One of the hardest battles for small to mid-size churches is how to get their sermons online.
The benefits of adding your sermons to your website are huge and in the year 2011 there are no more excuses for not uploading your content. Technology advances have helped lower the cost and you don’t need anything too fancy to record your sermons. Later, we will cover simple ways to record your sermons, but for now let’s assume you are already recording your sermons. So, how do we get them online?
Let’s be honest, you haven’t given any thought to making your church website mobile friendly. With smartphones everywhere in the US, as web designers we need to be aware that more and more people will access our sites from their mobile phones. Luckily, for website developers, this task isn’t that a big issue. There are CSS frameworks available in the market that allows users to make mobile versions of every web application.
Today I want to share with you some of my favorite plugins and frameworks that will make it easy for you to create a mobile version of your website. Enjoy!
I am a big fan of clean and simple websites. I also believe that your contact forms should also be simple and easy to use. I see web forms all over the place that require too much information, or don’t have clear instructions. Today I want to look at what you can do to help create a great web form.
Now, I am a huge fan of Wufoo. A great company that provides a very easy way to create and edit your web forms. I love them so much, that I use them on just about every website I work on. So let’s take a look at what you can do to optimize your web forms.
Getting people to your church can be hard work. You would be surprised how many church websites I see without a directions/location page! But even worse are the churches that only put their address on their location page.
Today I want to encourage you to use http://www.google.com/maps to create a custom map and directions. This quick and easy update, you literally paste the Google Map code into your CMS, will give your site that extra little feature to highlight where you are located.
Take a look at a great example from LifeChurch.tv:
This is a great example of what you can do to! I love that they list service times, a google map, and contact information! Do you have a great example of a location page? I would love to see them!
Website Ideas is a new series that features quick tips on how to better improve your church website.
Personalize your church website by featuring your pastor on your homepage. By taking your pastor and putting their image on the homepage, you can create a personalized feel to your church website. With so many websites using templates and themes, you need a way to make sure your website feels personal. So put on your nicest suit, or best pair of designer jeans, let’s get your photo on your website.
I am big fan of Seth Godin. If you don’t know who Seth Godin is, you can visit his site here. Seth Godin is a marketing and leadership expert. He has written 12 books on the subject and all of them have been bestsellers. I just finished his latest book and there are a lot of great things, as leaders, we can take away from this book.
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