And practical fixes any church can apply
Your church website is doing more work than you probably realize. According to a 2024 report from The Church Co, organic search is the single top source of traffic for church websites, meaning more people find churches through Google than through any other channel. And when they arrive, 74% of first-time visitors land on the homepage first. That homepage has a few seconds to answer the question every new visitor is silently asking: is this a place for me?
Most church websites fail that test not because the ministry behind them lacks substance, but because of a handful of recurring, fixable problems. Churches are typically nonprofits working with limited budgets and volunteer labor, and the website often reflects it. The good news is that the most common problems are not expensive to solve. They are mostly problems of clarity, restraint, and intentionality.
Here are five of the most common issues we see on church websites, along with practical ways to address each one.
74% of first-time visitors land on your homepage. That page has seconds to answer the question every new visitor is silently asking: is this a place for me?
Problem 1: The Homepage Tries to Do Everything at Once
The most common homepage mistake is treating it like a bulletin board: service announcements, ministry descriptions, pastor bios, event listings, donation appeals, and a welcome video all competing for attention on a single page. The result overwhelms visitors before they can find what they came for.
A homepage has one job: to help the right person take one clear next step. For most churches, that next step is either planning a visit or watching a sermon. Everything else is secondary. A well-designed homepage answers three questions immediately, without scrolling:
- What kind of church is this?
- When and where do you meet?
- What should I do next?
If a first-time visitor cannot answer all three of those questions within ten seconds of landing on your homepage, the page needs to be simplified. Distribute the rest of your content across dedicated interior pages where visitors can find it when they are ready for it, not all at once on arrival.
Problem 2: Your Photos Are Working Against You
Stock photography is a reasonable placeholder when a site first launches. It becomes a problem when it stays. Visitors making a decision about whether to attend your church want to see your actual people, your actual building, and your actual community. Generic photos of multiracial strangers in business casual attire do not accomplish that. They signal that no one has invested in representing the real community behind the website.
Photos that are stretched, pixelated, or poorly cropped send a similar message. Even a visitor who cannot articulate why will register that the site looks unprofessional, and that impression transfers to the ministry itself.
You do not need a professional photographer for every image on your site. What you need is:
- A small set of genuine photos of your congregation, your space, and your events, taken with a modern smartphone if necessary
- Images sized and formatted correctly for web use, typically compressed to under 200KB per image to keep page load times fast
- Consistent framing and lighting across photos used in the same section of a page
- A commitment to updating photos at least annually so the site reflects the current community
The investment in one Sunday morning with a photographer, even a skilled volunteer, will pay dividends for years. Real faces from your real congregation are more persuasive than any stock image library.
Problem 3: Critical Information Is Buried or Missing
This one is simple and surprisingly common: a visitor who wants to attend a service cannot easily find out when or where. Service times buried three clicks deep, addresses that link to a broken map, phone numbers that go to an unmonitored voicemail, and contact forms that nobody checks regularly are all failure points that cost churches real visitors.
Every church website, regardless of size or budget, should make the following information impossible to miss:
- Service day and time, displayed prominently on the homepage
- Physical address with a working Google Maps link
- A working phone number or email address that reaches a real person within 24 hours
- Parking instructions for any location where parking is not obvious
- A brief, honest description of what to expect during a service
The last item on that list is underused and undervalued. A sentence or two telling a first-time visitor what the service will feel like, the style of worship, the length, whether children are welcome in the service or have their own programming, reduces the anxiety that keeps many people from taking the step of attending. Transparency builds trust before a visitor ever walks in the door.
Problem 4: The Site Is Not Built for the Person Who Does Not Already Know You
Many church websites are written for members. The language assumes familiarity with the church’s programs, history, and internal vocabulary. Announcements reference events without explaining what they are. Ministry pages describe programs by their names without saying what those programs actually do. Navigation labels like “Connect,” “Grow,” and “Serve” mean something to a longtime member and almost nothing to someone visiting the site for the first time.
This is partly a writing problem and partly a structure problem. The fix is to read every page of your site through the eyes of someone who knows nothing about your church and ask: would this make sense to them? A few practical tests:
- Every page title should describe what the page contains to someone who has never heard of your church
- Every ministry or program listing should include a plain-language description of what it is and who it is for
- Every event listing should include a date, time, location, and one sentence explaining what will happen
- Avoid denominational or theological insider language on pages designed for new visitors
None of this requires eliminating language that is meaningful to your congregation. It means layering in context so that the site works for both audiences simultaneously.
Problem 5: The Site Is Not Maintained
A church website with a 2019 copyright notice, an events calendar showing past events, a staff page featuring people who left years ago, and a sermon archive that ends eighteen months ago sends a clear and unintended message: nobody is home. For a visitor trying to determine whether your church is active and worth visiting, an unmaintained site is disqualifying.
Regular maintenance does not require a technical team. It requires a clear owner: one person responsible for keeping the site current, with a calendar reminder to check specific sections on a specific schedule. A reasonable minimum maintenance cadence looks like:
- Weekly: update the events calendar, remove past events, add upcoming ones
- Monthly: verify that all contact information and service times are accurate
- Quarterly: review the staff page, update photos and bios as needed
- Annually: audit every page for outdated content, broken links, and information that no longer reflects the church
If your current website platform makes these updates difficult enough that they regularly do not get done, that is a signal that the platform itself may need to change. Modern church website builders have made content updates accessible to non-technical staff, and the investment in switching platforms is almost always worth it if the alternative is a site that goes months without updates.
A Word on Budgets
The original version of this article noted, correctly, that church websites are often underfunded. That is still true. But the relationship between budget and quality has changed considerably. Free and low-cost tools have made well-designed, well-maintained websites accessible to churches of any size. The gap between a church website that helps people find community and one that drives them away is now less a function of budget than of attention.
The five problems above are not primarily expensive to fix. They are fixable with clarity about who the site is for, a few hours of honest editing, a Sunday morning with a smartphone camera, and one person willing to own the updates. The ministry behind your website is worth representing well. The people who will find it through search are counting on it.
The gap between a church website that works and one that doesn’t is less a function of budget than of attention.
