24% of religious websites are nearly invisible

Nearly one-fourth of websites of religious communities that belong to the IRL or the CMSWR are nearly invisible. 

Is one of them yours?

What this means simply is that they are not mobile-friendly, and are read with only great difficulty by viewers.

In a recent review by Vocation Promotion, 14 of 55 websites of religious communities belonging to the Institute on Religious Life, or the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, could not easily be seen by mobile devices, such as smartphones. This is a crucial issue, because young persons who are potential vocations, for whom the websites are built, will quickly switch to another website when they see that it is difficult to read.

In a study of millennials aged 21-34 by Global Web Index (See our article), 31 out of 34, or 91% of online activities were begun on a mobile device rather than a desktop. This means that they saw a webpage like that of the below religious community when they wanted to learn about a community.

Three platforms that are simple and mobile friendly

Some communities feel overwhelmed by what they see as the level of difficulty or expense, of building a new website. Others are concerned that once it is built, it will be difficult to make changes to it, or that they need special training to do so. However, due to improving technology, simple websites nowadays that are mobile friendly can be built without a great deal of difficulty.

While it is true that Vocation Promotion builds beautiful and unique websites with the WordPress platform, we can also build websites on other platforms. We recommend three platforms that are user-friendly, simpler, and mobile friendly: GoDaddy, Weebly or Wix. They do not need a lot of technical ability to work with, and are therefore much less costly. Furthermore, images and text can be changed, as well as pages added to, by someone who is fairly handy with the computer. They do not need to be a programmer or have extensive skills.

No matter how your community recruits new vocations, every community needs to have an online repository of information. Thus, people who have heard about you need a place to go to find out about your charism, apostolate, history, and see an invitation to join you. You cannot do all this with a Facebook page, Twitter account or with texting. Your visitors need a resource where potential vocations, as well as friends and benefactors, can go to for information about you. That’s what a website is all about.

As more people adopt smartphones, all ages, including older demographics will be searching more on these cellphones and tablets than on laptops. So, make sure your website is mobile-friendly!

Does your website need to be made mobile friendly? Do you want to be able to easily change it from your own computer? Contact Vocation Promotion at the phone number on the top of this page, or use the form on our contact us page.