I offer digital marketing education written with ministry in mind. Subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter to learn something new every Friday.
I looked at 1200 church websites; here's what I learned
I've been putting in hours on this tool over the past few weeks.As a part of this project, I've visited a. lot. of church websites. Unless I can figure out how to automate this process, I'll be getting around to all 1,200. Maybe yours is next 👀 I've noticed: many, if not most, of the websites I've visited are relatively empty. There is usually a homepage with less than 25 words of basic info, a single sentence or graphic for an upcoming special event, and a Contact page. I don't fault anyone for this. It's challenging to come up with a full website's worth of content on the spot. And once your site is live, it's tough to find time to go back and make additions. If you're looking to beef up your website to give potential visitors a better idea of who you are, here's a full sitemap that won't take more than an afternoon to put together. Above the website header: Create an announcement bar that highlights whatever is most time-sensitive. This is just a simple 75-pixel colored bar with a single line of text. (Ex: Christmas Eve Worship at 7 p.m. | Click for details) Home
About
Worship & Study
Events
Contact
404 Privacy/Terms In the website footer: Call-to-action (usually: Sign up for emails/SMS) In case you're going to use AI to help you along, paste this prompt before the content above:
"I'm writing content for my church's website. Here is the sitemap, along with a description of each of my desired sections. Before generating website copy, ask me 10 clarifying questions that will enable you to write accurate content with the correct tone, community context, and theological backing."
Any other sections on your current website that I should add to this structure? Let me know! Until next week, |
Grace Ungemach
I offer digital marketing education written with ministry in mind. Subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter to learn something new every Friday.
I read some e-commerce advice the other day that got me thinking... Someone I follow on Instagram has had great success selling website planning worksheets as an onramp to her business courses and consulting services. She knows her repeat customer rate is 60% (which is insanely high in e-commerce). Once someone buys her $5 printable worksheet, they're highly likely to buy her $300 course, then some of them will buy her group and private consulting. The advice that piqued my interest? "Don't...
How to turn any paper-and-pen scribble into a dynamic Canva icon... I know the right people will geek out over this one with me 🤪 Instead of reading: Follow along with my video tutorial! What do I mean when I say "Canva icon"? Well, it's like this: You can change the icon's color freely -- not just changing the shade of the image You can scale it up really large without losing image quality Have you noticed that when you use elements on Canva some of them follow these rules and some do not?...
Here's an idea to build off of YouTube views you're already getting: Do you know how many times I've heard the following from pastors I work with? "Yeah, we put my sermons on YouTube. People will visit church and say they've been watching for a couple weeks before they attend for the first time, so that's been good." So. many. times. This is amazing! What an awesome demonstration of how the internet can be used to remove barriers to an in-person connection (which is, of course, the ultimate...