Avoid building a bad church website

Problems and bad mistakes

Many church websites are attractively designed, and yet seem to fail at one crucial point: they are not user-friendly to outsiders. Yet a church website should be its 'shop window' for the outside community. A site which has been designed with non-Christians as its first priority can be highly effective in reaching outsiders in the community.

Internet Evangelism Day offers church website resources to help your church develop its website to reach non-Christians. Our main resource links on church website design:

• Church Website Free Evaluation Tool - a stategic self-assessment questionnaire that helps you to assess your church website design online, and discover areas of the design which could be developed so that the site relates to outsiders. One key emphasis is the importance of testing the website using non-Christians. Fill in the questionnaire, and get a free custom 15-page evaluation report about your church website. This design tool can be syndicated into any other Christian site using a simple javascript insertion code, and it can also be freely published in print media.
• 70+ Church Website Tips - this page of tips builds on the principles explained in the self-assessment design tool. It can also be inserted into any other website, or published in print media.
• Building church websites – resource links to many other church website guides including a white paper on church websites (PDF document) and a video seminar.
• Vital video seminar from the team who developed the SouthsideLife church website.

We also offer pages on many other strategies for using the Internet to share the Gospel – follow the links in the left-hand menu. One important fact to get hold of: you can do web evangelism without being at all technical!