Building a better church website

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:09

Hey, welcome everyone to our unfiltered podcast where it's real people talking about real church planning conversations. So we're glad that you tuned in.

My name is Lee Stephenson and I have the privilege of serving with Converge as the executive director of church planning. My co host here, Danny Parmelee. Say hi.

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:26

Hello.

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:27

So, and Danny helps us kind of move church planting forward in our Mid America region of the country. And glad to be with you today. We're excited for our conversation. We're going to be talking about website and church specific websites.

And there is an art to it and there are certain specific things that you want to include and not do. And we have with us, I would call him the guru or the genie of church websites. So Ryan Imenecker.

And Ryan is also serves as our executive director of communications and marketing for Converge as well.

But he's been in the marketplace world, in the market doing marketing and website development for years prior to even moving into this role and has done a lot of work with local church and church planting as well. And so glad to have you, Ryan.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:01:18

Thanks. Good to be here.

Lee Stephenson: 00:01:19

Yeah. Let's begin to talk a little bit.

I mean, I'm assuming if people are tuning in to a podcast, they understand the importance of a church needs a website, but there's a lot more involved when it comes to that.

Talk to us a little bit about when you're getting, in the beginning works of trying to decipher what a website should be and what makes a strong website. What are the first things that a pasture planter needs to be thinking through when it comes to this side of communication?

Ryan Emenecker: 00:01:51

Yeah, I think obviously website's extremely important. I think really the most important thing is to remember that website really is a front door to people hearing about your church.

And you know, there's some statistics out there, a few years old, but still very relevant today, that anywhere from like 75 to 90% of people look for churches where to go using the web. And I mean, if you, even outside of church websites, you know, everybody does that.

If they're looking for any type of product or really anything out there, they first go to the web. And so again, that website really becomes that first kind of touch point in communication for a church.

So so important to have a great working website, something that really communicates vision, who you are, you know, very clearly.

Lee Stephenson: 00:02:47

I think one of the things I, I'm sure, Danny, you can speak to this as well, that as you go and visit different churches and their websites, there seems to be a variety of target Audience that churches either try to cater to or don't even define in the way that they develop a website.

What do you guys, what's your perspective when it comes to should a church have a target audience and if so, what do you think that target audience should be to make a good website?

Danny Parmelee: 00:03:22

Yeah, I mean, and Ryan and I have talked about this before, but I lean heavily on, especially homepage stuff needs to be geared about 85 to 90% towards that person who has never stepped foot into your church.

So instead of it being your bulletin and your events page, and here's where you're going to sign up for this picnic or this discipleship class that you basically have a few seconds to kind of capture the audience of that new person. So you want, I mean, I think to identify who's a person that doesn't know anything about your church.

What do you want them to know and how do you kind of want them to feel?

So that even kind of goes into some of the design part of it and let the people who are regular attenders of your church be in the other subcategories or back pages of the website.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:04:09

Yeah, I would agree with that.

I think back to the church I was at, where I was helping them with a website and some of their other communications we kind of narrowed down, okay, who are the audiences for the website. And we kind of said it's the person on the outside of the church. So external audience, someone who hasn't attended.

It's a new person, it's someone looking for a new church. And then you have your regular attendees, kind of that internal audience.

And I would agree with you, Danny, that website really should be geared towards that first time guests. Someone searching. We kind of realized at the church I was at that people don't hang out on church websites all week. What I know.

Lee Stephenson: 00:04:50

Shocker. Sinners. Yeah.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:04:53

And I think that's where you've seen maybe churches go for a website app or something to substitute for that. So really that 85% focusing so much on that first time guest is. Is very important.

And then I think from there you're thinking, okay, if it's really geared towards the first time guest, what is the information they want to know? What do we want them to do?

And within those first few seconds, like you mentioned, they've got to know what time your services are at and where they're at. And I can't tell you how many church websites I go on where a lot of them do a pretty good job at.

Okay, services are at 9 and 11 or 10 or whatever like that. But it will take me literally anywhere from 30 more seconds to a minute and a half to find out where is the church even located.

