THE VIBRANT PARISH NEWSLETTER

Church Website Trends We're LOVING!

We design (and redesign) websites for parishes across the country and, through this work, we get to see every type of church website design, layout, and content that you can think of. Here are some favorite trends we’ve come across that make parish websites more inviting, effective, and beautiful.

1. Homepage Video:

Video of a church’s parish community front and center, pre-scroll, on the parish’s homepage is a powerful way to connect with visitors to your page. This video can be part of the homepage’s headline, incorporate a tagline or mission statement, or stand alone. Opening a website with a beautiful video of the community to welcome the visitor creates a “wow” experience and sets a strong first impression, showing visitors to your site that you care about being tech-savvy and value giving your website’s visitors an engaging, welcoming experience.

Some examples of parish sites that do this well are:

• St. Augustine
  Their website shows multiple clips of their community engaging in Mass, sacraments, and community events as well as video of their campus. They feature different age groups as well so that visitors to their website get a great picture of who they are as a community.
• Christ the King
  Christ the King has a unique video worth sharing. It shows what it is like to walk into the front doors of their sanctuary and then shows a wide view of the sanctuary from above using a drone. Very cool!

2. Font Hierarchy:

One trend that helps websites immediately look more professionally made is the use of font hierarchy, also known as typographic hierarchy. This technique uses different fonts, sizes, and typographical emphasis (like bold and italics) to highlight the most important information first, then second, then third, and so on. Churches with the most successful designs incorporate their parish branding’s font hierarchy and colors right into their website.

Examples of parish websites that do this beautifully:

• Saint Michael the Archangel
  Here’s an example of a parish beautifully using their brand colors alongside good font hierarchy throughout their website. Visitors to this site will be more likely to remember this parish than parishes with sites who don’t present one unified message with their branding like this.
• Church of the Redeemer
  This parish also does an incredible job of incorporating their brand into their website. You can see their brand logo at the top right corner of their website and they continue the same colors, fonts, and clean, modern, design throughout the rest of their website.

Is your parish in need of a defined brand and font hierarchy? Have a brand but it’s old and doesn’t include special colors and fonts? Reach out to us! Our design team loves helping parishes create the perfect brand for them! See some examples here.

3. Simple Animations:

Animating certain features of your website brings a polished look to the finished site. They can also help direct attention to items you want to show, influencing visitors’ engagement with your content. This adds to the overall user experience people have when visiting your site.

Some sites that do this well are:

• St. Mark the Evangelist
  Immediately upon opening up St. Mark’s homepage, three circular icons toward the bottom float up, directing the visitor’s eyes to their most important homepage callouts: Bulletins, Online Giving, and Registration. Their hero image also features a welcome message that zooms into place, immediately highlighting that they are a welcoming community!
• Saint Michael the Archangel
  This parish features a simple but smart and creative animation on their homepage that contributes well to their user experience. Upon opening their homepage, as soon as a visitor starts scrolling, their logo at the top shrinks down to make room for the content on the page. Brilliant!

4. Special Welcome Pages:

Lastly, we wanted to highlight some content that we found inspiring. St. Mark the Evangelist has an incredible page that is linked on their homepage under their “Our Parish” heading in their menu called “I’m New Here.” This page is dedicated to answering basic questions a visitor might have when visiting the parish, a “FAQ” type of page. It covers questions like:

• What should I wear?
• Where should I park?
• Where do my children go?
• What times are Masses?
• Am I expected to donate money?

… and more. The page also includes a link to their easy-to-fill-out online registration form.

Pages with content like this one act to create an incredibly inviting environment for visitors and those discerning the faith. Great work, St. Mark!

We hope that these website trends help guide you toward the best website possible for your unique and vibrant church community! For help designing a website or a brand that best represents your parish, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We love assisting Catholic communities tell their story through beautiful and intentional design! Find our parish website service here and our branding services here.

Happy designing!

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Web Banners for Every Occasion

Inside WeCreate, our library of Catholic Content, we have web banner graphics for every occasion! Use them on your website, your social media profile page, for a Facebook or Eventbrite event, as a hero image for a flyer, and more!

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The First Things Visitors Look for on Catholic Church Websites

When someone visits your church’s website, their expectations of your parish in real life can be influenced by your site’s usability, content, and design. To make sure that you get people’s attention and don’t lose potential visitors, here are the first things that people look for when visiting a Catholic parish’s website.

1. Mass Times, Locations, and Live Stream Options

The most sought-after information on a church website is often the Mass schedule. Visitors want to know when and where your services take place. Make this information prominent on your homepage, ideally near the top, ensuring it's easy to find quickly. Include details about different services, such as worship styles, languages, and live streaming options.

2. Your “About Us” and Contact Information

People want to learn about your church's mission, values, and beliefs. Create an engaging "About Us" section that tells your story. Share the history of your church, your mission statement, and what sets your community apart. Don’t forget to make it easy for visitors to get in touch with you. Provide clear contact details such as phone numbers, email addresses, and even photos of staff members and ministry leaders. Consider also including a contact form for inquiries or prayer requests.

3. Events and Liturgical Calendar

People are interested in what's happening in your church community. Showcase upcoming events, classes, or special Mass times on a dedicated events page with an easy to find link on your homepage. A regularly updated calendar helps visitors plan their involvement with your community beyond just Sunday services.

