After a quick introduction to your church on your home page, the next page most visitors check out is your church About Us page.
This is your place to start building a deeper relationship with your site’s visitors. From images to personal stories, your About Us page can have as little or as much detail as you want to tell visitors who you really are as a church.
Creating the perfect page isn’t all
Tailor To Your Church Audience
No matter what content is on your church About Us page, ensure it’s tailored to your church audience. For instance, if you tend to target an older demographic, you wouldn’t really want a page filled with the newest, hippest slang that teens use.
You’d also want to ensure you target the content to your denomination, making sure it’s obvious what your church’s beliefs are. If you’re non-denominational, make that clear too in your content.
The more you tailor
Make It Feel Like Being In Your Church
Before anyone sets foot in your church or even interacts much on your site, they want to know if they’ll fit in. Is your church, even the online version, the right home for them?
The best way to help them discover the answer is to make your church About Us feel like actually being a member in your church. While you should obviously avoid any jargon that a non-member wouldn’t know, use the same type of tone and conversational style you’d use in your sermons and when talking with members and new visitors.
You should sound like you’re talking to an old friend, but explaining your church for the first time. While your home page is more like a handshake, your About Us page should feel like a welcoming hug.
While it may not appeal to everyone, which it won’t, it will appeal to those who fit in well with your church’s environment and mission.
Welcome New Visitors
You probably have a strategy in place for welcoming new visitors to your church. If not, try some of these 50 great ways to make new visitors feel more than welcome. You can also implement some of them on your church website.
Making someone feel welcome on a website isn’t quite as easy. Much like a text message might be interpreted, your content might not come off quite as obviously friendly as you intend.
This is why you should include a special Welcome section on your About Us page. Some churches even include this as a separate sub-page under their About Us menu heading. If it’s part of your About Us page, include it near the top or as a link in a table of contents style menu at the top of your page.
In this section, include at least the following items:
- A simple “Hello” and a welcoming message like you’d say to a new visitor at church
- Service hours and church location (sometimes visitors find your About Us page first)
- Denomination
- Link to contact page
- An invitation to visit
- Where to interact on your site (such as commenting on a blog, viewing sermons or engaging in a forum)
This entire section doesn’t have to be longer than a few paragraphs, but it helps make visitors feel more welcome. Instead of just a brief history, you make it a more personal experience, which makes visitors happy. It may sound simple, but outsiders and the unchurched feel more welcomed when you take a personalized approach like this.
Tell Your Church’s History
Now for the part you’ve probably been working on and are eager to share – your church’s history. Whether you’re a brand new church or have been around for generations, you have history.
Talk about the founders, why the church was built, any interesting facts and how you church has grown. Maybe you started with a small group of 10 and after 20 years grew to a church family of several hundred. Giving your visitors this glimpse into the past helps show what type of church they could be attending.
Express Your Church’s Mission
What is your church’s mission? Your church About Us page is the perfect place to include your mission and vision statements. This further explains what your church seeks to accomplish and creates a goal for everyone, from leaders to visitors interacting with your church’s site.
Don’t have a mission or vision statement just yet? If you haven’t established one or just don’t like the one you currently have (maybe it’s not clear enough), now’s the time to write those two important statements.
Smart Church Management provides five steps to writing mission, vision and value statements that represent your church. Mission Statements lists real mission statements along with what users think about them. This will help give you an idea of what works and what doesn’t.
Split Up Sections With Relevant Images
Want to instantly connect with your site’s visitors? Use real, relevant images on your About Us page. Images are incredibly powerful, but stock images just aren’t as effective.
VWO tested this theory with a truck driving academy. After replacing the stock photo of a truck driver with an actual student, registrations increased by 38%. There was also a 161% increase in conversions of interested students.
While your church isn’t a truck driving academy, the same principle applies. A relevant image of your staff, members and/or church builds trust and seems far more authentic than a stock photo that’s likely been seen on dozens or hundreds of other websites. While a stock photo might be okay for a blog post, your church About Us page needs to have real photos.
Use these images to divide up sections to make it easier to scan content and break up the text.
