Seven (Plus One) Deadly Sins of a Church Website

Allow me to begin with a couple of negative comments.

Most church leaders don’t grasp the value of a website to get guests to their churches to hear the gospel.

Most church websites are terrible.

I just finished looking at over 100 websites from a variety of churches of a variety of sizes. I am not an expert in either design or technology, so my primary purpose was to look at the sites from the perspective of a person considering visiting the church. Forgive my judgmental words, but I was not impressed with most of the sites.

I do not have confirmation of these statistics, so I am hesitant to put them in writing. Nevertheless, the unconfirmed numbers indicate that between 75% and 90% of potential guests to your church will first look at the church’s website before making a final decision to attend.

Did you get that? As many as nine out of ten prospective guests will get their first impression of your church based on what they see when they go to the church website. That’s huge! It may be the most overlooked outreach tool we have. The church that minimizes the value of its website is the church that is missing many opportunities to reach people.

Certainly the website should have features for the members, but it’s the guests who are often overlooked. Allow me to share the greatest omissions on the websites; what I humorously call the seven deadly sins. Read more

I have not only found many Anglican and Episcopal church websites to be abysmal but also diocesan, sub-jurisdictional, and provincial websites. Some are designed not to provide information to those visiting the website but withhold it; others, to sell it.