Working with Libby, Bellevue's Comms Coordinator, was a real pleasure. The church wanted a bespoke site and had clear ideas of what they wanted to feature on their home page. This included:

• a video that highlighted their congregation and service,
• information on services and events,
• easy to find information for new comers, families, and the community, and
• a features area that they could add to as and when they had new things to promote, 

They also wanted the site to reflect their logo, so we used this to create textured backgrounds, and we put overlays on images to ensure that everything held together. We were very pleased with Bellevue Chapel's finished website as were they. Libby said:

"ChurchPages created a website that exhibits the warmth and welcoming nature of Bellevue Chapel all while bringing our web presence up-to-date and making it a user-friendly experience. Working with the ChurchPages team was like visiting great friends who support and encourage you while walking a path alongside you. If a church needs a new website then they should check out Church Pages, they are tops in their field!"

O Isma Pinta was set up to meet that need. After running Sunday School and kids' bible camps in Portugual it became clear to the founder of O Isma Pinta, Ismael Luzia,' that there was a real vacuum in biblical animated resources. "There were plenty of resources in Brazilian Portuguese, but I wanted to create something that my kids could enjoy in their native Portuguese to help them to learn more about God's word."

Being a skilled animator, and encouraged by his wife, O Isma Pinta came into being. "It really is a family mission because my wife and kids are so involved, writing and performing each film's kid song with me.

How Did Church Pages Help?

The Church Pages' Initiative is not just about supporting churches to outreach to their communities, but we want to support Christian charities at the cutting edge. So when we heard about O Isma Pinta we wanted to get involved with the project. Building O Isma Pinta's English and Portuguese websites were just one way that we knew we could help.

Working closely with Ismael we were given wire-frames of precisely what he wanted the website to look like. The beauty of working with bespoke software, which we have programmed ourselves, is that you can then design and build a customised bespoke website. We were able to translate O Isma Pinta's animations into an animated home page that showcases Ismael's work perfectly. We created pages for his site that featured his videos, and how to donate to him. We have also added in the shop facility so that he will be able to sell merchandise and the original songs associated with his videos.

Looking Forward

For O Isma Pinta this is just the beginning of the adventure. We are hoping to partner with them as they bring new material online to help the children in Portugal find out more about the Bible and God's love for them.

You can see O Isma Pinta's UK website here.

If you are a Christian charity and feel that Church Pages' might be able to help you then do get in touch here.

The Benefice wanted an easy to edit website that let their web visitors know their commitment to loving and serving the people in their community, regardless of their life journey or story.

How did we help?

We worked closely with Revd Ian Whitley to find out his heart for the Benefice that he serves, and how we could translate that into an engaging website. There were certain things that he wanted to keep e.g. the purple in the header banner, although we tweaked this slightly to make it more web friendly.

One of the challenges that we faced was that two websites, Lingfield Parish Church and St John's Dormansland were combined into one. This meant that the logo had to be the United Benefice of Lingfield & Dormansland. This is rather long, but with our Creative Director's expertise we were able to produce a logo that worked really well on the web. It reads well, and reflects the tradition of the church whilst being friendly and welcoming.

 Despite changes in staff at the church we were able to gather all the information that we needed, and the website slowly took place. We created a short video clip of Revd Ian opening the doors of the church in an act of welcome, and then coupled this with some photos that showcased the warmth and friendliness of the church.

Training was given on how to edit the site, and of course we are on hand to help with any queries that they have.

What was the feedback?

We were pleased that the site was well received and that we were able to create a site that works well for the Benefice.

If you would like help to create a user-friendly and engaging website then please get in touch.

How did we help?

Understanding more about St Stephen's, Guernsey, their expression of worship, and their love for their community helped us to create a website that reflected their ethos and values. Again the Isaiah template seemed to align best with them, and their William Morris stained glass windows provided beautiful images for the website. We also used some stock photos of Guernsey to help reflect the area the church serves.

The invitation by the church to "Come and Meet with God," on the home page of the website, introduces St Stephen's heart for people to come and encounter the living God whatever their age or life story. This humble welcome reflects the nature of the St Stephen's which places the Bible, the richness of the liturgy, and the traditional sacraments at the heart of their beliefs.

By working closely with Fr. Joe at St Stephen's we were able to create a site that he and his congregation were happy with. We provided training for him, and his team, so that they could manage the website themselves moving forward and we are always on hand to help them, should they need it.

What was the feedback?

We were pleased that the site was well received and Fr. Joe had this to say:

 "We came across Church Pages and I contacted Heather by phone. What an absolute joy to speak with someone who spoke my language, and helped us to unpack what the website should look like. The finished website looked amazing, and we know that we can ask questions and get assistance should we need it."

