What a Church Website Actually Needs (And What It Doesn’t)

Most church websites were built in a hurry by a volunteer who no longer attends. You know the ones: a homepage slider with five photos of empty chairs, a calendar that stopped updating in February, and a “Watch Live” button that links to a Facebook page that may or may not still exist.

Nobody meant for it to get this way. It just did — because building a website and keeping a website are two different jobs, and most small congregations only planned for the first one.

So what does a church website actually need? Less than you think, and more of one thing than most have.

What it needs

A clear answer to the question every first-time visitor is asking: Who are you, and can I belong here?

That’s it. That’s the job. Everything else — the sermon archive, the online giving button, the staff directory — matters, but only after that question is answered. A new visitor deciding whether to show up on Sunday doesn’t need your full doctrinal statement. They need to know where you meet, when you meet, what to expect when they walk in, and whether someone will be glad they came.

The pages that do the most work on a small church site are simple: a homepage that feels like the church actually wrote it, a short “What to expect” page for visitors, a way to find service times and location without digging, and a contact or prayer request form that actually goes somewhere. That’s the floor. Everything else builds on it.

What online giving actually needs

A lot of churches assume they need a complicated giving portal. Most don’t. What they need is a giving button that works on a phone, connected to a platform the treasurer already knows how to log into. Tithe.ly, Stripe, PayPal Giving Fund — pick the one that causes the least friction for whoever reconciles the books. The platform matters less than the integration being clean and the link being easy to find.

What it doesn’t need

A homepage slider. Sliders were popular around 2012 and have been quietly lowering conversion rates ever since — most visitors never see past the first slide, and the motion creates visual noise right where a new visitor is trying to figure out if they want to stay.

A “Under Construction” page for any section. If it’s not ready, leave it off the site entirely until it is.

A stock photo of people in business attire having a meeting. Church visitors know that’s not your congregation.

The thing that matters most

Honest words. A church website written like a real person works much harder than one assembled from templates and placeholders. Visitors can tell the difference between “Welcome to our vibrant community of faith” and a paragraph that sounds like it came from the actual pastor who will be standing at the front on Sunday morning.

The best church websites I’ve seen don’t win on design. They win because you can feel that someone who loves the congregation wrote them.