12 Principles for Organizing a Church Website

I manage the website for my church, www.thechurchalive.org, and we are going to be meeting tonight to discuss some ways to further enhance our church website going into 2008.  I ran across this blog post on  ourchurch.com and thought that it had some pretty good points that I would highlight here.  We have a couple of things this next year that I am going to custom develop for them including a site redesign and possibly some e-commerce and podcasting functionality.

12 Principles for Organizing a Church Website

1) There isn’t one right answer.
The first and possibly most important principle is that there isn’t one “right” or “best” way to organize a church website.  While all churches have some things in common and all church websites should have some things in common, there are enough differences that one structure does not fit all.  So, don’t let anyone tell you you have to organize your site in a specific way, and don’t think you can go to the website of another church you admire and use the same structure.  The next 3 principles explain why that is the case.

2) Website structure will depend on the church’s mission.
Some churches have a holistic ministry approach and operate homeless shelters, job training centers, and rehab facilities.  Some churches plant and support new churches overseas.  Some churches have seminaries or teaching ministries.   Obviously this is going to impact the organization of the church’s website.  What is your church’s mission?

3) Website structure will depend on the church’s priorities.
Even if two churches have identical missions (if that’s possible), their website structure could differ depending on their priorities.  One church that operates a homeless shelter, job training center, and rehab facility might say, “This is what we’re all about.” It might give each of these ministries a main menu items with several sub-pages under each.  Another church with those same ministries may say, “This is a part of who we are, but we have other ministries that are just as important.”  It might put all those ministries under a “Help Centers” main menu item.  What are the 3 or 4 main priorities of your church?

4) Website structure will depend on the church’s content.
Even two church’s with identical missions and identical priorities (if that’s possible) could have different website structures depending on the content they are able to produce and maintain.  One church may have the ability to post audio and video of each service on their site while another does not.  Some churches may have their staff blog about their ministries.  Other churches may decide they want to facilitate interaction among members with personal profiles, forums, and private messaging.  Whether or not your church has these things as a part of its website will affect the way it’s organized.  What content is your church producing for its website?

5) Think from multiple users’ perspectives.
Take some time to think about the people who will use your website.  Some common visitors might include:

• An unchurched person who is feeling God nudge them to look for a church.
• A Christian who recently moved into the area who is looking for a new church.
• A member of your church who forgot when and where the church picnic is.
• A person who visited your church the last few Sundays who wants to know how to become better connected.
• A couple in the area who don’t go to church but are looking for a church to get married in.
• A member of your church who is struggling with something and looking for help.
• A member of your church who heard about the great things God is doing in the youth ministry and might be interested in volunteering.

Then ask yourself, “How can I organize the site and label the menu items in such a way that each of them will be able to find what they’re looking for as quickly and easily as possible?”

6) Keep pages short.
Your goal is to help people find information quickly, and easily and one of the ways to do that is to keep pages short.  For example, don’t create one “About us” page that includes a description of the church, photos of the church, contact information, a map, a doctrinal statement, your senior pastor’s bio, and the organist’s infamous triple berry pie recipe.  Instead, create an “About us” section and put each of those items on a separate page (and consider omitting the recipe).

7) Group pages into sub-menus that are intuitive to users.
Another way to help visitors find information quickly and easily is by using sub-menus.  If you have 30 pages on your website, you don’t want some people to have to read through the entire list before they find what they’re looking for.  You’d be better off with 5 or 6 main menu items each having 5 or 6 pages in it.  In some cases you may want to have second level sub-menus.  For example our site has a “Community” main menu item with “7th –12th Grade” under that and “Photos” (student photo galleries) another level after that.

Additionally, it’s important that the menu groupings be intuitive.  This requires you to try to think like your visitors.  Don’t organize pages based on the church’s org chart or order them by spiritual gift as written in 1 Corinthians 12.  Also try to avoid using “Misc” menu items.  If a page doesn’t seem to fit under any of the menus maybe it should have a link in the main menu or maybe it shouldn’t exist.

8) Avoid confusing menu systems and styles.
I’ve seen some sites that have a menu that goes horizontally across the top of the site and second one that goes vertically down the left side.  I don’t get that.  I’ve seen other sites that put links along the bottom footer of the website but then omit those pages from the navigation menu.  Other sites try to be creative by putting the menu in different places on different pages or use cool Flash animation effects.  Be creative with your content, but stay simple and intuitive with your navigation menus.

9) Give menus names everyone can understand.
One of the goals of your website should be to provide information to prospective visitors.  For that reason there are 2 pitfalls you want to avoid with naming menus.  First, steer clear of Christianees terms like “Sacraments,” “Liturgy,” “Deacons,”etc.  Those terms are meaningless to unchurched people and will cause them to feel like outsiders.  Second, try to avoid using ministry names that people outside the church wouldn’t know.  For example, my church’s youth ministry is called “High Tide,” but if you don’t go to our church, you wouldn’t know that.  So, instead of putting “High Tide” in the menu we used “7th – 12th grade.”  (We did use “High Tide” on the youth ministry page itself.)

10) Give content for visitors priority placement.
Obviously, you’d like to have all your web pages easily accessible, but visitors should be given highest priority because a) reaching out to unbelievers is the highest calling of the church, b) visitors have never been to your site and are unfamiliar with it, and c) if they can’t find something they won’t ask, they’ll just leave.  So, make your first menu item an “About us” or “Just visiting?” link that takes them to a section of pages about the church.

11) Cross-link like crazy on pages.
No matter how intuitively you group and name your menus, some people are going to end up on a page other than the one they were looking for, especially if you have several pages on related topic.  For that reason, you want to liberally link to related pages to help people move around your site.  Every time you mention a ministry, it should be linked to the main page for that ministry.  Every time you mention a person, ideally it should like to a contact form for that person.

Another example… our church is doing a Sunday series about helping people in need called “Disturbing Reality.”  We created a “Disturbing Reality” page for the series, a separate page about the garage sales we’re doing in the community to raise money for a school in Haiti, there is a page with notes and audio from each Sunday service, and a Sermon Audio page which has audio from all recent services.  While a person can get to all of those pages through the navigation menu, each of those pages has links to the others pages to help people easily move from one to the other without having to look in the menu.

12) Feature the most important things on the homepage.
While everything on your site should be accessible through the navigation menus, the most important things should be one click away on the homepage.  For most churches that is probably the next Sunday’s service, information about the church for visitors, and possibly a few important upcoming events.  The temptation is to try to put too much on the homepage.  So, remember if everything is a high priority then nothing is a high priority.

» Church Web Design Part 9: 12 Principles for Organizing a Church Website