4. Ministries and Programs — Especially Sacramental Preparation

Highlight the various ministries and programs your church offers in a prominent place. This could include children's programs, youth groups, community outreach, adult education, charitable offerings, liturgical roles, and more. Provide descriptions, schedules, and contact information for each ministry to help visitors get involved. We find that one of the most common reasons people visit church websites is to learn about marriage, baptisms, and funerals, so be sure to direct people to information about these topics in a prominent place on your homepage.

5. Your Bulletin

Including a digital copy of your bulletin that is easily accessible from your website’s homepage is a strategic way to make visitors to your website feel valued and informed. For those parishes who already partner with LPi for their bulletin service, including your bulletin in your website is as easy as using the included bulletin widget. Every week, when your bulletin editor submits your bulletin to print, your bulletin will automatically be sent to your church’s listing on Parishes Online. When you use the bulletin widget on your website, it will always display your newest bulletin, updating your website for you so that you don’t have to do anything extra to keep things up to date!

Lastly

If your parish’s website is not a well-designed site with clear and easy-to-use navigation or is not optimized to work on mobile devices, all the hard work you’ve put into making sure the above information is on your homepage may be wasted. If you need help designing an awesome parish website or giving your current design a new, more professional look, we’ve got you covered! Our team creates effective Catholic websites for parishes across the country and our powerful, yet easy-to-learn website builder, WeConnect, has everything you need to ensure that visitors to your website become visitors to your parish! Check out some examples on our “before and after” page and never feel lost when it comes to the world of web design again!

For more parish website inspiration, head over to the “Web and Social Media” section of our blog where you will find articles like:

• This, Not That — Are You Making These Common Church Website Image Mistakes?
• Simple Integrations that Add Value to Your Church Website

And more!

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9 Easy Steps for Creating Your Parish Website Mood Board?

Creating a mood board, also known as a vision board, for a parish website can be an exciting and creative process. A mood board serves as a visual tool that helps to establish the overall look, feel, and tone of the website you plan to create. It's a collage of images, colors, typography, and design elements that capture the essence of what you envision for your parish's online presence in a way that allows you to easily communicate those elements to others. Not sure where to start? Here’s how:

Step 1: Choose a Platform

Decide how you want to create your mood board. You can use digital tools like Pinterest, Canva, or Adobe Spark. You could, instead, go the traditional route and use a physical board that you paste images to.

Step 2: Define Your Vision

Before diving into design elements, take time to define your vision for the website. What message do you want to convey? Is it modern and welcoming or traditional and formal? Understanding your goals will guide your mood board creation process. If you don’t feel like you have a great direction for your vision yet, skip ahead to Step 3 to help you narrow it down.

Step 3: Gather Inspiration

Collect inspiration from various sources. Look at other parish websites, church-related imagery, and even non-religious websites that inspire you. Consider colors, textures, photography styles, and typography that resonate and make sure to capture images of all these elements to include in your board so that you are easily able to point to each thing you have drawn inspiration from.

Step 4: Select Visual Elements

Start curating images, colors, fonts, and any other visual elements that align with your vision. Include photos of your parish, faith symbols, your branding fonts and colors, and anything else that reflects the tone you want to set. If your parish already has a professionally made brand, be sure to use that branding as a baseline for your overall design. If you don’t have a brand that includes specific fonts, colors, and imagery, or you need a brand update, our design team works to help churches nationwide with their brands! Learn more and see examples in the Logos and Branding section of our website. Not totally sure if your parish brand needs a refresh? The article, “Is it Time For a Church Branding and Logo Makeover” might help!

Step 5: Organize and Arrange

Arrange your chosen elements onto your mood board. Group related images and experiment with layouts. Consider the hierarchy of information you plan to exhibit on your website, including the menus, and how you want visitors to navigate the site visually, when arranging your images on your board.

Step 6: Focus on Usability

Ensure your mood board reflects usability. Emphasize user-friendly design elements such as clear navigation, accessible text sizes, and appropriate contrast between text and background. Remember, also, that over half of the visitors to most websites navigate to the site via their mobile device. Keep mobile layouts front and center in your mind when dreaming up website design ideas.

Step 8: Review and Finalize

Review your mood board to ensure it accurately represents your parish's identity and values. Make any final tweaks before moving on to the website design phase. Be sure to get feedback from staff members, ministry leaders, and your parishioners and don’t be hesitant to make changes accordingly!

Step 9: Build Your Website!

Share your mood board with those who will be building your website! Mood boards make it so much easier to communicate with the designer(s) who will be working on your site and go a long way to ensure that you are communicating your parish’s unique ideas and desires thoroughly.

If your parish is using LPi’s website builder WeConnect, your mood board will help our website design team create the best website for you! In fact, here are some great before and after examples of parish websites we’ve designed that might have some elements you’d want to use as mood board inspiration.

By following these steps to create your parish website mood board, you'll be well on your way to crafting a beautiful and engaging online web presence for your parish.

Happy designing!

Want more parish website inspiration? Visit the “Web and Social Media” section of our blog! You may also find the following articles of interest:

• Professional Designer Spills Church Website Secrets
• This, Not That — Are You Making These Common Church Website Image Mistakes?
• 4 Tips to Make Your Church’s Homepage More Inviting

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