{"id":712262,"date":"2020-06-03T02:00:29","date_gmt":"2020-06-03T06:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/?p=712262"},"modified":"2020-06-02T21:41:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-03T01:41:00","slug":"12-marks-of-bad-church-websites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/12-marks-of-bad-church-websites\/","title":{"rendered":"12 Marks of Bad Church Websites"},"content":{"rendered":"

When our church consulting teams hire \u201cspies\u201d to visit churches, we usually give them only the name and address of the church. We want them to see if the church has a website and if the website is actually attractive and helpful. Here are several problems our \u201cspies\u201d have found with websites.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The church doesn\u2019t have a website.<\/b> It\u2019s almost hard to believe today that a congregation has no Internet presence, but it does happen. A church without a website seems almost non-existent in a world where potential guests first turn to the Internet to learn about them.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. The website looks cheap or out of date. <\/b>Ask some young people to critique your church\u2019s site. If they tell you it\u2019s not attractive, it\u2019s probably not. You likely already know if the site was cheap.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. The site has no contact information.<\/b> Maybe it\u2019s just an oversight, or perhaps the church has no one to answer phones or respond to emails. Either way, the church has closed the door on a primary means of communication.<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. The site provides no information about the services.<\/b> Again, it\u2019s almost unbelievable that a church would have a website with no service information. On the other hand, a church that thinks about only its own members probably sees no need to include service times (and, our experience is that the church with no service information on their site also doesn\u2019t respond to requests for information).\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  5. The information is out of date. <\/b>It\u2019s always nice to know the details about the church\u2019s community-wide Thanksgiving dinner \u2013 except when it\u2019s January of the next year! Sometimes the dated information is deeper in the site than the home page, but any dated material is almost useless material.<\/span><\/li>\n
  6. Spelling or grammar errors are common.<\/b> I realize that website writing does not always require complete sentences, etc., but the errors we\u2019re talking about here are basic writing errors such as misspelled words. Somebody in the church should catch these problems before the public catches them.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  7. Links don\u2019t work. <\/b>Sometimes links to pages about other events go nowhere. Sign-ups for upcoming events aren\u2019t functioning properly. Home page links to staff information go to blank pages. Again, potential guests should not be the first to recognize these problems.<\/span><\/li>\n
  8. No driving directions are provided. <\/b>Providing a clearly identified street address for the church is a start. With the numerous options available for linking to maps and driving directions, though, not providing those links is a serious omission. <\/span><\/li>\n
  9. Stock pictures don\u2019t reflect the church. <\/b>The pictures may reflect the \u201cvision\u201d of the church, but website visitors will not know that. If the pictures are all young families and the congregation is only senior adults, the visiting family with preschoolers will probably be surprised.<\/span><\/li>\n
  10. No recorded or streamed sermons are available. <\/b>Like it or not, potential guests may choose to listen to a sermon before deciding whether to attend. Not making sermons available may well make the decision for those guests.<\/span><\/li>\n
  11. Childcare information is not provided. <\/b>Young families will likely look elsewhere if this information is not available.<\/span><\/li>\n
  12. The site does not include an easily located, clearly described plan of salvation. <\/b>You never know who may visit your site. If a non-believer checks out the site, will he\/she have the opportunity to read and respond to the gospel?\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u00a0<\/b>What other marks of bad websites have you seen?<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When our church consulting teams hire \u201cspies\u201d to visit churches, we usually give them only the name and address of the church. We want them to see if the church has a website and if the website is actually attractive and helpful. Here are several problems our \u201cspies\u201d have found with websites.","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":712263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"publish_to_discourse":"0","publish_post_category":"1","wpdc_auto_publish_overridden":"","wpdc_topic_tags":"","wpdc_pin_topic":"","wpdc_pin_until":"","discourse_post_id":"","discourse_permalink":"","wpdc_publishing_response":"","wpdc_publishing_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[179,180],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-712262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-first-impressions","category-outreach-and-evangelism"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n12 Marks of Bad Church Websites | Church Answers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Our church consulting teams hire \u201cspies\u201d to visit churches. 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