Creating a Congregation Website

Our congregation listings average about 1,300 hits every Sunday morning.

Many congregations report that most of their visitors, even if they’ve learned about the church or fellowship in another way, have checked it out on the Internet before making that first visit. Websites are our new front door.

Start with something simple to establish an online presence and successfully invite people to visit your community.

Policies

• Administration and Ownership Considerations offers some specific areas that might be helpful for congregations to consider regarding their websites.
   
• Consider this Suggested Privacy Policy or review some sample policies from other congregations.

Hosting

• Website hosting can be free or cheap, depending on your needs.

Design / Content Management Systems

• Whether you choose to code the site yourself, or decide to use a Content Management System (CMS) with a pre-made theme, we have resources to help you design your site's look and feel.

Content

• Our content guidelines take you from simple beginnings to a thorough checklist, and include writing tips and ready-made content like web banners and social media plug-ins.
   
• Congregational treasurers offer some recommendations for accepting online donations or pledge payments.

Usability & Accessibility

• "Usability" refers to the ease with which people can use a website in order to achieve their goal.
   
• An accessible website doesn't exclude visitors due to their abilities, or the method they choose to access the web.

Promote Your Site

• Let us know about your site for a link on our congregational listings.
   
• Learn about search engine optimization to make your pages succeed in search results and for human beings, and then submit your web address to major web search engines.
   
• One emerging congregation got a stack of UU World magazines and put stickers on them that said, "Unitarian Universalist congregation coming to [town] this spring! [website]." They sprinkled the magazines around town (at the library, co-op, community center, YMCA, and the like) to great success.
   
• Contact growthresources @ uua.org for more good ideas.

Help

• There are a number of people and resources that can help you develop a great web presence.