Danny Parmelee: 00:05:41

Right.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:05:41

Like how do I get there? You know, and for a new person.

And I just moved to Orlando a couple of years ago, so I remember going through this and experiencing this all over again. I mean it can be very frustrating to a first time guest trying to just even get to the church.

And at the end of the day, isn't that what we want people to do? Forget all of the signing up for this and church picnics and stuff like that. We just want you to attend.

Danny Parmelee: 00:06:09

Yeah, I had the same experience moving to Nashville.

And when I guests speak at churches and all of a sudden it's like I don't know when your service times are or I'm getting conflicting information from a postcard to your Easter services that haven't been updated to this. And it's kind of like when are the services and how do I get there and sometimes using stuff I'm new to the area.

I don't know what McHenry Middle School is and is that different from from McHenry Intermediate School. So give me the address, put the map there, help me to click on it and I can just go right from my phone, you know, so.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:06:41

Exactly.

Lee Stephenson: 00:06:42

That's great. One of the first pieces that somebody has to think through on the early front end of church planting and website development is URL.

What address should we come up with to, you know, identify our church from the digital perspective? Do you guys have any perspective on that? Ryan, when it comes to what makes a good URL, what should you be thinking when you're developing that side?

You know, pre somebody actually clicking on the website?

Ryan Emenecker: 00:07:13

Yeah, that's a tough one because it really can be all over the place. I think it's a saying we have around Converge, especially on my team. And writing content is clear, beats clever anytime, every time.

And so something that's going to be clear, understandable, you know, think about the area you're in, think about the other churches around, even think about is there another church?

You know, I think if there's a lot of First Baptists out there and so what can you add maybe to your URL that will make it memorable, unique, but still keeping it short, I think, you know, dot coms are fine. Typically they're dot orgs. Even recently, about two years ago they introduced a dot just church. And I think that is a great place to land.

You know, an example, I think of is, you know, if you're going to be Harvest Community Church or something like that, you could do something like Harvest Community Church. And having some of those additional URL extensions has really kind of opened up some of the opportunities for different URLs.

Danny Parmelee: 00:08:14

And if you can buy multiple, it's absolutely worth it. With domains being 10 to $15. If you are River Church and riverchurch.com river.riverchurch.org and River Church is available, I say buy it all.

As far as like a marketing kind of investment, it can be worth it. And especially if you're testing different things. So I'm a little more leery of some of the dot churches because it's not recognizable.

So for a non Christian, they're pretty much used to dot com and dot org, net and biz is kind of like the. Well, someone already bought up all the good ones, there's nothing left.

So one of my big things is to think audibly because people will hear the website. So that's where, again with the creativity and clever. Do not use dashes, do not use numbers that are also so like too like come to church.

Is that T O O, you know, T W O T o like what are you talking about here? And that can just get really confusing. And, and that. So, and I also say short as possible because it does come into design later on as well too.

If you have a really, really long one, like, you know, whatever, the branch church, Nashville, Tennessee. And it's like now you're trying to design with that, you've got basically an entire sentence that you're trying to balance out.

So if you can go shorter, that's good.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:09:38

Yeah. And I would also say buy all the URL versions. Don't necessarily use all the URL versions. Right.

I think every time, you know, there's a new campaign or a new this in the church or a new idea or student ministries or whatever, let's go buy a new URL and use it.

I would select a URL, buy all the different versions, but just have it be, you know, whatever.org and then, you know, student ministries and those kind of things and just keep it simple. It can get very confusing if you have all these URLs and you're sending people here and there and you know, then there's the cost on top of that.

And then it's a branding thing. Keep people on your website, don't be taking them to different sites, different URLs and different sites.

And then you're having to manage even potentially 18 different sites because all the URLs and that it can just get very complicated.

Lee Stephenson: 00:10:31

That's great. Ryan, talk to us a little bit.

What are must haves like when you're developing a website, what are the things that a church has to have on the website?

Ryan Emenecker: 00:10:42

Yeah, I think it goes back again to audience. So too many times we think of what does the church need on its website? And it's more what does the audience need on the church website?

