Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Lemme ask you a question. Is your church website eye-catching? 85% of people are gonna get onto your church website before they walk in the doors for the first time. So making your church website stand out is more important than ever. And in this conversation, we're gonna unpack six ways that your church can make your church website more eye-catching. Let's do this. You are listening to The Reach right podcast, the show dedicated to helping your church reach more people and grow. Well, hey guys. I'm Thomas.
Speaker 2 00:00:31 And I'm Ian.
Speaker 0 00:00:32 And today we're talking about how you can make your church website more eye-catching, always very important. Yeah. This is something like we've been saying for you, and I have been saying this for 15 years, that, yeah, this is the first impression that most people will have of your church. It is. When I was in Bible college, they used to teach us that you had to make sure your church grounds were really nice and your front door looked good. And I remember my first ministry job that was really pounded into me the importance of first impressions when people get onto your church campus. Yeah. But we've realized for quite a while now that the first impression happens much sooner than that. You should still have a nice, uh, yeah. Entryway and things at your church. Yeah, of course, of course. The same way that's important. This is equally important because people will make judgements and in many cases never show up at your church if their eyes are not caught by your church website. It's true. So we figured, we devoted episode here today to unpacking some of the things that we are seeing, uh, here right now that make church websites more eye catching. Uh, should be a good conversation.
Speaker 2 00:01:35 And it'll be different from when you and I started, uh, consulting churches in this area and with web design where, uh, it used to be Flash and pastors walking out onto the homepage of Oh my goodness, of the website and leaning against Golden Pillars and all sorts of crazy flash animations and effects and all of that. So a little bit different strategy. Yeah. But we've seen a lot, haven't we?
Speaker 0 00:01:57 We really have. 2006, 2007. That was a long time ago. And yeah, I, I remember that very well. Yeah. Like people would call in requesting that. And there was one, I I don't even remember the name of the company and I wouldn't say it anyway. Yeah. But there was one company that was just known for doing these elaborate flash intros where Yeah. There'd be lightning striking and, you know, the pastor would ride in on a light, a bolt of lightning. It was just this really intense, dramatic impressions that people made. And it did. It was eye catching. It caught your eye. Yeah, it was, but it became kind of a, uh, a meme. I think I saw a site at one point where they highlighted some of those old flash intros just for nostalgia sake. Um, yeah. Might be worth a Google search for you out there.
Speaker 0 00:02:40 But anyway, that's funny. Um, let's dig in. Uh, the first one, uh, to make your church website more eye catching is you need to adopt a bold color scheme. Yeah. Um, this is something that I think is really important, and I think a lot of churches miss this opportunity here because, uh, it seems like half of the church websites that we designed in full disclosure, we do church websites. This is how we started as a company. Uh, we do lots of other things here at Reach. Right. But you and I, Ian, we eat Breathe and Sleep Church websites, and we started out doing that. And, um, so we, we talk to people all the time, uh, that are looking to do church websites, and I'd say about 50% of churches when we ask them, Hey, what color palette do you use? They'll say, we use lots of blues.
Speaker 0 00:03:21 Like, that's, that's kind of like the Yeah. Blues the main thing that we see. Uh, blue is great. There's nothing wrong with Blue. No. Um, I, we're not against Blue, but I think that the mistake that a lot of churches make is that we stay too safe when it comes to our colors. Yeah. Uh, so instead of adding in additional colors, uh, and especially contrasting colors, we'll just kind of make a, we'll, they'll think we should make a website that only uses variations of their blue. So it's Yeah. You know, blue and a little bit lighter blue, and then a white that has a little bit of blue in it. And that's kind of where we stay home. Um, you're much better off if you add in contrasting colors or if you're going to use blue using some kind of a bright blue and, you know, full disclosure here at Reach.
