Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 When it comes to websites for your church, you have two options, a custom website or a template website, and they have different pros and cons, but which one should your church choose? Well, we're gonna break it down in this conversation. Let's do this. You are listening to the Reach right podcast, the show dedicated to helping your church reach more people and grow. Hey guys, I'm Thomas.
Speaker 1 00:00:25 And I'm Ian.
Speaker 0 00:00:27 And today we are talking about template church websites and custom church websites, and which one your church should choose. Hmm. Uh, Ian, you and I have been in this game for a long time helping churches do websites since 2006. Yeah. Geez. Back then, churches didn't know is the question was, do I need to have a church website? And now, right. It's obviously answered yes. Yeah. That these website things kind of stuck around and so we're gonna keep doing them <laugh>. Um, but we've been doing it for so long that, uh, it, it is time to revisit this question. Um, you and I have probably more expertise on the custom side, but you know, as reach, right, right. We offer both template church websites and custom church websites. Yep. We do. Uh, and I think it's really an important conversation to have because the world of template websites has improved so greatly over our time helping churches with websites that, right.
Speaker 0 00:01:23 There are some situations where a template website just is the better choice, uh, for churches. Yeah. And so we wanted to dig in a little bit and help people kind of, if you're on the fence of like, which one should I choose? Should we do something more templated? Or are we the type of church that needs to do something custom? Yeah. We want to kind of put this out there as a guide to help you make that decision on what the right choice might be and some of the factors we would weigh into that. So, uh, yeah, I think it should be a good conversation. What do you think?
Speaker 1 00:01:49 Absolutely, Thomas. And I think too, it's, it's a good thing to, because websites for churches and businesses alike have been out there for a long time now. I think people can kind of forget the differences between these things. Things get saturated, trends change, and you can lose touch with Oh, yeah. You know, custom or, or template, or does everyone use a template now? Or who needs, you know, something full blown custom now? And, and, uh, so I think it's a good thing to keep people fresh on for sure.
Speaker 0 00:02:19 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. When we, when we started doing this, again, template websites were something that were, um, it was almost like a curse word, right? To do a template website, it seemed like, 'cause it was just so cookie cutter and so cookie cutter limited, uh, that you just really had no control over it. It was basically like the only thing you could choose was which variation of the colors did you want to use. And the template would stay the same. It was the same pictures for every single church, which is just like a, you know, it's just a bad idea to do that kind of stuff. And now these template websites are so sophisticated, uh, that, um, well, we'll get into a little bit of the reasons why someone might choose it there, but, um, what should we talk about first?
Speaker 1 00:02:59 Let's start with custom, right? Okay. So we'll lead out with that. And, um, and one of the first things within the benefits of a custom website is personalization, right?
Speaker 0 00:03:11 Yep. No, absolutely. So that, that's, that's pretty clear. Although there is some of that now on template websites. Right. But this is where it really shines, I think, is that, um, with a custom website, you can have, you have so much more ability to personalize every single aspect of the site, not just the colors and photos and those kinds of things, but, um, yeah, you have tons of personalization options, right. Um, which I think that, uh, yeah. I mean, for churches, that's something that is usually pretty important. Uh, so yeah.
Speaker 1 00:03:40 Yeah. Absolutely. And I think too that, you know, this is where, as far as personalization, we can expound upon that a little bit as far as who your church is. The identity determines more of the direction of the website, whereas your, you know, your personalization is not as limited, uh, in a custom site compared to something more templated where you gotta fit into that. And maybe some of the personalization is limited as far as how far you can go. Um, and I think also, also with a lot of custom sites, churches should realize that usually there you're getting some more professional consultation. Yeah. If you, if you are, if you are using a company, uh, if you are using a company or a designer or something like that, the personalization part is, uh, discussed and planned out a lot more, uh, compared to a templated option. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:04:32 That's true. So I think another thing, uh, and I'll kind of hit the next thing here that we kind of came up with was the scalability. I think of a custom website. I think this comes into play for, obviously larger churches can scale based on the size of their ministries and those things, whereas template websites will have something that's just more defined. I think it's especially valuable and it's almost, uh, if you're a multi-campus church, I think this is where the scalability really comes in. If you have multiple campuses in different places, you can kind of scale the site with you, you know, I suppose there are some workarounds with templates where you could do a different, you know, do the same template for every church, uh, every campus that you have. Yeah. But I think really when it comes to a multi-site kind of church, you can scale your site, um, with your needs there, basically. And I think custom's the only way to go for something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:05:22 Yeah. Agreed. Totally. So next one is, uh, optimized user experience. Let's break that down a little bit. That's kind of a big one.
