For churches · Insights
No. 27 entries · updated weekly
Real takes for pastors and church staff on websites, online giving, ChMS, and the small fixes that move first-time guests from the homepage into the room. No buzzwords. No fluff.
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A first-time guest decides whether to come partly from your website. Here's exactly what to put on a plan-a-visit page: parking, kids, service length, what to wear, where to sit, and the pastor.
Read insightTools for churches
Six homepage basics for church SEO, each with a figure from our 2026 study of church websites, a quick check, and where to fix it in Squarespace, Wix or WordPress.
One list, written once on Thursday, becomes Friday's email, a homepage block with an end date, and three spoken announcements on Sunday. A weekly routine one volunteer can keep.
How to claim and verify your church's Google listing from a church-owned account, make it match your website, ask for reviews within Google's rules, and keep it right each month.
Ask three things, skip the rest, put the same card online behind an "I'm new" button, and print one follow-up promise with a day on it. A setup one volunteer can run.
Before you sign or renew with a web vendor, check who owns your domain, your content and your site files, and what the renewal clause says. A four-step check for pastors and admins.
Figures from our 2026 study of 2,000 church websites, each tied to a question a first-time guest asks before Sunday, with one plain fix a volunteer can make.
The pastor doesn't need to own the website. Here's a one-volunteer monthly checklist that keeps your site current, plus when to hand it off entirely.
A plain weekly, monthly and quarterly routine for the volunteer who keeps a church website running, so service times, the give link and the Google listing stay correct.
A one-time redesign pays for launch day. A flat monthly fee pays for the regular edits a first-time guest depends on. Here's how to compare the two, and when you don't need a monthly fee at all.
Have one event coming up? Here's how a volunteer adds one short banner, one event page, and a take-down date to the church homepage, with service times still first.
If your church is asking about an app, our advice is to get a working website first. Here's how the two differ, who each one serves, and how to pick without wasting a volunteer's evenings.
A plain frame for pastors deciding how to serve Spanish-speaking guests on the church website: when to translate everything, when a single welcome page is enough, and what to build first.
Before you pay for a full church website rebuild, run this six-step check. It tells you whether your site needs a teardown or a few targeted fixes.
A plain, honest list of what a church plant needs online on day one, for its website, giving, and first-time guests, with notes on what to skip for now.
Picking a church management system for a congregation under 200 comes down to price, simplicity, and who has to run it. Here is how to tell whether you need one yet, whether a church tool or a business CRM fits, and how to keep your data.
A lot of welcome card advice tells you to tweak the fields. I'd argue the card isn't where you lose a first-time guest. Here's the assumption worth rethinking, and what to fix first.
A step-by-step way for a pastor or volunteer to audit a church homepage in about 30 minutes, using the eyes of a first-time guest deciding whether to come.
A plain, symptom-by-symptom way to find out why your church's give button isn't working, so you fix the real break instead of rebuilding the whole page.
A first-time guest lands on your homepage with a simple question: when do you meet? Here's how to check whether your service times are the first thing they see, and how to fix it if they aren't.
A first-time guest checks your site on their phone before service. If it takes eight seconds to load, they may not wait. Here's how to find and fix what's slowing it down.
The five things a first-time guest looks for on a church website, how to check each one on your phone, and what to add this week if one is missing.
A plain look at what Pushpay and Subsplash giving each lock you into, for pastors and the volunteer who maintains the church website, with a one-minute check of your own give button first.
Planning Center and Breeze are two systems that come up when a church is ready to move past spreadsheets. Here is how they actually differ, and how to pick based on where your church is right now.
A fair look at church website templates: when a template platform is the right call, the popular options churches actually use, and when custom is worth it.
A plain comparison of five online giving platforms, plus the free options. What each one charges per gift, who it fits, and how it connects back to your website.
A real breakdown of what a church website actually costs in 2026, by tier. The hidden costs, the breakeven math, and what you are paying for under each option.
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