Here Are Some of The Best Church Websites Today
You have finally decided to build a church website for your congregation. You want to make it the best that you can, and inspire others in the process. After all, you want to spread the message and get people interested in your church!
In this post, we will be looking at some of the top church websites today and what makes them so great. These examples will help you decide on a design for your own church website, inspiring you to inspire others.
Saddleback Church
This is the website for one of America’s most popular churches. You can find out all about Saddleback Church and Pastor Rick Warren here, as well as how to visit their church in person or watch a live stream online. The photography on this site is beautiful, being well lit and nicely framed.
With just 6 main menu options, it’s easy to navigate for newcomers and previous visitors alike. A welcoming website with bright colours and a great layout.
Grace Church
The Grace Church website takes a different approach. While keeping the main menu options to a minimum, there are many sublinks, giving access to pages around every aspect of the church.
Still quite simple to navigate, the photography is artful and not as bright as Saddleback – this gives the site a calmer feel.
Elevation Church
Making great use of their chosen accent colour (orange) the site is bright and energetic. It also has a great layout, with many links that are all grouped very sensibly.
There’s plenty of good contrasts in this site – bright photos are framed by dark backgrounds, white text against an orange background, etc. The real key is in the simplicity of what is shown – photos and videos from services take a prominent place, showing that you don’t need a tricky or clever design to have an impact.
Vineyard Churches
https://www.vineyardchurches.org.uk/
Working with a darker colour choice, white on black is the order of the day with a hint of light blue. Showcasing photos and videos of services and other events works well, while the overall look is professional and confident.
Some of the main interests of the church are shown on the homepage, including large prominent links to the next national event and information on church planting.
One Church
This site shows what can be achieved with a very visual website – there are more pictures and videos than there are words on the homepage!
The design is minimal and clean, while the homepage layout includes a great range of content with lots for visitors to explore. There are also links for different campuses, and an option to sign up for email updates – something that is less prominent on other sites.
Hints and Tips for Creating a Great Church Website
A church website should be designed to serve the visitor. Church website design should be considered carefully, and this includes the user interface element, not just the choice of images and colours.
UK church websites are just as capable of being useful to visitors as the megachurch websites are in the US, but you need to put yourself in the right mindset. You need to consider what any visitor will want from your site.
If you want to build a successful church website for today, then consider the following points:
- Is your site easy to navigate?
- Does it have interesting content that people can browse or search through with ease?
- Does it provide an opportunity for visitors to be in contact with you and sign up to any email newsletters and/or social media?
- Does it show your upcoming events and services?
- Does the site offer a way for people to donate and support your church financially?
- Is there an opportunity on your website to find out more about the leaders of the church, or even learn why they should attend one of your services?
There are many things that need to be considered from a technical aspect too, not the least of which is how well the site functions on both mobile and desktop devices.
You need to make sure that your site is running smoothly, and all links are working as they should. And perhaps most importantly, you also want to make sure the design of the website does not distract from any information on it or detract from its usability in any way.
You don’t need a flashy site when you have compelling content.
The church website is often one of the most important and influential outreach tools a church has. It is vitally important for any church to make sure that it does not only have the content, but also the design of its website in line with its mission statement–and this includes having easy-to-find contact information on every page.
If you’re ready to get started on your church website design, you might want to take a look at our comparison of church website building tools here.