Do You Really Need A Website?

Last weekend I decided to finally clean the garage. It was dirtier than I thought - filthy, actually. That’s why I was amazed when I finished the whole project in under 3 hours. When it comes to your church branding and design, there are probably some things that you’ve thought about cleaning up but have been wary of starting. What if it takes longer than you thought it would? What if it’s going to cost you money to fix? It can be easy to ignore these minor issues until they turn into bigger ones. The problem is that we often underestimate how bad things really are. If you looked into it, you might find that your website actually doesn’t work on certain browsers, or that there are 7 different versions of your logo floating around. This spring-summer season is a great time to clean up those divergent designs and maybe even do a light branding refresh. Tending your brand means addressing problems before they accumulate for too long, or it will quickly get out of control.

Designers use color ratios to help us create aesthetically pleasing designs. After nearly a decade of graphic design, I can go with my gut when balancing colors. But when all is said and done, it almost always works out to some version of the 70-20-10 ratio. 70 If you have a brand color palette, pick a more neutral color that is either very light or very dark. If you don’t have a color like that in the palette, just use white or black. This is your 70% color, and it should be the background color on the whole site. 20 Your 20% color should be a contrasting color to the 70%. So if your 70% color is white, your 20% color should be black or dark grey. Use this color for body text and some section backgrounds. 10 Finally, the 10% left should be a “pop” color. This is usually your main brand color. Use the 10% color on buttons, or smaller elements that need some attention.

Got a website for your church but it’s missing that extra-clean, professional look? I’ve got four tips for you today that are guaranteed to make it better. If you do these things, your web visitors will have an easier time finding what they’re looking for and you’ll have more people walking through your church’s digital front door. 1. Be Selective with Content The more different pieces of content there are on your site, the less likely visitors are to read any of it. Reduce the amount of information you’re presenting and cut any text that isn’t absolutely necessary. Pro tip: write as if you’re explaining your church to a total stranger at a 4th grade reading level. Here are a few practical ways to slice and dice: Headings should be between 1-10 words Paragraphs should be less than 50 words Use bulleted lists instead of sentences with commas 2. Increase Font Sizes If your content has been distilled to follow the word counts above, you’ll be able to bump up the size of your headings and body copy. This makes the site easier to skim, and helps older readers who might struggle with small text. I recommend 20-25px for body text, and 48-72px for your largest heading. 3. Provide a Clear Call to Action If someone happens to land on your website, you want to give them a clear next step, just like you would for a visitor who to your church on Sunday morning. Whether that’s filling out a digital connection card or watching your service livestream, make sure that there is a stand-out action someone can take, and that each button says exactly what it does. Pro tip: Avoid links and buttons that say like “Learn More” or “Click Here.” Instead, use labels that are specific and tell the user what to expect when they click that particular button. 4. Prioritize Menu Items Just like cutting down text, you also want to reduce the number of options you’re presenting to visitors. I’m working on a website refresh right now with an organization whose old website had FIFTY FIVE different links in the main menu. The decision paralysis and brainpower it takes to find what you’re looking for can get overwhelming very fast. Try to limit your main menu to 5 options or less. You can always link to additional pages from one of those main pages, but this approach keeps everything organized and easy to navigate.

So you want to put professional-looking photos on your church website. That’s great, but where do you start? Who do you hire? What shots do you need? The main thing to remember is that you want to show the benefits of your church. Why do people attend? What makes your church uniquely valuable as a local congregation? Website photos and videos should show the benefits you’re known for and set realistic expectations. Church website imagery is especially important because it’s giving potential visitors a taste of what it’s like to attend, while also reminding existing members of the reason they come. That said, how can you get the most out of your time and resources? Here are my recommendations. Book a local photographer for a Sunday morning and ask them for a list of shots that looks something like this: Parking Lot / Building Greeters Bulletins / Merch Worship Preaching Fellowship Baptisms or other significant moments Bonus tip: If you can find a little more budget, use a videographer instead and ask for stills from the footage they capture. Now you have professional video and photos. Much like a rebrand, if you do this right, you won’t have to do it again for a very long time. Put your new photos and video on the most visited pages of your website, and let them go to work. While you’re off focusing on ministry, they’ll be consistently connecting with people who are looking for a church home, and tending that part of your brand for you.