Speaker 0 00:04:07 Right? Yeah. Blue is our primary color kind of a soft, uh, uh, it's a bright blue that we use on things, and that's our main color for our calls to action and things on our site. Yeah. But because our site is mostly white, that blue really stands out. But if you're a church that uses mostly blue, um, I would say consider something like orange or a coral color Yeah. To be something that contrasts that's on your site. Um, I think one of the best examples of this, I think people famously you can cite Elevation Church is really great. You're right. Everybody kind of knows what's elevation's color, you know this I'm sure. Yeah. Orange. Yeah, it's their orange, right. So yeah. It's, it's orange is always what they use. They use it sparingly on their site. Their site is an all orange, but every photo has a hint of orange. And, uh, when they have that video of Stephen preaching, they'll have a little bit of orange in the crowd somewhere. Yeah. Their swag is all orange. So it's kind of, it comes out in the things that they do. So your church needs to take some time to consider what can we do to make our website just stand out? Especially having some splashes of color that are Yeah. Are bold. I think that goes a long way. What do you have to add?
Speaker 2 00:05:16 Not much. I think you covered most of that there. Yeah. I think bold is, it's, it's on trend for good reason. And we're gonna get into a little bit more of probably why because of, uh, well, this next one because of candid photos. Uh, and, and the reason I segue to that is because now church websites lean heavily upon photography compared to the way they used to. And so that's why the bold colors make sense. Um, you know, compared to times past, because your website should be very pho photo heavy and photography heavy. Um, so we say capture better candid photos that, that, that being the key word, candid, because, you know, people caught in the act, well, no, let me back up if you line everyone up. Uh, we've, we've laughed at this for years, and we know churches mean well, so we're not, we poke fun a little bit, but, but you know, in a nice way.
Speaker 2 00:06:07 But churches who line all of their members up in front of the church, uh, and they're all smiling, expecting the photo as much as that may, you may think that that's a welcoming thing. Hey, come these are the people that are in the building. It comes off as kind of disingenuous and corny and all of that. But when you have candid photos of people caught in the act of living out your values as kind of the way we put it here at reach, right. And, uh, caught in the act of, of warship and all of those things, and we'll go on and on and expound upon these, but those come off as more authentic. Yeah. That's what we're talking about. Candid photos, people caught in action is more authentic than people posed expecting the shot.
Speaker 0 00:06:50 Yeah. I think that's well said. I think that, um, the, the other mistakes, so there's a couple of mistakes. I think the, the posed shot is a mistake that we see. We also see the mistake of buildings, uh, like focusing too heavily on your facilities and you can't do candid shots of facilities. Candid can only be people. So that's, yeah. The emphasis on the candid, like, so, you know, there is maybe a place, especially if you have a historic church building, you probably want some photography of that on the site, but almost in every circumstance people engage with people. They're looking to people smiling or engaged faces. That's what we're looking for. Also, try to avoid kind of the empty chair pictures. Those are always really, uh, important. You never want a picture of your sanctuary with a bunch of empty chairs. It doesn't really say anything except for that nobody goes here. Um,
Speaker 2 00:07:40 I see that a lot. And I, I, I think the reason I see that is the thought behind that is, Hey, there's room for you here, <laugh>. We're not full. Yeah. But that's too much room. So
Speaker 0 00:07:49 <laugh>, I could see that. I mean, I could see there being like a totally full sanctuary with one arrow pointing to one seat where it says, Hey, we saved you a seat. Yeah. That would be a cool picture, I think. But yeah. Yeah. Um, I think that you, you want to be careful with that. Also, you want to be careful with the backs of heads in warship. Um, that's not a good thing to, to be having on there. I see that on quite a few websites. Um, also, I think you wanna be really cautious and at least intentional, I'll say about the people that you're putting into your photography. So you want, like you said, candid photography of people caught in the act doing the values of your church. Right. But you also want those people to be a reflection of both who you are right now and who your church wants to become, where you want
Speaker 2 00:08:33 To go. Yep.
Speaker 0 00:08:33 So, and it's kind of a delicate balance. You have to walk because you can't, if you're a church that is aging and one of your goals is to become a young family or a family oriented church, but the people in your church are, your average age is 65 years old. Yeah. Well, you know, you can't just put pictures of your two token young families Right. And have them be your only photos on your site. Right. Right. You, you have to kind of capture, you know, what you actually are. You don't wanna deceive people, but you also do get to use this opportunity to project where vision, where you are going as a church. Right. So, yep. I see this a lot of times with churches. 'cause I think almost every church has a heart to be more multicultural or multiracial and have a lot of diversity in their church.