So I think thinking through that lens and again going back to the two audiences, if you think of the newcomer, you may need to be able to attend a Sunday. So you've got to have information that will get them to your church.

And so that again is simple things like location, service time, sometimes churches you'll see, you'll have, you know what to expect. So it kind of tells what the atmosphere, those kind of things. Have some visuals to go along with that.

You know, hire a professional photographer to come and take some great pictures of your church. It shows real people.

So people you know, and it shows, hey, what are the people like they can start to see maybe themselves in that atmosphere versus using just stock photos. Yeah, using stock photos. I mean, at the end of the day, if you have to use stock photos, there's really nothing wrong with that.

But if you can spend the money and really make an investment in photography, you definitely want to do that. I think you've got to have obviously a giving section on there. Make sure it works great. That's important.

Lee Stephenson: 00:11:57

Okay, let me pause there. What do you mean by that when you say make sure it works great? Are there giving platforms that don't versus.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:12:04

Ones that do and yeah, I would say so. So a lot of it may depend on the church management system you might be using there. There are a few, I think of the church I'm going to now.

They use, let's see, Planning center, which is connected to. Can't think of the name right now they have a really easy Pushpay. Pushpay or no, no, it's an. It's another one. I just looked at it yesterday.

I can't think of what it is. Their system is really nice. It's literally you click from the website and you go to one page and all the giving is done there.

So you can set up your recurring donation. You're not having to click to multiple pages and sign in and that you can even make a donation without even starting an account.

You make the donation and it starts account for you. So then you can go back and look at Your giving history, download your statements. It makes it very clear and simple.

Danny Parmelee: 00:12:56

I think that we have something to learn from the political campaign. So that's the way that they operate. In other words, when all the presidents or centers are. You can go, here's the give.

You sign up and you give your donation. You know what I mean? It's not the most. They make it really easy to be able to.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:13:13

Yeah, I think if you can. So if you can. We're actually working on the Converge website right now.

And so we've really gone through and designed a giving process and so the least clicks as possible, you want to get their name, their billing information, how much, if it's recurring, you know, how often, and then email address and be done. You know, some churches, you know, you might have a dropdown because you're giving to a specific campus or campaign.

But the less fields you fill out, you know, you don't need to ask for blood type and Social Security number and all those kind of things. Get in and get them out, you know, and keep it simple.

And I've seen in the past where you go to a giving page and it's, you know, three paragraphs of copy and you got to scroll and scroll and scroll and find the button, it's a little text link and then you click off and you go to another site that the giving is even worse. And you're, you know, it's just so not understandable. So it could be very challenging.

And then I think maybe on the regular attender side of things, you know, you still want information for them.

So that way if you're, you know, for a month at church, put pushing small groups, they can go on there, they can get some basic information about small groups, maybe which small groups are there and register right away. So there are some times calendars. I think if you're going to do a calendars of event, don't put the actual calendar, maybe more because that's just.

You go on there and you can see different. This date has three events and you got to click and you're spending more time clicking than understanding what the event is.

Get in the information, what the event is, a little description, get them to register and make it easy. And sometimes that can even be accomplished through just specific landing pages. You don't even need a calendar of events page kind of a thing.

So again, thinking through what do regular attendees need to do? They need to give and probably sign up for events or small groups or something like that. Keep it simple.

Lee Stephenson: 00:15:09

Anything else that you would say a Church would need on there.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:15:15

Yeah, you know, I think different ministry information. I think it's good. You know, as part of first time guests, you'll have some people that are church people. It's not just those who have never attended.

So those type of people, even though they're searching for a church and you want to get them there, they'll want to know do they have a children's ministry, do they have a student ministry, you know, volunteer, those kind of things. But again, I think keep it simple. You don't have to give them the whole story and the entire information.

They're really, the goal is to get them to church. When they get to church, that's when they're really going to be able to connect. You want to make sure you have information for them.

They have a great experience.

Lee Stephenson: 00:15:56

What's your thoughts when it comes to sermon hosting? Third party integrations kind of things, those pieces of a website.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:16:03

Yeah, and that's probably the other thing is you want to make sure you have on a website is sermons, first time guests. Again they're going to want to know location, service time and then they're probably going to go to find out who the pastor is.