Use Ample Headings And Lists
As you probably know from your church members, people don’t have long attention spans. When it comes to your website, you can’t just change the level or tone of your voice to keep people interested. Instead, you have to create scannable content.
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Remember that many of your site visitors are probably coming to you from mobile devices with tiny screens. Scannable content creates a more enjoyable experience, keeping them on your site longer.
Add A Video Message, If Possible
Want to make an even better first impression with your church About Us page? Make a video to say hello to your visitors. This works well in your Welcome section. You could also use a video in most any section to describe your church’s history, invite visitors, give a tour of your church or to let your members speak to your visitors about their own experiences.
A video is a great way to sum up your About Us page and works well for visitors who might be put off by too much text or just prefer to listen to content, ideal for busy visitors who are on the go.
Include A Few Personal Stories
It’s always a good idea to have a select few testimonials from members on your home page, but your About Us page is a great place to add a few short personal stories from members.
The best way to show visitors what type of impact your church has in the lives of others is to let those people tell it themselves. Of course, if you have numerous members who want to share their stories, or even visitors who’ve been impacted by your site, list a single story and link to a separate page with the rest.
Introduce Your Staff
This is definitely a section where it’s important to include an image or even separate images for each staff member. Show off your smiling faces. Putting a face to the name makes your church seem much more welcoming.
Even for those who can’t attend your church, they’ll love having a face to associate with various interactions on your church’s site. For instance, when it comes to blogging, they’ll be able to see which staff member wrote the post.
In addition to an image and name, include a brief bio and/or the person’s favorite scripture. This builds an even stronger relationship between your staff and visitors to your site. For anyone thinking of attending, they’ll already recognize at least a few friendly faces.
Explain What Makes Your Church Unique
This section is completely optional and may already be covered in the history of your church. However, if you feel there is something that sets your church apart, talk about it.
For instance, what type of community involvement do you have? How engaging are your ministry programs? Are there any special events you’re particularly proud of every year?
Think about what makes your church unique. Even if it’s just a short list, showcase why people love your church so others get a feel of what it would be like to be a member or at least an online member.
Invite Visitors To Interact
Not only should you have an open invitation to visit your church on your church About Us page, but you should also encourage them to interact on your website. This is a great final section on your page.
Ideally, your site should include ways for visitors to interact with your church, other visitors and your members. Create a bullet list of links to the different places they can interact.
For instance, they might engage in various ways, such as:
- Reading and commenting on blog posts
- Viewing your live stream
- Viewing pre-recorded sermons
- Viewing podcasts
- Participating in and talking about Bible study sessions online
- Joining online prayer requests or adding their own
- Supporting your church through online tithing
- Stepping off your site to interact on social media
- Discussing their faith and asking questions in church forums
While you don’t have to have all of those features on your site, having some interactive elements gives visitors a reason to stick around. The longer they stay on your site, the more likely they are to keep coming back. Even if they never become members in your church, they’ll become loyal followers online as they grow in their faith.
Organize By Importance
One final note to keep in mind is to organize your church About Us page in order of importance. The exact order will actually vary based on what your church considers the most important.
Most often, the About Us page will start with either a Welcome or History section. Personal stories and testimonials work best in the middle or near the end.
Final invitations and an encouragement to interact typically land at the end of the page. After all, this is the final takeaway and call-to-action.
Your mission statement is often included in the Welcome or History section. If it’s separate, it should still be near the top as it’s an important part of your church.
For staff introductions, those work well near the middle or end as they’re not quite as vital as welcoming new visitors or talking about your church’s background.
However, order the sections based on your church’s needs. As long as all the relevant information is included and well organized (white space, images, headings, etc.), you’ll have a successful church About Us page.
Learn By Example
Don’t forget that you don’t have to come up with an About Us page completely off the top of your head. While there aren’t strict rules about word counts or number of sections, you can get a great idea about what works by looking at other church websites.
Plus, you’ll also get a grasp on what makes an About Us page engaging versus just a long page of text. While these aren’t church-specific pages, you can get great ideas from Search Engine Journal’s list of creative About pages. HubSpot also has a great list of ideas to work from too.
A great About Us page deserves an incredible home. Try our free website analysis to see how to help your site reach even more people.
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