Speaker 0 00:09:17 Right. Right. And so a lot of times they'll, they'll, you know, put people of all different nationalities in their photography on their site. Yeah. But when someone shows up at the church, you'll realize that was the only person of color that's at their church, or that was the only white person at their church, and they just try to make it look diverse. So you gotta walk this fine line here. I would say you can press the envelope a little bit of where you're going, but in the end, you do need to be candid. And I mean, candid means honest. Right. It's a honest representation of who you are as a church. So yeah. Be cautious with those things.
Speaker 2 00:09:51 Well put, well put, that's a good segue to this next one, Thomas. Yeah. I think you have here, so
Speaker 0 00:09:55 Yeah. Yeah. I'll get it. So incorporate, uh, great B-roll footage or B-roll video backgrounds. This is something that we see, uh, it is one of the best eye-catching tools, uh, that you have at your disposal. So when we say B roll, what we mean is similar to the photography, it's it's video of people caught in the act doing the values of your church around campus on a Sunday morning. Yeah. Giving people a taste of what a Sunday experience is like at your church. Uh, so this is usually about 20 seconds long with two second clips. So think of it as 10, two second clips that are rotating on there that just give someone a holistic experience of what's gonna happen on a Sunday morning. So yeah, you'll probably want, um, some B-roll footage of people being greeted at your church. Yeah. Maybe they're being hugged or handshaked or whatever it would be.
Speaker 0 00:10:47 You'd want, uh, b-roll footage of children, you'd want B-roll footage of youth and whatever's happening for those people. Yeah. You want B-roll footage of warship of sermon, times of refreshments afterwards. So you're gonna get a variety of these kinds of things, but it's, yeah. People are willing to stop for a second if they see a full screen video background. Yeah. And this does so much more than telling people what your church is about. Right. You could write a thousand words on your homepage or you know, even more, and people aren't gonna read that, but people will take the 20 seconds and even if they're not like, directly watching and, and thinking to themselves, right, I wonder what this church is like. They're catching it, they're catching That's right. What your church is about and who, what kind of people are there and what the worship style is, and if they'll fit in there, they're making those kinds of determinations and that Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:11:34 Catches people's eye. And that's really what this is all about. So I think this is a really great idea. Um, a couple of quick pieces of advice. One of the problems with these kinds of videos is they're notoriously large files, right. Which actually slows down your website load speed. And so you really have to do another delicate balancing act here where you want to make sure that you make the file size and the quality as low as acceptable. Uh Yep. But still having a good product that people feel like they can engage with. So, um, yeah. You, you cannot do a, you know, gigabyte large, high res video here because it'll kill all of your search engine results and it'll take too long to load. So you want to be cautious with this. Uh, so it's a little bit of ss e o wisdom on that there, but I think by and large, you do need to be doing a b roll video background. I think it's almost a, um, it's almost a must have on a church website right
Speaker 2 00:12:26 Now. Almost. Yeah. Yeah. Not that you can't, but yeah, we've seen 'em on the overwhelming majority of them, the, the sites we build, uh, I would say could, could you not? 95% of them probably are have, uh, b-roll footage, video backgrounds on the homepage. And, uh, yeah. Yeah, you covered all of it. Thomas. One thing I would add that we've seen actually be effective, because we've consulted churches for years to not make the main image or the main focus of, of a picture of the building. Right. But one thing you can add in, you covered pretty much the full gambit of what can be in this video, but one thing we've seen effective is it still doesn't hurt to have some photography and a little bit of this b-roll footage of your church building. So a lot, a lot of churches have access to drones now that are actually able to do, to get drone footage of the building. Now again, we still encourage you to make it less about the building, but you can slide in the that shot because people will identify a little bit with the building, but mostly the people of course. And everything you mentioned, but that was one little thing. Yeah. Uh, that might be helpful for somebody good
Speaker 0 00:13:29 Too.
