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The Small Church Website Checklist
The 24 things a visitor-ready church site gets right
Everything on this list is concrete, checkable in an afternoon, and grounded in what we measured across 2,000 church websites in The State of Small Church Websites, 2026. No item here needs a developer — most need fifteen minutes and a decision about whose job it is.
No email required. Print it, share it, give it to your deacon board. The print version is a clean one-page-ish handout with real checkboxes — that’s the download. (No JavaScript? Ctrl/Cmd+P does the same thing.)
Part 1 of 6
First-time visitor readiness
Before anything else, your website is for the person who has never walked in. These five things answer their five unspoken questions.
Service times on the homepage, above the fold
It is the single thing every first-time visitor comes looking for — nobody should have to scroll, tap, or guess to learn when church happens.
From the study: Service times are findable on 84.1% of church websites — but findable is not the same as immediate.
Your street address, plus a note about parking
A visitor makes the final decision in the car; the address should be one glance away, and a parking note quietly says "we expected you."
From the study: A physical address is findable on 85.3% of church websites.
A what-to-expect page: dress, kids, how long the service runs
Walking into a new church is genuinely intimidating — a plain page that answers "will I stick out?" removes the biggest reason people never come.
From the study: Only 56.9% of church websites have plan-a-visit or what-to-expect content.
One clear next step for a newcomer
One obvious door — "Plan a visit," "Say hello," a newcomer form — beats a menu of ten ministries every time.
From the study: Only 56.9% of church websites give a newcomer a clear next step.
Your pastor's name and a friendly photo
People visit people before they visit institutions; a name and a face turn "a church" into "Pastor Sarah's church."
From the study: Only 50.6% of church websites name their pastor anywhere in the text we crawled.
Part 2 of 6
Giving that works
Generosity has moved to the phone. A giving link that is missing — or quietly broken — costs the church every week, invisibly.
The Give link actually works — click it this week
Giving links rot quietly: processors change URLs, embeds break, and nobody notices because the people who would tell you already give by check.
From the study: Only 64.2% of small-church websites have a giving path that actually resolves when followed.
Giving completes on a phone, in under a minute
Most generous impulses happen on a phone — during the service, right after it, or the moment someone remembers on a Tuesday.
The giving page says, in a sentence, what gifts support
A line like "your gift keeps the lights on, the pantry stocked, and the youth trip funded" turns a form into an act of trust.
Part 3 of 6
Freshness discipline
Websites do not go stale from laziness; they go stale from nobody's-job. Freshness is a rota, not a redesign.
One named person owns the website, with 15 minutes a week
The churches whose sites stay alive are not the ones with the most volunteers — they are the ones where updating the site is a specific person's Tuesday task.
The newest sermon or message on the site is under two weeks old
A recent sermon is the strongest proof of life a church website can show — it says "this congregation met last Sunday and will meet next Sunday."
From the study: Only 22.5% of church websites have sermon content current within about two months.
Last month's events are gone; next month's are up
An expired event on the homepage tells a visitor more than any welcome paragraph — and what it tells them is "nobody is home."
From the study: Only 72.8% of small-church websites show any sign of an update within the past year.
The footer copyright year is this year
It is a tiny thing, but it is the first staleness signal a visitor — and a search engine — will notice.
Part 4 of 6
The technical floor
None of this requires a developer. Most of it is a checkbox in your website platform — the study shows the field has largely solved the first two and largely skipped the rest.
The site loads over HTTPS (the padlock in the address bar)
Browsers flag non-HTTPS sites as "not secure" — a hard thing to see next to your church's name.
From the study: 94.3% of small-church websites have this solved; without it, you stand out the wrong way.
The site is readable on a phone without pinch-zooming
More than half of your first-time visitors will only ever see the phone version — it is not the small screen, it is the screen.
From the study: 93.4% of small-church websites are mobile-ready by the viewport check.
Every page has a real title and a meta description
The title and description are your church's handshake in search results — write them like you would answer "what church is this?"
From the study: Only 62.4% of church websites carry a meta description at all.
Exactly one main heading (H1) per page
One clear headline per page helps screen readers and search engines understand what the page is actually about.
From the study: Just 39.9% of church websites get this right — most have none, or several.
A favicon (the little icon in the browser tab)
It is the smallest polish signal there is — and its absence is what makes a site feel unfinished without anyone being able to say why.
From the study: 81.9% of church websites have one; about 1 in 5 skips it.
Every meaningful image has alt text
Alt text is hospitality for members who use screen readers — the digital version of a ramp by the front steps.
From the study: The median church website gives alt text to only 40% of its images.
Part 5 of 6
Being findable
Most people will meet your church on Google or in a group chat before they meet it on your homepage. Make sure what they see there is true.
Google Business Profile hours and service times match the website
When Google says 10:00 and the website says 10:30, somebody ends up standing in an empty parking lot — and it will be a first-time visitor.
Basic structured data: church name, address, and service times marked up
Schema markup is how search engines and AI assistants answer "churches near me" accurately — it makes your real details machine-readable.
Part 6 of 6
Measurement
You cannot shepherd what you cannot see. Ten minutes of numbers a month tells you which boxes on this list matter most for your congregation.
Any analytics at all — even a free, privacy-friendly one
Without it, every conversation about "is our website working?" is a conversation with no data in the room.
From the study: 66% of church websites measure nothing at all.
Someone looks at the numbers once a month
Analytics nobody reads is just another stale page — one recurring calendar slot turns the data into decisions.
Statistics are from The State of Small Church Websites, 2026 — our audit of 2,000 church websites across all 50 states, July 2026. Small-church figures are of the 1,734 sites an LLM judge confirmed as small churches. Full methodology, biases included: the study · every stat, quotable.
The Small Church Website Checklist — Church Digital, The State of Small Church Websites, 2026. Full study and methodology: churchdigital.com/research. Free to share with attribution.
Want the list checked for you?
The free website grader runs your church’s site against the measurable items on this list — giving, freshness, service times, mobile, and more — in about 30 seconds. And if you’d rather have human eyes, we record a free five-minute video review of any church website. No pitch, no call required, no email gate on either.
Questions churches ask about this checklist
- Do I have to give you my email address to get the checklist?
- No. No email required — this page is the resource. Print it, share it, give it to your deacon board, forward the link to another church. The Print button produces a clean one-column handout with real checkboxes, and there is no PDF gate because there is no PDF: the page is the download.
- Where do the statistics on this page come from?
- From our study, The State of Small Church Websites, 2026: we audited 2,000 church websites across all 50 states in July 2026 with an identified, robots-respecting crawler, and an LLM judge adjudicated 99.9% of reachable sites. Headline small-church figures are of the 1,734 sites judged to be small churches. The full methodology — including its known biases — is published at churchdigital.com/research, and every figure is an aggregate: no individual church is named.
- What if our website misses half of this list?
- Then your church is normal — only 51.6% of church websites score a 4 or 5 on our five-point visitor-readiness rubric, and most sites we studied would miss many of these boxes. Work top to bottom: visitor readiness and working giving move the needle most. If you want the list checked automatically, the free website grader runs your site against the measurable items in about 30 seconds — no email required there either.