You know, does he look weird, is he normal, does he look like me? In some cases. And then they'll want to listen to a sermon because it's like can I listen to this person for half an hour or is he annoying?

Yeah, you know, I mean that's just reality.

Danny Parmelee: 00:16:27

So and I think with that what you can do is on your about sermon you can, you can hand select which sermon or do montage because again people a lot of times they won't listen to an hour.

But if you can do spend again a little bit of money on some video and do a little bit of a montage that's giving some of your highlights, that shows a good picture of who you are.

Because I agree they want to know what is it going to feel like, what is the pastor, what is he wearing, the experience, how does he talk, those different types of things. That's just really, really important.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:17:03

Yeah. And as far as hosting, a lot of it depends on how you're building the website.

So if you're doing something more custom, you're going and buying a WordPress template and you're gonna, you know, build it out yourself.

Then you've got, you know, there's simplecast, there's Libsyn, that are basically podcasting environments where you can store files and then embed it in your website. If you're gonna Use like a church plant media. That'll be all included. So you'll pick a template, you'll host all of your sermons in video.

There you'll have all the analytics, the navigation. I mean, basically a page built in. You just upload the file and that makes it real easy.

Lee Stephenson: 00:17:44

Which we've got a great partnership with for our converged churches. When it comes to website design is consider using church plant media.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:17:51

Yeah. And then even video. If you're not using a church plant media or tool like that, Vimeo is a great one to use.

You can start a free account and upload a certain amount of video each month and then they give you a link or embed code to put it on your site. And they make it pretty easy.

Danny Parmelee: 00:18:10

How much? So for those that are listening, maybe they're just kind of starting out. How much do websites cost? Give some different costs.

I know you can go different directions with that. But give me kind of like, hey, I'm going to just buy a WordPress template and domain to. I'm going to use one of these kind of plug and play to.

I'm just going to go hire a marketing company to build me a website. How much might they ask?

Ryan Emenecker: 00:18:35

So, yeah, we'll start with like a church plant media where, you know, they focus on building church websites. So they're going to give you, you know, again, an option of templates and the content management system behind it, basically.

Danny Parmelee: 00:18:49

And what's content management?

Ryan Emenecker: 00:18:50

Content management is basically an administrative tool. So you would log in and that's where all of your pages live and you can go in there and basically change content.

So content being, you know, words on the screen, images, video, all of that.

Danny Parmelee: 00:19:06

You basically change to a pastor that doesn't know any coding.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:19:10

You don't need to know coding. It's like literally there are fields and you fill them in. You know, it's almost like a survey how you fill in fields and stuff like that.

Fill it all in, hit save, and it automatically pushes it to the website. So it makes it real easy. And that's a great option. So at church plant media, usually they have packages with our relationship with them.

There's a startup fee of $500, which typically it's 1,000, so it's 50% off, and then it's $50 a month from there, which sounds like a lot, but really what you get, they really have kind of the full package. If you're gonna go hiring an actual marketing agency, you can probably spend anywhere from, I don't know, 10 to $30,000. It's not going to be cheap.

Danny Parmelee: 00:19:57

And church planners just have that in their back pocket. Yeah, that's the way to go.

Lee Stephenson: 00:20:01

Throwing money around like crazy. Make it rain.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:20:04

That's right. Go to the money tree, call an agency and you're good to go.

If you're going to buy a WordPress template, I mean you can buy WordPress templates literally for like $13 or $15 or something like that. I've done that in the past and seen that done.

So you can spend, if you know someone who knows code that can go by, you pick the WordPress template, they buy it. I mean you could literally spend maybe a couple hundred dollars if you wanted to. So you know, it's kind of a wide range.

You just have to figure out what's best. I would probably.

If you don't have someone who really not just understands coding but understands how to build a great website, if you don't have that, go with the church plant media, you're going to get the full package, you're going to have a great designed website.

Lee Stephenson: 00:20:48

And I'd be careful, like everybody knows somebody, be careful of falling into that trap to try to save a few dollars because in the long run it may be worth the professionals and it's.