Speaker 2 00:13:29 So Yeah. Other than that next one here is leverage, inspiring font, pairings, fonts, fonts, fonts. We, um, we have a great design team here that, uh, really, they, they think a lot about fonts, and you may not, uh, the average passenger may not, but they are very important fonts. Now, again, in the, the time of websites that are photography heavy, maybe have a little more white space compared to times past or dark space, uh, that's been on trend a little bit. Fonts really make a big difference in the style, the brand, uh, of what you're communicating, you know, for your church. Yeah. And often can be overlooked, I think, just because Yeah. Uh, you know, and, and that's why we say pairing, uh, you know, and not just having, you know, you know, one BLO font that you're using or something like that. So yeah. You
Speaker 0 00:14:21 Almost always need more than one. And I, I, so right disclosure here on this, so when we started Retr, I was our graphic designer and I have a, you know, limited background in that area, and I, uh, it was pretty good at it. But we now have a team that does all of our graphic design and all of our web design and those kinds of things, which is really nice to have your church. Yes. You know? Yeah. I don't know how you're set up there if you're looking for some help, our team is fantastic at what they do. Yeah. Yep. But one thing I realized very early in my graphic design journey is that <laugh>, really, so much of it, especially in web design, is font choices and using font weights and font sizes and font, uh, just italics and bold and look like the things that your disposal there are so important that it really, I, I would venture to say, like if I was giving it a kind of a, a weight, I'd say about 50% of design is caught up in the font choices that you make when it comes to web design.
Speaker 0 00:15:19 There, uh, a bad font pairing. If you're using like all, um, crif fonts or old, I mean, you can really ruin a website and it really says something about your church too, like a, a mainline church. Um, you know, they might choose something like a RIF font that feels more old timey, whereas a, uh, a contemporary church almost certainly doesn't want to do something like that. Right. You can maybe make some cases if they're doing more of an ancient future worship style and that stuff. But I, I can't emphasize enough how important getting your font pairing, right. But then also staying at home once you've chosen those things. So this is a bigger conversation than just the website, your church, right. In your branding guidelines, you should have a document that does that. You should have one or two to three fonts that you use in there, um, that you basically say, these are the fonts of our church.
Speaker 0 00:16:11 This is the styles that we use, this is the weight that we use for it. And we don't deviate from that. We stay within these, these font pairings for everything that we put out there. And then people will start to recognize that. So we very famously here, I, I think we have these broadening guidelines at reach, right? We use railway for all of our, um, a railway italic for all of our headings on our site. We use a vibrato for everything else. And so we, we stay really close to home with all of our design pieces and it kind of makes it our brand here at our company. Yeah. So your church should be doing the same thing, but we had a few font pairing suggestions. Yeah, we do. I think we can share with people. I'll let you kinda do that. And, um, you could just do a go a quick Google search for any of these.
Speaker 0 00:16:52 Yeah. All of these pairings are Google fonts. Uh, that is an important thing to think about when you're doing web design is generally speaking, I don't wanna make this too complicated, but most modern browsers have access to all Google fonts. Uh, so they will see the fonts as intended if you use a Google font. Um, yeah. With web design, you can't just use any font you could possibly download, because if people don't have the font downloaded on their computer, they won't see the font the same way. So basically with good web design, what you do is you tell it, this is the font I want you to use. If you don't have that font loaded, then use this one instead. And if you don't have that one, then use this one that everybody has. You know, it's like a Yeah. Like a times New Roman or a, you know, something to that effect basically. So, um, you want to, generally speaking, use Google fonts for your web design. So we came up with five pairings that we think are really hot, hot right now here in 2023 that our designers are using a lot. Um, I'll let you go ahead and, uh, give those to people. Um, you can, we'll give a link to some of those fonts, uh, in the description down below if you're watching us on YouTube or some other channel. But, um, yeah. What are some of those? Ian,
Speaker 2 00:18:03 Roberto and Roberto Slab, uh, is the first one. Yep. Um, so the second one would be Open Sands and Laura. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, and, uh, that's not L a u r a, that's l o r a. Um, so Playfair Display and Source Sands Pro.
