7 Complaints When Visiting a Church Website

7 Complaints When Visiting a Church Website

June 4, 2015 by

Your church website is often a guest’s first impression of your church. During last week’s #cmschat on Twitter, our followers shared what they thought were the major complaints when first visiting a church website. Here were some of their top issues:

  • Hidden Information: Because everyone wants to try a church that doesn’t even tell you when they meet or where they’re located. Your service times and location should be one of the first things your audience sees on the church website.
  • Out-of-Date Material: No one likes a sudden time shift, especially if it means you just walked into the service 20 minutes late. Make sure all your service times are accurate, especially around the holidays.
  • Insider Language: Christian jargon is bad enough, but referencing locations in the church by nicknames or worse, acronyms on the church website? Steer clear of this.
  • Too Many “Extras”: Too often, visitors are accosted on the homepage with information about the latest shift in treats in the coffee bar rather than the newest sermon series. Your visitors will be overwhelmed with the information, so insert only facts that are needed for potential visitors. These facts include service times, dress attire, driving directions and more.
  • Unclear Theology: Most of our users agreed they were hesitant to visit a church if the theology seemed vague. Make sure your mission statement and other doctrinal details are easy to find.
  • No Mobile Version: In a world of smartphones, there’s no reason your church website shouldn’t have a mobile version. This is especially helpful when your visitors need to double-check directions while driving to your church.
  • Clunky Language: When you’re writing for the Internet, it’s almost guaranteed that your readers will skim. Make sure your copy is quick and easy to read, breaking it up by using bullets, headers and more. You should also group basic visitor information on a single page.

Pay Attention to Stats

Several in the #cmschat community advised improving your church’s website by paying attention to your analytics. When you know which pages have the most clicks and returns, you’ll understand what sort of information your audience wants as well as which parts they consider clutter.

Example Church Websites

If you need some inspiration, check out some of these great examples of effective visitor experience websites shared by our community:

Final Website Thoughts

But most importantly, some of the closing advice from our #cmschat community:

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Post By:

Celine Murray


Celine is recent graduate who is still getting used to sitting for eight hours at a time. She blogs regularly at Latchkey Writing & Editing.
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One Response to “7 Complaints When Visiting a Church Website”

  • Jeremy Smith
    June 6, 2015

    As someone that went looking for churches via websites recently, you missed a big one. Ministries for teens, yourh, and childcare. We knew we wanted these services and if a church didn’t have it on their site, we didn’t even mess with visiting.


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