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The Oklahoma United Methodist Contact
January 17, 2024
Your church’s digital curb appeal is more important than ever
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n today’s digital society, a website is often more important than a building’s location, curb appeal, or signage. It’s important to ensure that your church has a robust, dynamic website that shares necessary information and introduces visitors to your authentic, unique character. Starting a website can be daunting. It’s more than going online and “signing up,” as we do for most things these days, like Facebook and Amazon. A website needs three main components, each of which must then work together to make it work: A domain name is the URL - or what comes after www and before .org or .com. If you search commonlynamed churches, you’ll see that most are already taken. For instance, if you’re First UMC in Oklahoma City, you might look for okcfirst.com as a domain. Unfortunately, that name is currently being used by First Church of the Nazarene. It’s important to get a domain name that is short enough to be memorable but that isn’t already in use. Hosting is where your website itself - the files, the code, etc., is actually stored. There are tons of web hosting companies. Many churches pay for five years of hosting, then forget the host name - or staff changes and institutional knowledge is lost. When this happens, staff can find that all of
a sudden, the church website is down and no one knows how to set it back up. Keeping that information in a safe, obvious spot is imperative. Web design is the final piece of the website puzzle. This is where church staff or volunteers can become equipped to log in and change information, upload photos, and more. Web design software can range from relatively easy, with sites like Wordpress or Wix, to very difficult, using computer coding languages to design the sites. What does this all mean to a church looking to add a website to its portfolio? Each item listed has a cost attached. From domain rental - you never really “own” your domain name - to hosting to design, a good website is never free. Some all-in-one membership management software, like SalesForce or Salsa, offer included websites, but for the purposes of this story, we will assume that if that is an option, your church can also take advantage of their free or low-cost training.
to log into their account and add information such as worship and education times, leadership introductions, available ministries, detailed descriptions, and even photos. The search engine optimization (SEO) used by UM Comms is firstrate, which means that if you use FindAChurch, your church will come up in Google searches of your area. Another free web resource that every church should be taking advantage of is social media. Whether your target audience is on Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, or Snapchat, your church can have a presence. The caveat to some social media platforms is that safe sanctuaries policies do apply to children and youth using those apps, so a good policy will be of utmost importance. Ensuring your Google location is up-to-date is an additional step that often gets overlooked. The second option is to use UM Comm’s Website Services. This service is available to all United Methodist churches at a low cost and includes all three necessary This article focuses on three basic components to a website, plus training. options for your church. One advantage of UM Comm is The first is to take advantage of that their services are specific to our totally free resources available on denomination; another is that they the web. assist through the entire process, from Find-A-Church is United Methodist beginning to end. Third, they are by far Communications’ most-visited site. the least expensive paid option. This tool allows church representatives The third option is to do the
Director of Communications: Joseph Harris Multimedia & Web Manager: Andrew Himes Editor of Publications: Jena Barber Communications Specialist: Tabitha Beckman 1501 N.W. 24th, Oklahoma City, OK 73106
Stories and photos by the editor unless otherwise noted.
Send news to editor@okumc.org. Submission deadline: Each Monday. Next publication date: Jan. 24.
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