Danny Parmelee: 00:21:00

Really knowing two people. So it's a designer and a website builder. Sometimes people can be both people, but a lot of times it's not.

So someone who is good at design and graphics and video on the creative side doesn't actually understand the structure side and the strategy and the building it out type of thing. So it is kind of almost needing to know two different. Two different people.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:21:22

Yeah, yeah. Because there's a, there's a lot of developers out there that yeah, are great at the development side of things, not great in the design.

They could probably take a pre purchased template that you know a pastor or somebody likes and do something with it. But yeah, if you're starting from scratch, you're going to need a designer and developer, that type of people.

Lee Stephenson: 00:21:39

So when it comes to website and mobile integration, what are your thoughts when it comes to mobile platforms for web connection?

Ryan Emenecker: 00:21:53

Yeah, I think so. Taking a step back, thinking about what does a website need to be? Your website has to work on every mobile device out there.

So phone, tablet, all of those. The way that most sites are built now is what called is responsive.

So basically you have one site and the layout shifts depending on the device you're on. So that's at a minimum you have to have that 90.

I think one of our other partners, Aware3 said something like 91% people have their phone in their hand or nearby them at all times. So I mean, obviously you guys know I'm in that group.

Lee Stephenson: 00:22:35

Oh yeah, totally.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:22:37

So it's gotta be.

Lee Stephenson: 00:22:38

I've been meaning to talk to you about that Ryan.

Ryan Emenecker: 00:22:40

So keep me accountable. So that's important. As far as you know, do I have a church website, Do I have a mobile app? I kind of go back and forth with this one a little bit.

There are a lot of great apps out there that will include a lot of what we have been talking about. I think it comes down to again, you know, the audience accessibility, all of that.

The church I kind of mentioned before that I helped out at, we decided that for new time guests, you know, that again that website's going to be really geared towards them. But the experience for our regular attendees needed to be different. And so we decided to.

We ended up creating our own but essentially creating a separate site or a mobile app that really focused on what they wanted. So that was the giving. We had sermon notes on there, small group notes.

We would have calendar of events, really those things that regular attendees kind of care about. So I'm not against having a mobile app and a regular website. It just depends on need. Sometimes you can have both at a minimum.

I guess I think wise sometimes it's pay for the extra expense of an app when really your website could potentially do it all. But there's a lot of websites or mobile apps that offer a lot of great pieces to it and stuff like that.

Lee Stephenson: 00:24:03

That's good.

As we kind of come to a close here, is there any just last words of wisdom that you would give a planter to think through when it comes to integrating a strong web presence in their community?

Ryan Emenecker: 00:24:17

Yeah, I think we've been talking a lot about the how and even the who, you know, making sure the website's great, some of the tools, those kind of things. I think you've also really got to think about your content and the messaging, you know, what are you saying to people?

Because really your design, your website, it's only as good as the content you put into it.

And so you really have to make sure that you know, you look at the content on the page, what are you saying to people, you know, is it clear, don't use church words.

And some of those things that you know again that first time guest who maybe doesn't know anything about God, Jesus, the Bible, church, anything like that isn't going to understand. And so that's just as important.

You know, what visuals and videos, you know, put your best effort into all of that as much as you do into buying URLs and, you know, creating the template and design and all that. And then manage it well after that, you know, revisit your content. Your website doesn't have to be constantly updated all the time.

It just has to, I would say, have that consistency. Talk about your vision, your mission, your message, you know, and talk to people. This website is for them. It's not really for you. In the end.

Yes, it's a tool to help you connect with people, but it's really for them. And again, getting kind of break down to it, getting people to attend your church.

Once you get them there, make sure that the experience moving forward is just as good. Welcome them as a guest. You're. You're essentially inviting guests into your home. So make sure you follow through with that.

Lee Stephenson: 00:25:53

Super, Ryan, thanks so much. Great information, I think. Great.

You know what a great asset it is for guys to have perspective on web design, web content, and very, very helpful conversation. So thank you for taking the time to be with us, guys. Until next time, keep it real. This has been our unfiltered podcast. We'll talk to you next time.