XL-Mentoring: Making a Difference

• Improve behaviours, self-esteem & life skills.
• Stay in school and succeed in education.
• Improve relationships with family, peers teachers and others in the community.
• Set goals for the future and work hard to achieve them

Three more church websites for inspiration

It is great to see churches and ministries producing very different websites out of the same system. Three more ChurchInsight inspirations today – each with its own needs and approach, each with elements to inspire us all.

 

ChurchInsight is a website system for churches and ministries used widely in the UK and US. Try our free trial here to see if it would work for your organisation.

 

This post is the fourth in a series. Find more church website inspiration here: part one, part two, part three.

Terry Virgo

Terry Virgo is a communicator. You can’t tell from the screenshot, but the front page of his website is quite long, taking space for summaries of his latest blog posts. In doing this, his voice is clearly heard on the front page, setting the tone for the whole site.

 

The website is all about Terry Virgo’s articles, audio recordings and books. To help users browse through the catalogue, there is a fat nav drop down from the main menu – a wide drop down box with lots of links. The site also has an A-Z list of topics in the Resources Library and a content rich footer, useful when you’ve scrolled to the bottom of a long page. 

 

The visual appeal is obvious, with a balanced layout and use of colour, using green sparingly as a feature against the grey. A few rounded corners take the harshness out of the blocks. I like the partial use of shadow down the sides, and the well-proportioned carousel of links. 

 

All Souls Langham Place

Similar to Terry Virgo’s site, All Souls also have a row of image links in letterbox dimensions across the middle of the page. They are overlaid with text and sit under a scrolling hero image. 

 

One thing stands out that not many churches go for – Facebook, right in the middle of the page. Featuring an active social media account in this way immediately conveys a sense of community and activity, and encourages people to join in. 

 

It’s a busy website, but presents the visitor key information about when the church meets through the events column, and offers sermons in audio to get a flavour of the church. Altogether, easy to see what is going on, easy to get in touch.

 

Serve

Serve is an alliance of Christian organisations who support churches to transform their communities. On their website, they’ve made a bold choice and gone for blue in a big way, with yellow highlights.

 

It works because they’ve carried it out with conviction. Many different shades make up the whole. The site is uncluttered, with the most important items in their own boxes. 

 

Real photography rotating in the centre gives the website, and the organisation, a soul. I like the clear newsletter sign up on the right, and the clever expanding menu for resources underneath.

 

For help designing your own church website, see ChurchInsight design services. Come and chat to us about church website design on Facebook or Twitter. 

Even more inspiring church websites

Continuing our series of inspiration your own church website design, we bring you three more ChurchInsight examples. Today, a young church in Luton, an established UK and Ireland network, and an Anglican church on the other side of the world.

 

If you like these, check out the first set and the three more inspiring designs that followed.

 

If you want any help designing your own church website, there is more information at ChurchInsight design services. 

 

City Life Church

City Life Church in Luton have taken an original approach to their website design. The main content floats over an arresting pink background, with customised tabs at the top for navigation.

 

The main part of the front page shows articles and dates. The right hand column introduces the church, switching to submenu navigation on the content pages. Where many churches hide or minimise the login box, CLC make a feature of it, showing visitors that there is more to the site (and church) than meets the eye.

 

Not everyone could get away with using pink, but it works for City Life Church. The informal tone of both the design and the copy is a refreshing change for a church.

 

 

Elim

Representing a network, the Elim website has to be different to local churches. Users will be searching for different information, such as what makes the network distinct, and how to find the nearest Elim church.

 

These questions are catered for with the bold links on the left. There is an introductory video and a scrolling gallery of related adverts, which are well designed – important especially when the feature takes up so much of the page.

 

Clearly there is a lot of information that Elim could put on their site, so they have done brilliantly at controlling it and keeping the design simple. Visitors find what they want by drilling down systematically from the main menu, if they hadn’t already seen it on the front page. The green date line at the top of the page is a nice, subtle touch.

 

St Marks

I like the way that St Marks in Melbourne, Australia uses bold colour blocks to create a sense of gravitas and tradition. The historical weight is carried through by the image gallery, which rotates with iconic pictures of stained glass and the church spire. It also shows the congregation for the human dimension.

 

The navigation is ordered through the main menu, and new visitors are served immediately by the picture links at the bottom of the page. Where many churches shun text on the front page, St Marks willingly share a welcome message, which fits the composed, regal feeling of the whole site.

