Do you need to create a website for your church but don’t know how to code? Don’t worry; tech is here to help.
Powered by no-code technology, any non-technical layperson can build their own gorgeous, professional-looking website. All it takes is a few clicks of the mouse or taps of the screen, and you can share your message with the world, inspire your congregation, and connect with your community.
In this article, we’ll guide you through the start-to-finish process of building a sleek and appealing website for your church.
Before You Build: Articulate the Goals and Purpose of Your Church Website
Creating a church website involves more than just building your site. Your site's essence must illustrate your church’s message and mission while reaching new members and engaging your current congregation.
Describing these crucial points gives curious visitors a clear idea of what makes your church unique, your church's activities, and why they should attend your services. Think about the following:
- What is the main message my church seeks to spread?
- What lessons does my congregation learn from sermons?
- How do I encourage congregation members to put my sermon messages into action in their daily lives?
- How does my church foster a strong sense of community?
- What does my church do to make first-time attendees feel welcome?
- What is the overall feeling my congregation gets from sermons and activities?
Jot down answers to these questions. Include anything else that describes your church’s overall goals and purpose. These notes will serve as a resource when you start building your site.
Begin By Building an App
Before you build your site, create an appealing and interactive app with an app builder like Adalo. App builders require zero coding or technical knowledge and feature drag-and-drop functions.
Here are some app ideas you can build out that will foster a greater sense of community in your congregation:
- Event Management: Create an app that schedules and manages church events such as services, Bible studies, retreats, and volunteer activities. Have the app automatically break a large group of attendants into small groups or teams. Assign specific jobs for optimal coordination at volunteer activities.
- Prayer Requests: Seamlessly build an app where congregation members can submit prayer requests. Allow all members to view the requests and pray for each one. After a member prays, include a function that notifies the prayer-submitter that specific members have prayed for them.
- Your Sermon Library: Build an app serving as a library containing past sermons, where users can listen to or watch recordings of sermons. Categorize each sermon by topic, speaker, or date.
- Daily Devotional: Make an app offering daily Bible passages and reading plans. Enable users to comment and share insights on each entry. Features include letting users save favorite passages, sharing insights with other members, and tracking reading progress.
- Donation App: Build an app that allows congregations to donate money for offerings or to various charities your church supports. App builders like Adalo are connected to most payment systems, making this an easy integration.
Most app builders allow you to make your app downloadable directly from your website. After your site is up and running, you can make it available to visitors. Some apps, like Adalo, let you put your app in the Apple iOS or Google Play Stores. Choosing one of these app builders lets you get it to users before you even start building your site.
Choose the Right Platform and Tools to Build Your Site
Choosing a website builder is an important decision. We only included platforms that integrate drag-and-drop website building, a method that can transform people with zero tech knowledge into website-building experts. Using any of these builders will allow you to build your church site with ease and artistic freedom.
Wix
Wix is an exceptionally user-friendly website builder boasting a wide range of professionally designed templates. One particularly delightful aspect of Wix is its category of religiously themed website templates. Choosing a website template from Wix can significantly reduce the time needed to build your site without sacrificing quality.
What Makes Wix Appealing?
- Wix includes a built-in SEO optimization tool powered by the leading SEO service provider SEMrush. This tool makes optimizing blogs and other content for SEO a breeze.
- If you send an email newsletter, Wix is a great option. You can send 200 subscribers up to two monthly for free. Wix also has paid options to send to more subscribers, starting at $14/month.
- To get you acquainted with how its website builder works, Wix offers a free trial for all plans.
- Not interested in any templates? Wix also allows users to build their site from scratch, using drag-and-drop color schemes and shapes.
Pricing:
- Lite: $16/month
- Core: $27/month
- Business: $32/month
- Business Elite: $159/month
Weebly
Do you have a bare-bones budget and no need for a specialized domain? If so, Weebly may be your best choice, as they offer a free version, although your domain name will always be youname@weebly.com. For those on a budget, Weebly provides the cheapest option.
What Makes Weebly Appealing?
- The free plan has site analytics, so you can track visitors and determine which pages are the most popular.
- Weebly is part of Square’s business tool suite. So, you can easily integrate Square’s payment system into your site, which makes accepting donations or selling merchandise incredibly simple.
- While Weebly offers fewer templates than other options, they are very high quality in appearance and usability.
- Weebly integrates its proprietary SEO tools, allowing you to SEO-optimize each page and blog.
Pricing:
- Personal: $13/month, or $10/month when billed annually
- Professional: $16/month, or $12/month when billed annually
- Performance: $29/month, or $26/month when billed annually
Squarespace
Squarespace offers more templates than most website builders, and they work hard to ensure their templates are the most visually appealing. Their drag-and-drop system is perhaps the most intuitive on the market, meaning you can build your site more quickly using Squarespace.
