If you follow the surveys and research of consumer web interactions and church website surveys, you’ll find more and more users want easy to understand navigation, clear directions, yet beautiful websites. It makes complete sense. Too many overwhelming sites and busy pages really just make users confused, and this leads to a higher bounce rate.
Look at the power of clean sites like Apple.com, google.com, Nike.com, or even the popular project management app BasecampHQ.com. Simple works. Simple sells. Simple is clear.
Examples of church and ministry sites doing it right
So what are we seeing here?
Easy to use home pages, clear navigation location, focused in priorities, high contrast, easy to read text. No busy home pages, no tiny text, gone are the days of 100 important elements on the home, no more 25 ministries fighting for attention.
What else is great about these sites? They all could be easily re-purposed in a mobile / iPad-friendly site design. Touch screens and rotation based content in a snap with designs like these.
So on your next site redesign, focus on the metrics of your audience, as well as national surveys. Plan, test, and make sure your church website is not falling behind the tech and user expectation curves.
Anything I missed? What other killer sites ave you seen recently?
Mars Hill has always had one of the most compelling designs for a church website.
Great list here. Thanks for compiling.
Awesome to see Christ College and Blythefield Hills on the list! We also recently launched http://kingsland.org which uses an innovative navigation structure to keep the website clean, simple and straightforward.
I agree Adam, but i will say i think very few churches can pull off the look that mars hill does. I wish my own church could be so simple, but that much minimalism is not for everyone.
Great work Matt R. love the new kingsland site. The drop down menus are a really nice touch.
Great post Matt A. Love the examples.
Also, good job on the Kingsland site, Matt R.
Finally, touching on the future of church web, here’s something we did a while back on MediaSalt:
1. http://www.mediasalt.com/2009/03/23/future-of-church-websites
2. http://www.mediasalt.com/2009/04/30/church-web-wizards-weigh-in-on-the-future
Good stuff. The before and after LifeChurch.tv redesign is a great example of simplifying navigation and content.
Hoping more churches latch on to the idea of simple elegance.
[...] Every day during the holidays, MediaSalt is counting down our most popular posts of the 2010. Today’s post was our 9th most popular, originally published on July 13, and written by Matt Adams… “The Future of Church Websites.” [...]
As both a web professional and pastor, it’s worth pointing out that though beautiful, not a single one of the sites referenced here are search engine optimized well.
Example, the One Community Church site looks fantastic, but when I googled “Hamilton Ontario church,” I gave up on trying to find it after 6 pages.
Blythefeld Hills Baptist came up high on their Google places listing, but the site itself didn’t come up after 6 pages either.
Having a great looking site is step 1. But we should all remember that we need people to find our churches who have never heard of our churches. Someone who searches “church in __” should be able to find our site within the first 2-3 pages on Google, or else our site isn’t doing its job.
Amen Lance.
That may be a great post series in 2011. I see it time and again with great sites, church staff focus on the look, and forget about people who DON’T know who they are already.
thanks!