"I found the process of working with the team very easy. I was given lots of helpful advice and suggestions. I am very pleased with the finished result.

We now have a professional, fresh-looking website that reflects our church's identity and enables visitors to the website to gain a good understanding of our church and its mission. Thank you so much, Church Pages team!"

Carolyn Schofield, Lydbrook Baptist Church

Lydbrook Baptist Church is a small church based in Lower Lydbrook in the Forest of Dean. Affiliated to the Baptist Union of Great Britain the church is made up of elderly members and was founded over 150 years ago. However, inspired by the life-changing power of the gospel to reach out to their neighbourhood, the church wanted to a website that reflected their values and was a point of contact for anyone in their community.

Lydbrook Baptist Church got in touch with Church Pages after receiving an email from our Team and contacting us to find out more how we could serve them. Being a small church without extensive funds Church Pages was ideally placed to help Lydbrook Baptist Church set up a small website because the Church Pages Initiative had been set up with churches like theirs in mind.

How the website was designed and built

Lydbrook Baptist Church knew that they wanted a very simple template that was easy to manage and so chose the Caleb Church Pages Design Template. The church then began to gather copy and images and swiftly sent through all the information that we needed to create the site. Where images were missing they asked us to find free images that would be suitable for the site. The images that were used very clearly showed the warmth and friendliness of the congregation, and even though one of the images wasn't quite as sharp as we normally would use the composition was so excellent that it didn't matter.

The finished website has the following features:

• An engaging home page that clearly shows the friendly nature of the church.
• A home page that can be easily edited and shows clearly where the church is located.
• Sermons uploaded that can be searched by filter.
• Information on Lydbrook's activities during the week.
• A footer with contact and social media  links.

As Lydbrook Baptist Church were specific about what they wanted to feature on the site the creation and build of the website was not too difficult. There were some simple amends along the way, but the site was built quickly.

We also gave training to Carolyn at the church so that she could edit the website herself, but of course we are always just a phone call or email away.

What else did Church Pages do?

We added optimisation tags to the website and put in a link to the church's Facebook page to help web visitors link to Lydbrook Baptist Church's social media presence. We also added in web stats so the church could determine the number of visitors to the site and what actions they took once they arrived.

How did the website go live?

Lydbrook Baptist Church decided to buy a new domain for their website, so Church Pages purchased this for them.

Conclusion

The team at Church Pages were very pleased to have helped Lydbrook Baptist Church to create an up-to-date, responsive, and friendly website that engages with their community.

The new Lydbrook Baptist Church website can be viewed here.