Don't launch a website too soon

People go to church websites for information.

I constantly emphasize that in my seminars—they are not going to your church website for their multi-media thrill of the week. A flash intro, moving parts, great graphics—these do not equate to a great church.

I was reminded of these lessons, when this week, I was looking at a new church website. This church was very excited about finally having the money to do a really "professional" website and they paid a bucket of money for it, as I discovered when I clicked on the link at the bottom of the page that took me to the company that made it. It had a great opening page, lots of moving parts, and color and excitement.

But I really wondered about the integrity of the company that created it and the wisdom of the folks at the church who ordered it because many of the placeholders for content, e.g. bios of the staff, including the senior pastor, schedules, photo albums, details about the various ministries in the church,  were all empty.

The place-holders were there, but little content was behind the initial click.

As a potential visitor or seeker, if I was checking out a church I don't think I'd be very impressed with one that had a fancy opening page, but didn't tell me a thing about the senior pastor or any of the other staff.

PLEASE, put content on your church websites and don't launch until you have all the sections with something in them. You don't have to have a deep and extensive website at the beginning, but the basics, such as who is the pastor, and the basics about core ministries are really essential.

Without content, it's worse than no website at all—it says this church didn't plan ahead, this church cares more about show than substance. This is definitely not the kind of information you want people to get from your website.