Speaker 0 00:05:30 Yeah. I think this is probably, I would say the most important reason to go custom is that when you, when you, um, when you do something custom, you can really tailor exactly what your calls to action are and exactly what your processes in your church look like. You can really tailor those and have them match exactly what's happening on Sunday morning and in your church with what's happening online. So, yep. For instance, if you have a, uh, a sis a process at your church where, um, you welcome visitors and you have, uh, you invite them to let them know you're coming before they show up, and then you have an email sequence and you invite them to some kind of Yeah. A growth track or something like that, your website can, can really match that without a lot of effort on a custom website Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:06:14 To, to help people take that next right step. Uh, and the, you're not kind of confined to a pre-made set of next steps, but you can actually make your own series, your own sequence of next steps that people are gonna take. And so I think for larger churches in general, that's something that really is valuable, um, being able to mm-hmm. <affirmative> hone that, especially because you're probably seeing dozens, if not hundreds of people going through these next steps every single month. Yeah. You wanna make sure that that online process is really, it's really tailored to how your church is already functioning. So, uh, a custom is the only way to go in that situation.
Speaker 1 00:06:53 I totally agree. And I think another thing too, another way to say that, you mentioned calls to action, which we always love talking about, and that is very important to call that visitor, that newer person on your site to that next step that you want them to take. But it's also putting content that is the most important to who you're trying to reach in front of them. Often with a, uh, templated site, you're kind of, it's, you're kind of in con you're not in control over what content you can put front face first, whereas you have full control with, um, with that for the user with something more custom. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:07:30 Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1 00:07:31 That's good. Next one, next one is big one I think too. Ss e o optimization. So how is it, Thomas, that, you know, someone can have better s e o optimization with something custom compared to the templated route? Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:07:44 I, I think that just, uh, a custom approach. I, I guess just to say it plainly, generally speaking, templated websites, uh, without a lot of heavy customization on them, which is what you're trying to avoid, right? They're pretty bad when it comes to doing SS e o. Um, they're not optimized for the keywords that you might be trying to target there. Whereas with a custom approach, you can build the site with someone helping you with really the ss e o side of things in mind. Uh, for most churches, you know, your primary s e o strategy is gonna be a local s e o strategy. So people that are looking for churches or ministries that you offer in your area. Um, yeah, secondarily, there's maybe like more of like a, um, an organic ss e o strategy, which means, uh, anybody searching for maybe certain theological topics, or if people wanna type in what Jesus says about prayer or something, perhaps you can come up there, but that isn't necessarily just reaching people in your community that would be good church members.
Speaker 0 00:08:42 So, um, long story short, I think when you really do something custom, and if you're working with a good custom website provider, they will help you think through the SS e o strategy. Yeah. Whereas with a template, um, it's just something you're, you're getting what you know how to do for SS e o. Right. And in most, most cases, that can be a little challenging. Now we have all kinds of guides out there that we've done and videos that we've shot over the years end Yeah. Teaching people, whether you're on a custom or a template website, how to get the most out of it from an ss e o perspective. Yeah. But, um, there's, there's something to be said for beginning with ss e o in mind when you're doing something custom and any good Right. Custom website provider should be able to do that for you.
Speaker 1 00:09:23 Yeah. Not only can they be more hands-on and consult you in that. I also, one thing that came to mind for me too is that with something more custom, you just, you're able to structure your content, uh, a little more, you have a little more freedom to do that, um, rather than having to fit it into certain areas. So just more freedom for, uh, what you do with content within your site, which is, uh, obviously lends itself to SS e o. Yeah. So definitely. Good. That's good. Well, our friend template church websites won't be left out, so let's dig into those. And, uh, the first thing that of course, I think comes to mind is cost as a far as a benefit. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:10:01 Well, so I, I think maybe we should take a step back and like talk about, um, 'cause I think a lot of times people, they, people will say template and custom and it really means different things depending on who you're talking to. That's true. Like, so a lot of people will define their websites as custom, when really they're just like a template with a little bit of addition on top of it, or they're adding some things to it. When we say, and you could, the best way to tell whether a site is, is templated or not usually is the price. Sometimes people will charge a lot for a template, and so you can't just think, oh, it's expensive, so it must be custom. But anything that's under, I'd say a, a couple of thousand dollars here in the us Yeah. That's generally speaking, that's gonna be a template website.
