There are so many cool features that can be added to a website. There are wondrous visual effects, slick technical tricks, amazing feats of audio-visual magic. Most of it adds little to a website and much of it actually hinders its functionality.

A site needs to be visually attractive; there are some church websites that scream 1995 when you open them, with the little animated icons and boxy layout. There are others that are so visually overwhelming that its next to impossible to find any real information. Every time you move your cursor, something new pops up at you. Videos are running on both sides of the page, with a slideshow moving across the middle.

And please, PLEASE, get rid of the splash page. You know, that landing page that has no real content on it. There was a moment in time when that was appealing. But those three minutes and 40 seconds have passed. People don’t want to go to your site, then have to click to actually get to any real content. They want to read something now. Reports show that people become impatient if a page takes more than a second to load, and if it takes over 10 seconds, they’ll usually go elsewhere.

Never lose sight of the fact that, when it comes to church websites, content is king. People want information. Yes, like I say, an ugly website can create a bad impression. But a website that won’t load because they don’t have the SnazzMaster™ plugin on their computer also creates a bad impression.

Think about our technology. Why are mp3s so popular? Because of their quality? No. Because of their accessibility. Why do newscasts now show cellphone videos? Because of the high def picture they produce? Nope. Its because the information can be had now. In many ways, the text message is a huge step backwards. But it’s become the dominant communication form for a whole generation. Is it pretty? Not at all. No bells. No whistles. But it works, right now. That’s what you want on your website. Something that works. Right now.

Or do you see it differently? I’d like to hear your experiences with websites in general and church websites in particular.

Members need quick access to church information. At the same time, churches don’t want to publish all information to public; today’s world has raised new security concerns.

If your church feels the need to make some members’ info available on the web but only to certain users, there are several approaches. The basic approach is to have certain sections of your site visible to all, but accessible only with a password. I’d deem this the least attractive. People can become suspicious of “No Trespassing” signs on a church website; just what are they hiding? Maybe most people understand this, but since there are other solutions to this problem, I don’t see the point in possibly offending your visitors.

Another tack is to set up a separate site for members. This can be done in many ways; a lot of churches use Facebook for their members, posting private information in a closed group on that site.

More and more, it’s becoming easy to assign different levels of users on a site. Members sign in and are able to see parts of the site that are otherwise invisible to other users. To me, that’s a more elegant solution. I’d love to hear how your views on this issue.

Here are some basics that members need:

• A calendar of events. It’s easy to set up calendars today. I recommend using Google Calendars, but there are lots of options. A good calendar will not only tell you when and where, but also provide a map to the location, have contact info for the organizers, etc.
• Contact info for church leaders and event organizers. Make sure the church phone number is readily available as well.
• Access to recent bulletins. This is especially helpful to those who travel over the weekend and to shut-ins.
• Sermon downloads. Once churches had an active tape ministry. Little by little, the download is replacing that.
• Links to ministries that the church supports. If you support missionaries, non-profits or other ministries, your members should have any easy way to get more info about those efforts.

Beyond that, there is much you can add: photos, discussions, blogs… What are some of the things you can think of? What can a church offer on its website that would be of special help to its members?

It seems to me that we often focus too much of our attention on the “look and feel” of a church website and don’t spend enough time thinking about the content. While I’m not advocating an ugly website, I think that the majority of our planning needs to be focused around what we’re going to say.

Let’s think about outsiders first. We need to consider our website content from the point of view of someone who knows absolutely nothing about our church. That means we need to include the basics, like address (including city and state!), contact information, and meeting times. Those things are pretty basic, but it’s surprising how many church sites lack one or the other of these vital facts.

From there, you want to give them an insight into who you are. Describe your beliefs and your mission. Provide an overview of the different ministries that go on at your church. Tell with some detail what a visitor can expect when they visit your assemblies. It can really help to have a photo of a service, so that they can have an idea of how formal or informal the dress is. Actively seek to avoid “Christianese,” that church jargon that only makes sense to insiders.

Find someone in your congregation with a good feel for writing and proofreading. Have them look over everything. While your writing doesn’t have to professional, you don’t want it to look sloppy, either.

In another post, I’ll talk about making your site member friendly. But for now, let’s talk about non-members. What things should we be providing them on our church website? What things should we avoid?

Back in 1996, we were making arrangements to open an annex of an existing language school. One of the things that I decided to do was to put up a website. Admittedly, I was a bit ahead of my time in Argentina; Internet use was not yet widespread there. Still, I felt there would be some prestige in having a website.

There weren’t a lot of design programs available to me. I ended up buying a book on HTML and coding the site “by hand.” It was far from beautiful, but it was functional. And it allowed us to advertise that we had a website, a mark of prestige at that time.

Things have changed greatly, but the need to have a website is still there, especially for churches. And there are lots of tools to make having a website a reasonably simple process. I want to spend some time over the next few days discussing church websites.

As we begin, let me ask you: what do you look for in a church website? What would you hope to find there? What shouldn’t be on a site? What advice would you give to a church that doesn’t have a site or that is looking to redo its site?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.