If you would like help to create a user-friendly and engaging website then please get in touch.

Historically, a church spire would stand out for miles around and act as an beacon for visitors to a Parish so that they could find their way to church. In our modern world, our churches can struggle to be seen and found when there are so many other buildings, hoardings, and advertising fighting for our attention. Even in a small village, the church can be missed as commuters leave and come home in the dark. So where does branding help in all of this?

Branding Helps Build Trust

Commercial businesses have long known that a strong and consistent brand is essential to perform well in the market place. The church is in crisis, with attendance falling across the country; however, there seems to be a rise in people looking to investigate faith. The Spectator's recent article on "A Christian revival is under way in Britain" made interesting reading. I was also encouraged to hear that at my local church two teenagers were passing by just before the evening service, and when waved at by one of the Welcome Team came over for a chat. They were not from any religious background, but were discussing Christianity just at the moment they passed by the Church. Needless to say they stayed for the service and were deeply moved as the Lord met with them. However, stories like this are rare, and so as your community is seeking spiritual guidance, you may wish to consider how branding can help to engage with them.

By investing time in branding, you not only enhance your visual identity, but also build trust with your community. This is done through:

• Consistency: A well-defined brand ensures consistency in messaging, imagery, and communication. It shows that your church is dependable and trustworthy.
• Clarity: A clear and unified brand helps convey your church's values, mission, and beliefs, making it easier for people to understand and connect with your message.

Branding Communicates Your Values and Who You are

Every church has its own personality and set of values. Your branding can reflect these characteristics and help communicate them effectively. Branding enables you to tell your story through visuals, logos, and messaging. You can share the unique story of your church and reflect who you are. This allows you to connect with a broader audience who resonate with your values and beliefs.

A strong brand will help with recognition within the community you serve, and brings credibility. It helps to create unity within the church and a sense of being on mission together, and means that there is a common theme running through all your media.

Branding is not just about having a logo. That's a good starting point, but having a brand strategy will help your church to tell its story, reflect its uniqueness and share its mission and passion.

Some pages from a recent branding design and brand guidelines document we created for Trinity Church Islington

How Can Church Pages help?

At Church Pages we offer::

• Custom Logo Design: A memorable and meaningful logo that represents your church's identity. We adopt a prayerful approach and are keen to make sure you have a logo which is flexible enough to work in all situations and across all media. We create smaller badges and icons for social media as well as full vertical and horizontal logo variants. 
• Brand Identity Development: Crafting a comprehensive brand identity, including colours, fonts, and messaging guidelines. 
• Marketing Design For Print & Digital: We can create materials that align with your brand, such as brochures, banners, and social media graphics. We can arrange printing or deliver print-ready graphics directly to you. Our Creative Director has over 20 years of experience designing for print for large brands including Lexus Cars, Natwest Bank, News International, the Guardian, and Hearst Magazines, so you can be confident in the quality of the design we can produce!

Examples of recent print design for leaflets and posters we have created for churches

How much does it cost?

We understand that churches and Christian charities do have tight budgets, which is why we offer our design services at a reduced rate. It's not that we don't value ourselves, but as a Kingdom Business we believe that as the Lord blesses us commercially we should use our talents to help build his Kingdom.

Each quote that we give will depend on your individual needs and circumstances. We prayerfully consider how much we should charge before we give you a quote for the work.

Would you like explore more?

If you'd like to just have a chat with us about how we might be able to help you then please do get in touch or call us 01403802000.

Set the aims of your website

Before you start writing anything you should consider what the aims of your website are, in other words what are you trying to achieve through your site. Ask yourself who the Church's website is for:

• Your congregation?
• Those on the periphery of Church? 
• Those outside of the Church? Or
• All of the above.

Then you need to prayerfully set your priorities for the site.

At Church Pages our heart is for churches to reach the next generation with the Gospel, so we would place an emphasis on creating a Home page that is warm, welcoming, and engaging.

Set the objectives of your website

Once you know what you want to achieve through your website, you can start considering what you want your website visitor to experience from your website. Objectives help you to meet your aims, and they should be measurable. For example:

After visiting the Home page of our Church's website people will be able to:

• Describe what type of church we are - warm, welcoming, modern, traditional etc.
• Explain when our Church Services are.
• Describe the type of people who attend.
• Get in touch.
• Outline how the Church helps the Community.
• Find a link to a course about Christianity.
• Listen to a sermon.
• Describe what events are on at the Church.
• Find our Safeguarding Policy.

You will need to use words and images to meet your objectives, but you should now have a road map of what to put on your Home page. However, you now need to consider your demographic.

Understand your demographic

Knowing who will be visiting your website will determine its design, and by that I mean:

• the look of the site,
• the images that you choose,
• the copy that you write, and
• the calls to action you include.