When God's people gather for corporate worship, we've always looked for ways to beautify the space in which we meet. Sometimes you don’t have a choice for what your meeting space looks like. Many churches and church plants share a building with someone else. Others might own their building but just don't have the budget to start knocking down walls. However, the design and layout of common spaces in your church building will either help or hinder people feeling welcome and at home in your church. When my wife and I bought our first house, we were excited to host people for meals and fellowship. You can imagine that I was disappointed when I realized that the layout of our walls and floor plan made fellowship difficult. A wall separated the kitchen from the living room, and the dining area tried to straddle the two rooms, which made it awkward to socialize while we cooked food for our guests. Conincidentally, we're standing where you would have to stand while talking with someone in the kitchen. When we decided to build a house, we designed the floor plan to be open and spacious. Not being interior designers or “feng shui” experts, we were expecting that this new layout would solve our problem. It did - but not perfectly! After all that, there are things I would still do differently to make our home as welcoming and supportive of fellowship as possible. Our new house, still a work in progress. If you own your church building and can afford it, seek out a professional for help creating a space that is beautiful and inspiring. Regardless of your situation, don’t take for granted opportunities to beautify the place you're gathering for corporate worship. At the end of the day, there's nothing that is more welcoming than a friendly, genunine person. Inspire your congregation to be that hospitable through their environment.

Got a website for your church but it’s missing that extra-clean, professional look? I’ve got four tips for you today that are guaranteed to make it better. If you do these things, your web visitors will have an easier time finding what they’re looking for and you’ll have more people walking through your church’s digital front door. 1. Be Selective with Content The more different pieces of content there are on your site, the less likely visitors are to read any of it. Reduce the amount of information you’re presenting and cut any text that isn’t absolutely necessary. Pro tip: write as if you’re explaining your church to a total stranger at a 4th grade reading level. Here are a few practical ways to slice and dice: Headings should be between 1-10 words Paragraphs should be less than 50 words Use bulleted lists instead of sentences with commas 2. Increase Font Sizes If your content has been distilled to follow the word counts above, you’ll be able to bump up the size of your headings and body copy. This makes the site easier to skim, and helps older readers who might struggle with small text. I recommend 20-25px for body text, and 48-72px for your largest heading. 3. Provide a Clear Call to Action If someone happens to land on your website, you want to give them a clear next step, just like you would for a visitor who to your church on Sunday morning. Whether that’s filling out a digital connection card or watching your service livestream, make sure that there is a stand-out action someone can take, and that each button says exactly what it does. Pro tip: Avoid links and buttons that say like “Learn More” or “Click Here.” Instead, use labels that are specific and tell the user what to expect when they click that particular button. 4. Prioritize Menu Items Just like cutting down text, you also want to reduce the number of options you’re presenting to visitors. I’m working on a website refresh right now with an organization whose old website had FIFTY FIVE different links in the main menu. The decision paralysis and brainpower it takes to find what you’re looking for can get overwhelming very fast. Try to limit your main menu to 5 options or less. You can always link to additional pages from one of those main pages, but this approach keeps everything organized and easy to navigate.