Speaker 0 00:10:44 Uh, so, um, so usually a thousand dollars and, and the dead giveaway is if you're only charging a monthly fee and there is no setup fee for the site. Right. That's almost certainly going to be a templated website. It's something that's built from a template, even if there is a little bit of customization that goes on top of that. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, it is still a template at the foundation with that there, um, you know, kind of our place is that we, we generally see our custom work, uh, for full custom sites starting at about, at the very low end, about five or $6,000 here at reach. Right. That's kind of a, a pretty normal rate. And we've done projects that are 70 to $80,000 custom websites at the same time. So it could be all over the map and depending on what you, what you're looking for with those areas.
Speaker 0 00:11:28 But when it comes to template websites, yes. Uh, cost, it should be much less money to set up a template website than it would be to set up a custom website. And that's just because you don't have a, the actual labor that goes into building a template website. Right. The template is, um, it's built one time, the labor happened once, uh, yeah. And then you're reusing that and you're doing it yourself, or maybe someone's doing some light customization for you. Yeah. Whereas a custom website, you know, with our process, we sit down for hours typically with a client. Yeah. And we wrestle with what is, what makes your church unique and, uh, what is that process like for welcoming new people
Speaker 1 00:12:08 And helping them next steps, planning content, all of that. Yeah. All of that.
Speaker 0 00:12:11 All, all of the branding conversation. So hours and hours of work, just discovering what we're gonna do for a custom website and then the actual execution. It's not just taking something that already exists, it's actually building that out from scratch and making sure it matches what's happening on the ground there for the church. So with that comes a considerable increase in cost. Um, so, you know, usually for us it's a minimum of like a five x increase to do this because Yeah. Um, you know, it's just, it's a lot more work for our designers and we have designers and programmers and s e o specialists all working on
Speaker 1 00:12:44 These kinds of projects. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 0 00:12:46 So cost is the obvious. Uh, first question, and I know one thing that you run into a lot is that, um, a lot of times churches that have grown, or maybe they became used to like buying template websites Yeah. Maybe they've had two or three template websites and they've never really paid anything for them. Yeah. Um, it can be shocking when you realize, well, you know, churches of other churches of a thousand might spend, um, you know, $10,000 or even $20,000 on, on custom church websites depending on what they need or multi-site churches. So it can be kind of surprising, uh, but you absolutely get what you pay for when you're working with a good provider on these kinds of things. So, uh, right. It really is, I mean, worth the investment if you're moving, again, lots of people through, uh, your process there. But I would say for churches that are, uh, that maybe have smaller budgets and smaller churches, you could probably get most of what you need to happen, um, on a template website. So the cost savings could be a good decision for your church,
Speaker 1 00:13:46 And yet we also see smaller churches that, uh, understand the value of something more custom and strategic that are able to have a good healthy budget for that. But sometimes in some cases, but like you said, in a lot of cases, yeah. A template can be, I don't know if sufficient iss the right word, but cover you, like you said, accomplish most of what, what you need, um, there. So, you know, this next one might be kind of surprising to some, um, ease of use maybe being a benefit that a template has over something custom.
Speaker 0 00:14:16 Yeah, I, I think so that, that could be surprising too. Um, I think that the reason for that is that the, the less complexity you have, um, the easier things are for anybody to make changes to. So when we there you go, go in and build a, a custom website for a client, there's, um, it's not to say that it necessarily has to be hard, but without really thinking through it, um, it may not be that perfect user experience on the backend or for editing just because it's something that is tailor made for you. You're the only instance of this. And there's not software where thousands of people do this exact same task every single day. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Now there's, again, that's not to say that custom sites necessarily have to be hard to use, but in general, the more complexity you add to something, uh, the more difficult it is to manage.