It is likely that your visitors will be your congregation and people from your local community. Therefore, it helps to know more about who lives in your community, which the 2021 Census can help you with here. You can also ask local agencies and charities in your area what they consider to be the most urgent needs. Chat to your congregation too as they will have a good insight as to what is happening locally, and how your Church can respond.

As a Church you will probably know where your strengths lie, and what you are capable of doing. You'll also know who you want to attract to your Church, and how you can serve both new people and your existing congregation.

Now you can begin

With all the information you have gathered, and knowing what you want to achieve, you can begin to structure your Home page.

Unfortunately visitors take less than a second to gain an impression of your website, so you might want to consider using a video on your Home page as this has been shown to increase engagement with a page by 88% (SEMRush). Also visitors spend less than 6 seconds reading written content and so you need to make your copy simple and easy to read. Using images to convey your objectives works better, and simple calls to action aid navigation.

At all times try to think like a web visitor who is not a Christian and is possibly not familiar with the language that we commonly use in Church. Try to make sure your navigation is clear and the user's journey is easy to follow. Ultimately you are looking for a response, so make sure there are plenty of calls to action with links that work. The visitor shouldn't have to work when looking at your website i.e. look at clashing colours, different size typography, bunched images etc.. A professional designer will help you with this.

Choosing images and the style of your website will depend on who your target market is, and so ensure that your web designer knows what you want before the site is designed. Look at sites you like, both Christian and secular to get a feel for what works well.

It is also important to consider how the site will work on mobiles and tablets. This is particularly important when choosing images. Using an image with writing on it might work well on your desktop, but look at your mobile to see how it renders as the type might be chopped off.

We would also recommend making use of the footer for important links e.g. safeguarding information, and finally don't forget to add a Title Tag to your Home page to help Google to find you.

How can I find out if my website's Home page is engaging?

Once the site is launched you should see how well it is performing. The only sure way to determine this is by using analytics. If you have a Church Pages' website then we provide free web stats as part of your site, and these are really easy to understand. They provide comprehensive information on Bounce Rates, Entry Pages, Exit Pages, Visitor Behaviour, and Time Spent on your site. If you don't have web stats as part of your website package then you will need to add in Google analytics (which are also available with Church Pages).

Once you have added in your Google Analytics then you need to look at the Bounce Rate for your Home page. The Bounce Rate measures the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page. According to SEMRush anything under 40% is good and anything above 60% indicates rhw page is not as engaging as it could be. Google Analytics do not automatically show the bounce rate, but the SEMRush article referenced will help you to create this report.

If the idea of adding in stats is not appealing then you could form a "Focus Group" of people outside of your Church to ask how engaging the site was. The reason for asking people from your community is that they can identify what you need to tweak to improve engagement. Try to ensure that you ask people to look at your website on different devices to make sure your site is responsive.

You can also ask new visitors to your church how they found you, and if it was through your website ask them for feedback on the site as this is always useful, even if it is difficult to hear sometimes!

If my Home page is failing to engage with my web visitors what should I do?

I would revisit the suggestions above to make sure that you are meeting the needs of your demographic. If you have a website that is aimed at students and you don't use video, and have very long written content, you are unlikely to engage with your target market. Similarly, if you're hoping to attract families and you have no images of families on your Home page then you might want to have a rethink on your images. 

Conclusion

I am always challenged by these verses in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23:

¹⁹.Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. ²⁰ To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. ²¹ To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. ²² To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. ²³ I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

Paul identifies the need to be culturally relevant when presenting the Gospel, and I think the challenge to us today is to do the same when creating a website.

How did we help?

Wilmslow Parish liked the Isaiah template and felt that it would work well for them from a usability point of view.

Firstly we edited their engaging and heart warming video to capture the heart of the Parish as visitors landed on the home page. We wanted to draw out the care and warmth of the Parish so created a short -ooped video from the provided video.

We then tweaked the Isaiah template so that information on the two Parish churches was readily accessible, and featured the morning services on the website's home page. The full video was featured in a "Hello and Welcome" block and brought in links to pages that the Parish wanted to feature.

Times of services were added in, and links to the pages that Wilmslow were created. We added in a link to the full video and created a footer with appropriate links.

We also spent time training folk from the church so that they could maintain their website easily, and of course we are on hand to help them we they need some guidance.

What was the result?

Wilmslow Parish has had excellent engagement with their new look website and were very pleased with their new look site commenting that:

"Feedback on our website has been effusive – people in the Parish are very impressed and complimentary. and we are ever so grateful for your work."

If you would like help to create a user-friendly and engaging website then please get in touch.