I see too many churches missing chances for continued visitor engagement. Does this sound familiar? “Thanks for attending, follow us on Facebook for announcements!” Giving people a link to your social media page isn’t bad, but there is a much better way to encourage visitors to continue engaging with your church. Most people are coming to church with the intention of getting something deeper than what they can get online. So give them that! Instead of asking something of them, offer them something that they would be crazy to say no to. Here are the three easy and effective ways to do that: 1. Next Steps After What They Just Got This is an easy one. Offer visitors the next thing that follows from how they just engaged. Why? If they came for a worship conference or at a summer camp, the next steps are going to be activities like discipleship, Bible studies, and community. If they experienced the power of the gospel and God’s people at the event, they’re going to naturally want this. And, if you’re like most churches, these are all programs that your church already offers! 2. More of the Same Thing Offer visitors more of the same thing they just experienced. This is helpful in circumstances where the engagement is something your church participates in on a regular basis. If you have a weekly cadence of a Wednesday night Bible study for Sunday morning worship, and a visitor attends for that particular event, offer them an easy way to continue to come. This offer should somehow make attending next week even easier. 3. Something Similar But Better This one is pretty self explanatory. If a visitor is attending a Wednesday night community bible study, offer them a small group of people in your church where they’ll go deeper and get to study over a longer period of time with people they know. If someone visits a Sunday morning worship service, offer them Wednesday night worship or a prayer meeting. Following these three strategies will help you guide visitors along the journey of engaging and identifying with your church, so that they can ultimately join.

A friend told me they have a saying in sales world, “Confused people never buy.” It’s a maxim to keep rookie salesmen from making the critical mistake of overloading their prospects with information.Instead of focusing on one or two unique benefits of the product, they’ll talk about all the little complex features. But this is actually counterproductive. Seasoned salesmen know that people buy when they have the most clarity around just one or two pieces of information. Here’s the question: does your church brand promote clarity or does it create confusion? Like it or not, branding can easily be the difference between visitors who don’t come back and excited new members who join. Tend your brand in a way that tells a simple, coherent story. P.S. Simple and clear doesn’t always mean easy. That’s why I offer a complete rebrand package for churches who are tired of mismatched branding and want a permanent fix.

If you’re a church that does sermon series graphics, then you might have struggled with how far to push the envelope in those visuals. Do you download the latest free template from Free Church Media or Ministry Designs dot com? Do you design them in-house? For us creatives, it’s enticing to explore and use new visuals every few months. But I want to encourage you to curb that impulse. Here’s why: Those unbranded templates and graphics can ultimately work against your brand. But wait, they’re not permanent - what’s so bad about them? Over time, these graphics become part of your brand, whether you like it or not. Using templates that are fun, fresh, and modern might feel like a good way to keep things interesting, but over time that variety adds up into noise. Over time, too much variety accumulates into noise. Instead of your sermon graphics reinforcing your brand, they can start to pollute it. They start to appear disjointed and random when you sample them as a whole. To protect your brand, you need a common thread woven throughout. This is why brand guidelines are so important. They provide a fixed scope for visual styles. Robust brand guidelines will tell you not only what that common thread is, but how it should be integrated in different contexts. If you’re worried about your sermon graphics polluting your brand rather than reinforcing it, check your brand guidelines to see if there’s a way to bring that free template into alignment. If you don’t have brand guidelines, consider having some created. It’s a great way to get the most out of your existing logo and can help you add variety to your church’s communications, without feeling random.

No, not that kind. I’m talking about a crest or circular mark that adds a level of class to your overall brand. You might think, “Isn’t a seal something you press into wax on a scroll or an envelope? I can’t see our church needing something so… outdated?” I’ll grant that. Seals and crests have been around a long time. But their oldness is exactly what makes them such a useful form for a logo to take. For almost every organization, and certainly for a church, there are times when you want to present yourself with a bit more formality. Pop quiz: You‘re greeting someone you know. Do you…? A. Give a short nod B. Embrace them with a warm hug C. Offer a firm handshake The answer is, it depends on the context! Some situations call for a nod, others a hug, and depending on where you are, neither of those things might be appropriate. The logo seal is the firm handshake of visual branding. Having this brand mark in your arsenal is tantamount to elevate your brand for settings where more formality and gravity is required.