Speaker 0 00:15:05 Uh, yeah. And so I think that this is something that just with template websites, with your things like, uh, your squarespaces and these, and your Wix sites, those kinds of things, they literally have th hundreds of thousands of sites out there. Uh, so they've really thought through these things and they, they, to make it easier to use, what they do is they limit what you can do. Right. So they, they limit your options and your, your scalability in those things so that the vast majority of people can do the majority of what they need. Right. But that is very easy for them to do. Um, so it's kind of a trade off in that area.
Speaker 1 00:15:42 Yep. That's it. Um, yeah, that's very good. Um, and then quick setup, that's definitely, I, I know that's always been a benefit for the template route is, you know, obviously as we covered, there's more time planning involved. Yeah. You know, design more design, uh, rather than a quick setup. So quick, quick setup is definitely advantage if you're needing something up for your church, you know, a lot sooner rather than later. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:16:08 Definitely. Just to give people some ballparks of here of what we see, and this is, yeah. Probably pretty close to what other people do in the industry here. Um, so we, for our tailored websites, so we have our cus our template websites that we then tailor for churches with all of their, uh, imagery and branding and all that kind of stuff on, they're putting in content for them. Yeah. We're usually able to turn those out in about a week or so. That's how much time it takes on the customization of a tailored site or a template site. Uh, whereas our custom work, uh, it really six to eight weeks is kind of the minimum of what it takes to do those kinds of things. Uh, we've, you know, I don't want to, we, we've had some that just kind of go slow in the process, or they're just really large projects that take months, uh, months and months, like six to eight months in some cases. Yeah. And so, uh, it really is all over that. But if you want to get something up tomorrow, uh, you're gonna have to do a template. You're not gonna get a custom website up in a day, you're not gonna get a custom website up in a week. Um, it's something that if you, if it your time, uh, to get it live is what's really important to you. You're gonna have to go with a tailored option or a, a template option there. Yep.
Speaker 1 00:17:15 That's good. Well, the last one I think we have here is reliability. And this one might be another one that's surprising. How could a template be more reliable than something custom?
Speaker 0 00:17:26 Yeah, it's pretty simple. I think it's that when everybody is using the exact same set of tools, it's easier to manage just those tools, uh, than it is to manage tools that have a tendency to break because they're custom made just for you. So we build on a WordPress platform, for instance. Uh, and on a custom website we might use somewhere between five to 15 different plugins Yeah. That help us to accomplish certain things. So doing really unique, uh, form systems, uh, for people. So, uh, let's say that you want to do a registration form that also includes the opportunity to pay for a specific event. Uh, yeah. And with that, it would do things like, uh, send receipts to multiple staff members, and there's all kinds of customization we could do. Well, that takes a unique plugin and, uh, it has a unique, um, other aspects to that plugin that sometimes when WordPress updates or the plugin updates, that sometimes things might not work quite that way.
Speaker 0 00:18:28 And so a good custom website provider is gonna stand by their work and they'll fix it for you and Yep. Get all of those things done there. But there might be some downtime with those kinda things because there's just so many variables. Whereas yeah, when you're working with a template website, you have a very limited set of tools. There's not lots of additional customization that happens there. And because tens if not hundreds of thousands of people are using this exact exact, these exact same tools, you can trust that they're gonna make sure these specific tools work all the time. So yeah, they're always working there. So that's kind of our thoughts on the reliability. Yeah. Uh, if, if that, obviously everybody wants a reliable website, and I think Right. The thing you have to consider is not whether my website's gonna work or not, it's just do I have the support to be able to keep my website working when things do happen, or I do run into challenges with things there.
Speaker 1 00:19:16 Yeah. That's good. And I think kind of what we have to help folks, and as we close with this too, is just some final considerate considerations that, you know, a pastor or a ministry leader may wanna make when they're making this, uh, decision here, whether or not to go customer template. So, um,
Speaker 0 00:19:33 Well, I think we could probably just boil it down, um, to, to this in general, um, medium to large size churches, you probably ought to consider doing a custom website. Uh, that's, uh, and by that I'd say I, I don't know where you'd put the number. I think you probably start considering it at probably 150 to 200 people. Right. You start considering going towards a custom route. Um, and I think in general, small to medium sized churches should probably, it's okay to consider a template now, right? Yeah. We've worked with churches of, we've worked with brand new church plants that go custom because they have a vision for these kinds of things, and they're projecting out that they're going to be seeing the kind of growth that they hope to see. Yep. We've helped some small mainline churches do custom websites over the years because they've seen the importance of this, and they really wanna make sure they're on the right, on the cutting edge when it comes to technology.