 

It is simple, but effective.

 

Did you find any inspiration in these designs? We’d love to hear what you think on Facebook or Twitter - or tell us what you've done with your own ChurchInsight design.

More inspiration for church websites

Thanks for you response to Inspiration for church websites. It’s good to see what other churches and ministries are doing with their ChurchInsight sites. 

 

Without further ado, here are three more ChurchInsight websites for your delectation. Which one do you like best?

 

(If you are new to ChurchInsight, you can start a church website free trial here).
 

 

Bath City Church

Bath City Church’s website is the definition of order. There is a main menu for navigation, backed up by a content-rich footer full of links. In between, a list of latest articles and upcoming events let visitors know exactly what is going on.

 

I like the friendly welcome paragraph with service times displayed up front, next to links for new people. Someone knows how to write headlines – the event names (and other links) are clear – which makes this list approach effective. Colours have been kept simple for ease of communication.

 

The carousel keeps down to 4 adverts, in complementary colours. All in all, the visitor knows exactly where he or she is, and the site looks clean and balanced, letting the words speak for themselves.
 

 

Jubilee Church

Jubilee Church is another clean design, made up mainly of graphical adverts. The full width carousel is striking and has its own thumbnail navigation so that you know how many images there will be, and you can flip back to one that you want to see again. The adverts glide across a photograph that slides a little itself for a nice effect – you’ll have to visit the website to see what I mean.

 

Three one-click adverts that take you straight into last Sunday’s message, meeting details, and more info about the church. The main menu is repeated at the bottom of the page. You know exactly where you are, and there is a good use of embedded Vimeo video on the About page.
 

Tollington Parish

This is the website for three churches working together in north London. I like the colourful banner design and well chosen heading font. The main menu sits neatly into the design, above the main content which is framed first by the orange, and then by a subtle shadow further down the page.

 

The content is simple – a recurring theme in these inspirational websites. It’s easy to find out what is going on, listen to talks, or find out more about the churches. Tollington Parish is also another example of real photography – the colourful images get a strong message across about the church community, and add interest and social proof to the design.
 

Do you find anything to inspire you in these designs? We’d love to hear on Facebook or Twitter what you are doing with your church website. If you want custom design work for your site, ChurchInsight offer a range of design services.

Inspiration for church websites

Well over 600 churches and ministries are using ChurchInsight. We want to show you what some of them are doing with their websites to give you inspiration for your own. 

 

Some will be big ministries, others local congregations. Some have lots of time and money to spend on their website; others take a simple idea and execute it well. We’ll feature three today and more in the coming months. We’d love to hear what you are doing with your ChurchInsight website too.

 

(If you are new to ChurchInsight, start your free trial of a church website here.) 
 

Hope Together

Hope have a colourful header with a few handmade elements that create a collage feel without overdoing it. The search bar is cleverly incorporated into the design.

 

The front page actually has a simple layout. There is a main menu, adverts to key areas of the site in the middle, and a content rich footer to aid navigation if people prefer it. The two main adverts alternate – but with only a few images.  

 

Hope Together combines colourful branding with a clean layout – a difficult thing to do when you’ve got a lot going on. The website includes a shop for their resources.
 

Chiswick Christian Centre

Chiswick Christian Centre take an even more minimal approach. Their site is bold and simple. They use the dark blue background colours to set off high contrast menu text and colour photography. These are the two things that jump out when you visit the site. 

 

The hero images rotate through adverts for church events and photographs from church life. There is no stock photography here – CCC display real photos of people in their church, which shows the merit of finding someone to take good pictures of your congregation.

 

The bold white menu leads the user straight into the site content. Once you select an item, the content pages have a more comprehensive sub menu to help you to navigate.

St Andrews Chorleywood

St Andrews also go for contrast but in a different way. The background is light, against which black section headings stand out, set off by monochrome hero images. The full-width photos are a slideshow of different things going on in the life of the church. 

 

Reserved colour means that where colour highlights are used – for links, adverts, or added to the black and white photography – they really stand out. 

 

This website is happy to bring useful components onto the front page: events, latest articles, recent uploads and a welcome message appearing in the bottom half. They have also made the most of themes and settings to create a discrete design for key sections of the site, for example the Youth:
 

I hope that there are some ideas in these ChurchInsight websites to inspire you. Let us know on Facebook or Twitter what you are up to with your church website. And if you want custom design work for your site, find out more about our design services here.