How important is website design for your religious community?
You want your vocation prospects to know about your community’s charism and history, right?
But when it comes to mobile-friendliness, is your website a fish out of water?
Recently, I checked over a number of websites of communities who belong to the IRL and CMSWR. Maybe yours is one of them. When it comes to mobile, many of them are functioning like a man wearing buckets on his feet.
While the sites look OK, or even beautiful on a desktop, websites designed ten years ago are often just dead weight. They have text and pictures that look squeezed up on mobile. They remind me of an image that I saw in a museum years ago. It was of the entire Bible printed on the head of a pin. You needed a magnifying glass to read it.
Between 52% and 56% of website visitors today view your website on a mobile device, according to experts. And when it comes to the young people who are looking for their vocation, you can bet that the number is a lot higher.
Website design – how does it fit in?
Your website design and social media presence provide the two pillars of your promotion efforts. First of all, a website provides the bulk of information about your community. Secondly, your presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. provides easy communication with your prospects. The two function together, like wheels on a bicycle. They provide your visitors with education about you on the one hand, and news and communication on the other hand. You need both.
Wouldn’t you agree – every five to eight years, it’s about time to upgrade your website with new looks, information and functionality?
Mobile-friendly: two paths
You can go two routes in making your site mobile-friendly. One is to go with a popular website design company, such as Wix.com. We know of a religious community who designed its own site with this company. They wanted to save money. Yes, it is mobile friendly. But it has a plain-Jane look. And it has a few blank screens here and there. And one headline font looks cute, but out of step with the rest of the site. On the other hand, Wix’s price is only $14 per month for hosting. You must design the site yourself, or find someone who will do so.
The other route to go is to go with a professional website designer who can do everything for you, from soup to nuts. From helping your placement of information to making it beautiful, and compatible for many devices. This kind of website is more expensive, of course. But it will uniquely display your charism, apostolate and personality. Beauty has always been a hallmark of the Church – just look at all the wonderful Church architecture, paintings and statues over the centuries. This is a witness of the beauty of God himself.
We at Vocation Promotion will be happy to design your mobile-friendly website that will explain your charism, apostolate and personality, as well as give people an easy way to contact you. We design our websites with the popular WordPress platform, which is used by some 30% of all websites in the world.
You can also have a blog on this kind of website. And you can update the pages and posts on your own with the use of a password.
We will be launching a website soon that we have been designing for a Poor Clare community. It is spell-binding. We will let you know when it’s made public.
Are you ready for a website upgrade?
Free website audit
We will give you a free, 15-minute website audit of your website on the phone. We’ll explain your site’s weak spots and how to fix it, as well give you an estimate of what we would charge to rebuild your site. Read more about why a good website is important on our TreeFrogClick website.
Take a step today to bring your religious website up to date. Call the number at the top of this page, or contact us.