Speaker 0 00:20:28 So there's not a, a right or wrong, we've seen larger churches go the templated route. I will say that that often leads to frustration, uh, when larger churches that have very, you know, lots of people moving through processes and they want to be able to, to do the level of customization. I think it, they run into some headaches with those kinds of things there. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So I think if you're, you know, a church of, oh, I don't know, over 500 and you're considering a template website, you probably ought to think again on that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:20:55 But yeah, agreed.
Speaker 0 00:20:56 No, I think there's a, i I think the question mark is for those churches that are a hundred to 300, you know, where, where do you go? And really, um, you know, you could, I could make a case for either one. Um, I think it really comes down to budget is what it Yeah. Happens if you can pull together the funds, I think you'll be happier with a custom website. But we know that, you know, money can be hard to come by in a church that's says, I've pastored churches for years and I know that, um, you know, a spare five or $6,000 for a custom website can be a, a big ask, uh, especially when all you've done before is pay, you know, $20 a month or something like that, right. For a template website. It's really hard to, to, you know, really see that difference there for some people. But, um, I think if you choose the right provider, it really can be there. So I don't know exactly. If we were to wrap it up, Ian, what would you kind of say in a nutshell, how would you, um, kind of move that line around? Which, which, uh, how, how would you tell a church which way they should choose that?
Speaker 1 00:21:54 Yeah, I, I think you covered a lot of that, Thomas, but I think really the, the thing that comes to mind first is what is your long-term vision and strategy? You know, what is, what are you trying to accomplish? Are you just wanting something informative that gets the basic information out there for your church and, you know, and has some interactive things? Well, if, if, you know, if you feel like that's all you need to do, and, and, and budget of course is a big concern, well then something template. Now, if you really are, um, it, it's good that you asked me that Thomas, 'cause we, without naming the church, just had a church move forward. That's, you know, probably only about 70 folks average weekly attendance. But they had a five year vision that they out, they, they had a, a goal of where they wanted to be. And, and they, in this pastor's words, he said to me, listen, I want to project something that is, if I don't wanna look like we're a 500 member church when we're not, I want be realistic, but I wanna project something that says, Hey, here's who we are, but here's where we're going. And if you have a vision for that and you want something more strategic to really reach first time visitors and you can budget, I think, I think that's a big one, Thomas to, uh, to think through there.
Speaker 0 00:23:08 Is this the same church that, uh, told you that their last website was their biggest mistake in this ministry career?
Speaker 1 00:23:13 It's not. It's not. But uh, they could also kind of be in that same vein for sure. Uh, so no, it's, it's not that church was a little bit larger, uh, about 500 or so, and they are doing something custom. I don't know what they did, uh, previously, but I know that they weren't happy, uh, with it. So yeah,
Speaker 0 00:23:31 That's what's at stake. I mean the, I thought that was a little bit dramatic personally. Yeah. The biggest mistake of my ministry career in 40 years. If that's choosing the wrong website, then in years, that's great. <laugh>. He's,
Speaker 1 00:23:41 He said in 40
Speaker 0 00:23:42 Years. Yeah, that in 40 years. If that's the biggest mistake you make, you're a killer pastor, I assume. Yeah. It is a life or death, but, uh, it is a lot of work. Uh, and you wanna make sure you get this decision right. So I hope this has been a helpful kind of guide for you on how we would recommend that churches go, some things for you to consider on that there. Um, if you do need some help in this area, we don't do this for this reason, but um, we'd be happy to chat with you. We have all kinds of guides and tools on our website and you can free, get a free quote on either the tailored sites or our custom work. We'd be happy to help you with that even more. So it would mean a lot to us if you would subscribe, rate, review, do all those kinds of things. That's how we get the word out there about this reach. Right. Podcast. Uh, thanks so much guys for being a part of the Reach Right. Family. And we'll catch you next week. See you.
