Confessions of a once reluctant web designer
I’m technically a millennial, but it’s probably more accurate to describe me as an “elder millennial.” I’m a native Internet user and got facebook right at the beginning (2004) and all that jazz. But my tech skills come from the fact that I’ve done a lot of online research as part of my college and graduate degrees, and I like to solve problems, and I care a great deal (too much?) about just. making. things. work. If you had told me a few years ago that I would be confident enough in the worlds of web design and basic online marketing to be offering these services to other communities businesses, I would have laughed at you and then gone about watching The Good Place. And yet, here we are.
When I started working at my church back in 2016, fresh out of a stint working as an attorney at Legal Aid that burned me out faster than you can say “holy forking shirtballs,” I never really gave much thought to our website. Our Director of Operations managed it and it was really pretty, compared to other church websites I’d attempted to navigate in the past. However, as I learned more about how to keep my own programming and events up to date on the site, I kept finding pages and information that were two or three years old. The digital native in me decided that this was a bit embarrassing for the church, so I started learning how to do slightly more complicated things, and puttered around, editing pages and events, exploring settings, watching how-to videos, and adding content until things were roughly up to date.
Since that first slow ramp-up of my web design skillset, I’ve come to see that websites are massive opportunities to create a warm and inviting space for visitors and congregants, to put your mission and values front and center, to set expectations and tone for newbies, and to give people a reason to trust you enough to visit you. Statistics show that roughly 187% of people google a church before they decide whether they’re going to visit.* When you actually invest in this space, it works.
I know. I was also surprised.
I can tell you the first time someone in a new member’s class (which I was also running at the time) declared that the reason they visited the church for the first time was because they were impressed with the website. My heart grew 10 sizes that day! I’d worked hard to make the copy accessible and inspiring, and the church was always fantastic, but it made a difference how we packaged information about all the great ministry that was already happening. People felt welcome, and saw a possibility to connect.
I started noticing a pattern in more new members classes and when I spoke with visitors. People don’t stay in churches because of websites, but it is often the thing that gets them in the door - be it virtual or otherwise - in the first place. So having a good one - one that you can manage confidently - matters.
Our website is built in Wordpress, which is a great tool for expert web developers, but not as DIY friendly as one would hope. I’ve learned a ton, and still manage most of our website, but I will never build a website in Wordpress again. For those unfamiliar with this tool, it’s really popular and in theory is super cool because it’s free and open-source, which means that anyone can build little programs (plug-ins) to create all kinds of functionality within the platform. The problem is, if you are a lawyer and theologically trained ministry director who can’t tell a sneakily evil line of code from an elegantly beautiful one, Wordpress breaks a lot. And while Wordpress is free, you have to pay a company to host it on their servers, which adds another level of things to learn and things that can break and things to pay for. And, depending on how you build your site in the first place, the template (“theme”) you use may suddenly stop being updated, which means that things will break even more and that you need to migrate your site, pay a developer to update all the code, or give in and drown your sorrows in a massive quantity of frozen yogurt while your website ages into oblivion.
I highly recommend not allowing this to happen. Leaving your website alone in its “quirkiness” equates to telling would-be-visitors that you don’t actually care about their first experience with your church. That is, you aren’t willing to invest in the people who actually take an interest in getting to know you. We have some words for this in the church. Welcome. Hospitality. Evangelism (yes, my progressive friends, I said the e-word.). And so, I continue to wrestle with Wordpress because I love my church. But I have learned a new way. A better way. An all-in-one user-friendly well-supported way. I have learned the way of Sqaurespace.
Building my own website in Squarespace has been fun. It’s intuitive and easy to play around in, and I love that it’s supported by and hosted by the company that developed the platform. Squarespace users pay one monthly fee (probably $12-18 for most churches) and you don’t need to worry about security stuff because there are sooooooooo many fewer possible entry points for weaknesses in your site. You can integrate it with social media platforms, your church database, google suite products, email marketing software, calendars, online giving tools...everything most churches are looking for! I’ll post more details about each of these things in the future, but holy moly, it’s so much easier to use. And, it’s so much easier to make it look beautiful and welcoming and...hospitable. And, it’s so much easier to teach.
The era of pandemic-necessitated virtual everything has required churches to pivot on a dime, and so many church workers and volunteers are scrappily putting it all together, week after week, program after program, with “I’m sorry, you’re muted!” reminders 47 times per day. There’s not always a lot of time to think strategically - especially if you have a small staff that is in the trenches and meeting the needs of your people all day, every day.
But I love to think strategically. And I would love to talk with you to see whether I could help you integrate your ministry into a new or migrated website, or to be a sounding board for your other pandemic tech problems.
*statistic may be slightly exaggerated :)
