Your church site’s home page is probably the single most important page on your site. You may say ‘duh, isn’t that true for every sit?’ but it’s not. For this site, most of our views are on individual posts. Or, when was the last time you lingered on Amazon’s home page instead of just finding a product you’re looking for?

In the non-profit realm though, home page is king, and I want to give you some tips not just to spruce up your home page, but to make it as effective as possible. Your home page is not about throwing everything about your church out and graphically vomiting on every visitor. It’s about connecting in intentional ways to every person that visits your site, and these tips will help you do that.

1) Boring Info

The lion’s share of visitors to your home page will be people looking for information, and the clearer that information is, the better it will be for your visitors. There are three things on your home page you want every person to see with minimal, preferably no, scrolling. Contact, schedule, and Address. All but the ‘contact info’ can be easily worked into your site before the fold (or the area where the bottom of your browser stops before you start scrolling). The contact info can be added to the footer in the form of a number and a [email protected] email.

2) A Slider telling WHO and not WHAT

What does that mean? It means that most visitors to your home page are more interested in who you are instead of when your next conference is. Most people that find events on our site aren’t finding it through our home page, they find it through our social media presence with a link directing them to the event. Don’t clutter up your home page slider with a bunch of gatherings hosted by different ministries. If you do put a slider up for a conference, make sure it is 1) a church wide conference and 2) that it flows well with the ‘theme’ of your other slides.  A slide pushing your online media section, a slide to learn how to connect, and a slide for  your children’s/youth ministries should be good for your home page slider.

3) A Carousel with your most pertinent links

Two things here for your home page. One is important pages and one is your most clickable pages. For your most important pages consider your team page, online giving, about (mission, vision, values, what to expect, etc). For your most clickable pages, pay attention to your stats. Side note, if you’re using WordPress you can get some pretty good stats for free using the Jetpack plugin. For example, a conference will have a high page view rate. Instead of putting them in the slider, put a image in a carousel.

These are some really quick tips to make your church’s home page even more awesome! What are some more tips that you have used on your own site? Do you have any examples of churches that are doing it right? I love The Oak’s home page! Share your favorite home page in the comments!