Speaker 0 00:18:24 This is a two, that's a really good bold one that goes with something that's really readable afterwards, so I love that one. We use that one a lot. That's good.
Speaker 2 00:18:31 And this one, I hope I say this right, monserrat and Merryweather.
Speaker 0 00:18:35 Monserrat and Merryweather. Yep. All that's kind of a tried and true. Uh, but yeah, really good pairing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:18:40 And then the one you mentioned that we use here at Reach, right. Railway. And then, uh, the second one would be Lotto.
Speaker 0 00:18:46 Yeah. We use, or Lato, we use railway. Roberto, but yeah, it's close to that, right?
Speaker 2 00:18:51 Railway was one of them. Yes. And then, uh, and is it Lotto? Yeah, I think so. Sponsor.
Speaker 0 00:18:55 Nobody knows how to pronounce responses. Sponsor. We all say lotto though. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:18:58 No. Gosh, I know. Lotto, that's what, that's what came out first, so, so anyway. But uh, yep, those are, those are good. Five pairings there.
Speaker 0 00:19:05 Good stuff. Good stuff. Alright, next one to make your church website more eye catching is you want to feature bold calls to action. Um, yeah, this is something that, it wouldn't be our episode of the Reach Right. Podcast if we didn't talk about calls to action. We always do. That's right. Big on that. This kind of goes back a little bit to the first one that we said of choosing, uh, bold color schemes. You really want to use those bold color schemes on your call to action. And I would say no matter what you do, if you get anything from this conversation today, you need to use a bold color for your calls to action on your website. Yeah. Yeah. This is what makes things eye-catching. If everything is white and you have a bright blue, or if everything on your, uh, site is, uh, orange and you have a blue, or it's blue and you have an orange, whatever it would be, you want a very big contrast when it comes to your calls to action. And so what this means is that in every section or page of your website, you need to ask yourself, what do I want someone to do as a result of being on here? And you want to put that into a button or an image that has your bold color choice in it. So, um, an obvious one is on your homepage, uh, maybe you want to have a plan your visit button or a let us know your coming button. I
Speaker 2 00:20:21 Knew your
Speaker 0 00:20:22 Main goal on your homepage is to get people to decide that they're gonna come and visit your church on a Sunday. So you have a button, your call to action is let us know you're coming. You want this to be big and bold and make sure nobody can miss it, and it catches their eye so that they click onto that, fill out the form, and they pre-plan their visit. You can follow up with them. We've done many episodes about this, uh, this topic before. But yeah, choosing your bold color for these call to actions, uh, that's really important.
Speaker 2 00:20:48 As funny and as bold as it may sound, this could actually, if you don't do this, cost you first time visitors. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so, and I, what I mean by that is we obviously know that a, uh, you know, things are bigger than a call to action, but here's the thing, this is where you're wanting people to respond and click to and then hear from them, right? So if it does not stand out and it's bold, they may pass that up. And, and if you have a great website where you have a good plan your visit or an I'm new page, like you were talking about Thomas, you know, if you've put, you know, time into that content, you want to hear from people. And it could be that they missed that. So, um, yeah, this could be a big difference in, in hearing from more people and getting more first time visitors. So
Speaker 0 00:21:31 Yep.
Speaker 2 00:21:31 Well said. Good. Next one, utilize well-placed animation. You know, it's kind of funny, when we were planning this, talking about this, I was like, yeah, we can't forget about this, you know, because we did, we were joking at the beginning of this podcast, Thomas, how, you know, we used to see all of the flash animation and it was too, uh, too well be too heavy now at that time, I guess it was kind of fun for folks and, and really engaging, but you still want to have well-placed animate animations throughout the site. Not too many of them, but they do add some excitement and then they get people engaged. They add some movement. Yeah. Um, and so to think through different areas on your website where this would be, uh, carried out is a, is a good thing to do. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:22:15 Let me, let me make sure we we're talking about the same thing when people, um, hear the term animation. So we don't mean you need to have an animator come in and, you know, draw cartoons of things happening at your website Correct. Or your church or something like that. What we're talking about with animation is it means anything that's moving on your website. So typically what this is gonna be is we'll want maybe for instance, calls to action like we talked about before. Yeah. That if these have some kind of a movement to them, uh, maybe they slide in slightly when you scroll down. Yeah. Maybe they expand and get bigger as people scroll through the site. Um, these are the kinds of things you see. I also think about like parallax images that would fall under animation. So when you scroll, you see a different part of the image or it tends to back out or zoom in.
