Ekklesia 360

Have you noticed a decrease in website visitors? Are people calling to ask questions about your church because they can't find the info online? Maybe it’s time to evaluate your current church website to see if it needs an overhaul.

Because your website is the digital “front door” to your church, you want to make a good first impression. Most people who are looking for a new church to attend will first go online to see what your church is like. If it’s difficult to navigate, outdated, or simply doesn’t answer their questions, they may dismiss it altogether.

Below you’ll find 3 indicators that it’s time for your church website to get an upgrade.

1. User Journey

You may have had a ministry model on your church website that worked before COVID. But since everything changed, it may not be as user-friendly or efficient. With everybody going online and even more people using your church website than before, you’ll want to evaluate if it’s working well.

A user journey, when it comes to websites, is a path a user may take to reach their goal when using a particular website. You’ll want to evaluate your user journey to identify how to enable the user to achieve their goal as quickly and easily as possible.

The journey consists of a number of pages and decision points throughout your church website that the user will interact with in order to reach their goal.

Steps to take to evaluate your user journey:

Understand who is using your website.

Think about your church demographics. Who are the types of people that will be using your site? You’ll probably have a combination of new visitors and committed church members.

Identify what their goals are. 

Do they want to find directions to your church? Are they trying to get connected to a small group? Are they curious about what your beliefs are? You’ll want to think about what people are using your church website for and get one step ahead. So you can provide a user journey that will help them reach their goals and answer their questions.

Map out the current user journey.

Take time to review your current site. Walk through the links, discover what is working, what is difficult to find, and any links that may be broken. Essentially, find flaws or frustrations your church members or future guests might struggle with.

Create a plan.

From here, map out a user journey that will help them accomplish their goals.

Pro Tip: Ekklesia360 has church-specific features that will make this easy. With small group hubs, sermons, new here layouts, and more, we’ll assist you in making your website easy to navigate and use.

 2. Mobile Responsiveness

This is something that may seem obvious, but a lot of churches have outdated websites that are not mobile responsive. Because so many people use their phones to browse the web, you’ll want to make sure your website looks great and is usable from a mobile device. In fact, according to Statista, in 2021, the number of unique mobile internet users stood at 4.32 billion, indicating that over 90 percent of the global internet population uses a mobile device to go online.

Pro Tip: Using a website platform like e360 will ensure you not only have a beautiful website but that it’s mobile-friendly as well. You will no longer lose online visitors because they can’t access it easily from their phones. Instead, you could see an increase in engagement.

3. Content Mangement System

One of the easiest facets to evaluate whether your church website needs an overhaul is to consider how simple it is to use the dashboard. Is your current content management system (CMS) easy to add, change, or update content within your website? Can multiple admins use it without interfering with what others are working on? Is it simple enough for a volunteer to be able to add a church blog post or update event info?

Pro Tip: e360 is built for churches. With that in mind, the CMS and background side of website updating is made simpler. You can update everything you need for your church, including events, articles, sermons, etc.

E360 Layouts

Our layouts are designed for churches. Other website builders are not. Simply put, you want a ministry-focused platform that will make it easy for new people to find your church and for committed members to stay connected and informed.

Ekklesia360 has ministry pages that get results. They’ll help solidify the user journey and create ministry movements online. It’s difficult to implement these layouts with other website builders because they are not focused on ministry and do not understand the needs of your church website. e360 makes it easy! You plug in your content, it looks amazing, and then you move on to ministry.

Some of the ministry-focused layouts that Ekklesia360 offers include:

• Small Group Finder
• Sermons
• New Here
• Live Stream
• Staff
• And More

Are you ready for a church website overhaul?

If you’ve implemented these steps and discovered it’s time to update your website, e360 is here to help! Whether you’re starting from scratch or you’re a current client, we can add our church-designed layouts to help make your church stand out. Contact us today to get started.