So when Sportily (a network of fun-loving sport and Christian faith groups who help the youth of Gloucestershire explore life and make friends) needed a website to enable people to find and book events, we were able to create a bespoke solution for them. This included a seamless integration with BookWhen, which is software that allows site users to find events by location and then book either a whole course or just one or two events at a time.

The benefit of a custom coded integration using the BookWhen API has meant that the user-experience is excellent as the BookWhen events appear as part of the website. This means that the end user doesn't know that the events are being called in from elsewhere, as can be seen below.

With the BookWhen integration events automatically order with the next available event showing first in the list. Each tile shows an image, date, location, price, and a button to book online. This helps Sportily's visitors to be able to find the sport event that they want to book quickly.

 If you would like more information on having a website that seamlessly works with BookWhen then please contact us.

When we first spoke to Debs Peyton (CEO of Silver Cord) early on this year we were heartened by her passion for the lonely and isolated within the UK. What encouraged us the most was her passion for older people, and her desire to restore a place of honour for them within society. Silver Cord had been born out of this passion and received charitable status as we were creating the website.

As Debs had little marketing or design experience (although she did create her own logo, which we used) she asked us to create a site that reflected her vision.

How did Church Pages help?

The passion that Debs had for the older generation was infectious, and something close to my heart, and we felt honoured to be able to help Debs with her website.

We understood that the website was primarily for agencies looking to help those within society her were older (or vulnerable) and were feeling isolated and lonely. This meant that the befriending service had to feature prominently. We also wanted to let Debs passion sing within the site. Although the charity is in its early stages we wanted to choose the right web colours, fonts, and styling so that as the charity grows the website would not feel outdated. We also helped with the copy to make it as "user-friendly" and engaging as possible.

Optimisation tags were added to the site to help the site to be found by search engines.

How did Silver Cord respond?

Debs Peyton, CEO of Silver Cord, sent this email when we told her the site was now live:

"Could not be more thankful for the kindness, creativity and patience of the team at Church Pages. They worked really closely with us throughout the process and we absolutely love our site - it has really captured who we are. It's wonderful to be able to point our referral agencies, church partners and clients to such a high quality website for the ministry. Thank you so much!"

If you would like to receive help with your church's website, or with your Christian charity's website, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

All Church Pages' customers without a completed Privacy Policy are being urged to complete the policy so that their web visitor can read it and decide their cookie preferences.

With amends to the Data Protection Act 2018 being enacted shortly there does seem to be a lessening of certain requirements for consent on non-commercial organisations, which will enable churches and charities to rely on a "soft opt-in" for direct marketing purposes. Web analytics will also be allowed to be used without consent, although we have included these as a preference at the moment as we are waiting for the amendments to come into force.

It's a question that I am regularly asked here at Church Pages, and one that doesn't have an easy answer. However, knowing who your community are is the first step and discussed in our last blog "Who is the community we serve?". One thing that is known is that over 71% of people use their mobile phones to find information and therefore your church's website has to engaging, easy to navigate, informative and secure. From a relevance point of view it must be easy to edit, and if you have invested in church management software it must work seamlessly with this.

Why the focus on my website and not my other social media accounts?

The reason for this is that different age groups engage with different media platforms. And unless you are blessed with a congregation brimming with online creative experts then you will need to decide which online presence should take priority. All ages will access a website (that works well on a mobile), but statistically Generation Z will not spend their time on Facebook, and Baby Boomers will not be frequenting SnapChat!

At Church Pages our aim is to provide churches with affordable, responsive websites, that work well for the web visitor, and can be easily edited. We are also on hand with advice and encouragement as you manage your site. We do this so that you can outreach to your local community with the good news of the Gospel.

We realise that not every church can afford to have a bespoke website built. So we decide to design a template that looked bespoke, was easy to navigate, and had an easy-to-use home page. We wanted to design the template so that where churches used ChurchSuite, the church's events would be integrated into the home page seamlessly.

It was also important to provide the ability to add in an Instagram feed on the home page, if required, as this media platform is used by all generations, and provide links to other social media platforms as required. We wanted to ensure that a YouTube video could be embedded on the welcome page of the site, and that information regarding Safeguarding could be added into the footer if required.

After some discussion the Isaiah Template was created, and it has been our most successful template to date amongst churches and Christian charities not just because of the cost (£425 + VAT), but because it looks great!

Examples of the Isaiah Template

• St Matthews Church, Bristol
• The Coach House, Kilmuir
• St Mary Magdalene Church, Wandsworth
• St. Martin's Church, Guernsey
• Funchal Baptist Church, Madeira
• St Margaret's Church, Iver Heath
• Royal Wootton Bassett Methodist Church
• St. Saviour's Church, Guernsey

The template works well for both churches and charities and works well on all devices.

Please contact us at Church Pages if you would like a new church website based on the Isaiah template.