What Makes Squarespace Appealing?
- Squarespace crafted its editing interface with beginners in mind, making each step simple while implementing features that prevent creating sloppy pages.
- It provides an SEO checklist and website builder so you can incorporate SEO while simultaneously building your site.
- Squarespace offers an extensive suite of sales features allowing users to control product management, customer account creation, and shipping and fulfillment.
Pricing:
- Personal: $16/month
- Business: $23/month
- Basic Commerce: $27/month
- Advanced Commerce: $49/month
Determine Your Domain Name
Your domain name is your site’s address on the internet, i.e., “www.yourchurchesname.com.” All the above offer domain name registration services, letting you set up your domain immediately before building your site. Each service will inform you if someone else is already using the domain you want. Conveniently, these sites recommend domain names if the one you want is already taken. Domain pricing and renewal costs start at around $20/year.
You should ensure the word “church” appears somewhere in your domain to inform searchers that you are indeed a church. Consider using a “.church” website extension if “.com” or “.co” is already used.
Choose an Appealing Theme, Layout, and Structure
Each of our selected website builders is chock full of themed templates with unique color combinations. Choose these carefully—they should match and flow together nicely. If your church has a special color combo featured on the building or signage, make these the primary theme colors of your site for consistency.
Building Your Church Site in Four Easy Steps
Once you've chosen your colors and template, it’s time to start laying some digital bricks! Get your paper with the answers to the goal-related questions we asked at the beginning of the article, and follow these steps to start building out your website:
- Create a unique home page by featuring a live video of an inspiring sermon moment, drone footage featuring an aerial shot of your church, or a captivating image.
- Here’s the golden rule for links from your home page to other places on your site (also called “internal links”): create just a few links, and put them in the top right-hand corner of your homepage–most templates will follow this format. Your essential links must include:
- Location and Sermon Hours: Don’t forget to complete a Google Profile so your church’s location can go live on Google Maps. You can embed a Google map onto your site.
- About Us: Tell your church’s story and introduce your ministry and other leaders.
- Our Message/Blog: You can share sermon clips and blog topics on your approach to preaching.
- Contact: This page allows people to contact you directly with questions.
- Build out each page, and ensure it follows the same colors and themes on your homepage.
- Link to your social media accounts from your homepage.
- When you finish building your site, preview the site before publishing. Doing this will show you exactly how your church's site will appear to the public.
Once your site is up and running, review it periodically. Changing up your site’s multimedia, like adding pictures from last year’s nativity story at the start of the holiday season, will keep your website fresh. Visitors will see that your church is actively staging fun events.
Continually Create Engaging Content and Add-ons
After you publish your site, add content to it. Adding blog and video content lets you spotlight what makes your church and congregation unique. Those looking to join a church might find your insights inspiring.
Blog Articles
Keep up with your blog by posting at least one 300-500-word article weekly. Topics can include anything making your church unique, your church’s viewpoints on aspects of your religion, or what you discussed during your last Bible study session.
Invite viewers to post comments and reviews of each entry for engagement, keeping the community active. Don’t forget to post links to new blogs on social media!
Video Posts
You can embed clips or full videos from your YouTube or TikTok accounts to your website. Leverage this feature to showcase fun events your church hosts or compelling nuggets of wisdom from sermons.
Does your church have a band? Showcase some performances–everyone likes a band! As with written blogs, always notify your social media flock when you upload new videos.
Tend to Your Site
In addition to adding blog and video content, always ensure your site is a current, accurate reflection of your church. Did you just onboard a new youth pastor? Don’t forget to add them to your “About” page.
Ensure that your site is optimized for both desktop and mobile viewers. The website builders we recommended have easy-to-use features to make your site flawless for mobile and desktop experiences.
Occasionally, you might want to change your site's appearance or add a few new colors, pages, or features. Each website app builder simplifies this function so you can seamlessly switch your site’s appearance. With today’s website builders, constructing and maintaining your church’s website has never been this easy.
Connect to Your Congregation with Adalo
Is that customizable app we mentioned earlier still on your mind?
Adalo comes packed with plenty of customizable, ready-to-go templates. You’ll find customizable features that can give your apps a divine feel: schedule and manage events, accept donations, host an interactive Bible study, and more.
Several churches like yours already use Adalo’s intuitive, no-code app-builder. Conveniently upload Adalo to the Google Play and Apple iOS App stores for easy availability. As a bonus, Adalo is compatible with most payment systems like Stripe, PayPal, Square, and more. Adalo gives you the liberty to build custom apps without any coding knowledge.