Speaker 0 00:23:03 Yeah. Some of these kinds of things. Anything to add interest, uh, to the site and grab people's attention as they go. It makes it more eye-catching. So Yep. We like to use this sparingly. Like if if everything is animated, nothing's animated, it all feels the same. Right? Right. But if you have your key, maybe headings, maybe it's something that, um, when someone first gets onto the site, uh, the, the words fade in or they slide in this key statement that you're making on your church about why your church exists, that would be a good thing to animate your bold calls to action. Um, you know, you want to maybe put in some moving parts of this so that as people scroll down your homepage and see new content or any page of your site Yeah. That they will, they'll be caught by the new thing that happens.
Speaker 0 00:23:46 So you go onto any, um, you know, major retailer website now you get onto like a, a Apple's website. They are fantastic at this, where just as you scroll, you see all kinds of moving parts and you interact with their product as you scroll. It's animation that's doing those kinds of things there. So yeah, it doesn't have to be complicated. You don't need an animator to do it. Uh, usually most web design platforms, certainly WordPress, which we work on primarily Yep. Has lots of tools to animate and make things move a little bit. That makes it really easy to do. Yeah. So yeah, you definitely want to play with this, but I think the key word is it's well placed. Uh, you don't want 19 animations on every page. You maybe want one to three. That's kind of what you're looking for. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:24:28 That's good. And I, one last thing I would add to that is, keep in mind what most people are doing is they're thumbing down on their smartphones now. So that's where this Right. Well said. You know, so as they're going down, what do you want to jump out and be animated? So, because again, it's, it's a little bit different the way people are looking at sites these days because of, um, yeah. We see, I know when we've looked at the analytics of the sites that we've built, it's near 80% if I'm, if I'm not wrong, right, Thomas, about how many people are coming from, uh, smartphone. Yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 0 00:24:59 It's, it's only growing. Um, I think it's just under 80, it's in the upper seventies is kind of the number that we're seeing right now. So yeah, you're really, you're really close on that. So yeah, well said. I say scroll and I think scroll is something you do on your thumb too. But yes, do keep in mind that this is something that
Speaker 2 00:25:13 I thumb down, scroll down, whatever. Yeah. So
Speaker 0 00:25:14 Either way. Yeah, that's it. So I hope this has been helpful. I, I think that, yeah, this is so important, like just catching people's attention, you know, stopping them from going off to the next place and making sure they engage with your content on your site. Yeah. That is the first battle in grabbing people's attention. And almost everybody that's going to be a visitor of your church is going to see you online first. So you have to catch their attention. It has to be eye catching. So these are six things we're seeing that are working right now to make you more engaging and up the likelihood of someone visiting your church for the first time. So if this has been helpful to you, it would mean a lot to us if you would rate, review, subscribe, uh, hit that like button, um, that does a lot for the algorithm and helps us to get in front of more people and helping us coach more churches.
Speaker 0 00:26:00 So thanks so much guys for being a part of the Retry family. Also, I'll say this before we sign off, if you have anything that's working for your church that makes your website more eye catching that we didn't cover, we'd love to hear about that. And also we do most of these episodes from comments that people leave on our videos and on our podcast. Yeah. So, uh, if you have anything you'd like us to cover, drop us a comment. If you have any questions at all, we'd love to tackle that in one of our future episodes. So thanks for being a part of the Rewrite family and we'll catch you next week.
Speaker 2 00:26:28 See you.