I’ve encountered confusion when I provide multiple versions of a logo for a rebrand project, especially regarding the scaled-down or “mini” version. Why do we need this one? Shouldn’t the main logo be just fine? It’s understandable. Designers love to be nitpicky and anal about things. And most logos can work at small sizes (ish). But you want to elevate your brand above just “good enough” right? The thing to understand about “mini” versions of a logo is that they solve a very specific problem: Most logos with any kind of complexity will start to lose their detail or integrity at a certain size when scaled down. Beyond that point (usually around 1in on the longest dimension), linework starts to appear thin, gaps begin to plug up, and the logo loses its presence. Every medium for rendering an image or a shape into the real world has its limitations. Digital screens are limited by pixels. Ink on paper is limited by the dot size and density. Embroidery is limited by thread and needle size. Laser etching is limited by tolerance in the machinery and surface material. I could go on with this list, but it’s actually not necessary that you understand these different techniques. The critical idea is this: Relative size matters more than anything else. Every medium comes with logo limitations. Relative size is what matters most. For a sunglasses company, they need at least a version of the logo which works in the tiny space on the stem of a pair of sunglasses. For a food truck with no website or merch to speak of, the logo can be more complex, and is only limited by what can be printed on a vehicle wrap or a menu. For most churches, having a website is enough of a reason to have a logo optimized to fit in that little square provided by the browser tab (usually called a “favicon”). It’s a common practice for many churches and other organizations to have a mini logo, and it’s why I recommend all of my clients use the mini version I provide them in their branding package. If you ever anticipate getting the logo embroidered on a hat, embossed on a journal, or printed on a lanyard, you will probably need a simplified brand mark.

Recently I shared a story about a church who was threatened with a lawsuit due to a similar logo. But that was probably just a fluke - is spending the time and money on a trademark really necessary? As it turns out, there are other cases of trademark battles involving churches, and more nuanced reasons to venture down the trademarking path. I’ve been learning about this process lately, so I figured I would share what I’m learning here and contextualize it for churches. With that, here are five reasons you might want to trademark your church name and logo. 1. You’ve been confused with other organizations This first one should be obvious, but trademarking your church’s name and logo is the best way to prevent organizational identity theft and brand abuse. In 2010, the International House of Prayer (IHOP), faced a trademark infringement lawsuit from the restaurant chain International House of Pancakes, also known as IHOP. The restaurant chain alleged that the ministry’s use of the acronym “IHOP” and the website domain “ihop.org” caused confusion and diluted its brand. Although the lawsuit was eventually dropped and settled out of court, the ministry agreed to rebrand itself as IHOPKC to distinguish itself from the restaurant chain. 2. You sell merchandise If you’re selling books, shirts, or creating digital resources under your church’s name, a trademark can help you maintain control over the brand. As soon as you start putting your name or logo on merchandise like shirts, mugs, hats, books, etc., you’re entering the realm of commerce. A trademarked image and name helps you protect your church’s right to sell those products without worrying about knock-offs or competing merch. Otherwise, another church could copy your image for their own merch and start profiting off it. Online platforms like Amazon, Shopify, and Etsy will sometimes even require you to trademark your brand, rather than run the risk of stores impersonating you. 3. You create media resources Similar to physical products, digital products can be replicated, resold, or changed without your permission, which can quickly turn into a huge headache. In fact, digital products are even more vulnerable than physical products because they are easier to make and distribute copies of. Media resources like trainings, devotionals or Bible-reading plans, and paid digital content (even if it’s just raising support for a campaign) can all be exploited without trademark protection. 4. You’re expanding digitally In that same vein, creating content online can become more complicated as your brand and audience grows. Even if there’s no money changing hands, your church’s reputation is an asset that can be maligned or challenged. All that to say, if you’re expanding online (websites, social media, podcasts), you probably want to think about trademarking sooner than later. 5. You’re expanding geographically If you’re starting satellite campuses, or gaining regional/national recognition, trademarking helps protect your brand across state lines. At the end of the day, without proper trademark protection, your name or logo can be used by others, leading to confusion or association with unrelated or even opposing groups.