach of 78,000 with one click (based on Facebook's statistics on a church of 800).  

Just make sure if you take this innovative step with your church website you do it with excellence.  Not only will a video be an asset to your website when done well but it will also hurt your site when done poorly. 

Why you should build a custom church website

The word custom website carries a different meaning now that there are hundreds of free templates out there.  At first it seems like the more free templates the better right?  My question is why are they free? The next question is what is your core vision and culture?  Can a free template deliver the culture and brand you desire to build through your church website? 

I got off the phone yesterday with a local book author who is looking to build two websites for his next project.  He said something in regards to custom websites that caught me off guard.  His comment was, "Luke, I could go anywhere for my website. Heck I could outsource it to India! But I want Sheepish Design to do it because you can communicate my brand!"  This was amazing to me because he was selling me our services! 

Custom websites are the future of differentiating yourself in a sea of free template websites.  Since the web has become to starting point for most peoples church shopping, it is important to nail the first impression with your church website design.