CSL 013 – Learn How to Immediately Improve your Church Website

Rohn Gibson (00:00:55):

All right. Good morning, everyone. Hope you are all having a wonderful Thursday morning or maybe it’s not morning where you are, but a welcome everyone. We are absolutely thrilled to have you all here today. Obviously you notice somebody that looks a little different sitting beside me on your screen today. We’ve got Mike,

Mike Kurrle (00:01:19):

Not as pretty as Isabelle, huh?

Rohn Gibson (00:01:19):

We’ve got Mike joining us.

Mike Kurrle (00:01:22):

Good Morning! Good morning, everybody!

Rohn Gibson (00:01:22):

He is, yes, he’s my fellow co-founder. And I’m excited to have him,ujoining us today. So we have got a, we always say this, but a power packed episode for you this week. Uso let’s just jump in, let us know if you’re watching. So we’ve got 19 people on right now. Introduce yourself. Give us the name of your church and the city you are joining us from here this morning. So we’ve got Douglas Recker. Welcome Douglas. Glad to have you here down in Omaha.

Rohn Gibson (00:01:57):

I was just there yesterday. Flew into Omaha. So welcome. We are glad you’re joining us this morning. And then we’ve got Ron Gardner. Welcome back, Ron. Glad to have you here. Good morning, Linda. Great to have you here with us. Ron is watching from Arizona. Beautiful love Arizona lived there for about eight months. Absolutely loved it. All right. Let’s see. We’ve got Benjamin welcome Benjamin. Good to see you back. He yeah. Anyway, reached out to us. I forget the name they gave you Benjamin, but you’re like one of our top mentors and a fan.

Mike Kurrle (00:02:40):

Yeah, top fan.

Rohn Gibson (00:02:41):

There you go. It’s awesome. Welcome Benjamin. We’re glad to have you here. Let’s see. We’ve got Douglas. Let’s see Mick bearish varnish. Forgive me if I just totally butchered your name. We’re thrilled to have you here. Douglas. Welcome. Let’s see. Just a couple of others that are joining us. Oh yeah. Prescott Valley. That was North of where we lived beautiful up in Prescott. All right. There’s Benjamin again. A Cornerstone Baptist church. If I’m not mistaken, you’re the first one. We’re going to be doing some website reviews today and Benjamin. You are up to bat, so awesome. Yes. Top fan. Got it. Head out there. Glad to have you here.

Mike Kurrle (00:03:29):

Quite the accomplishment.

Rohn Gibson (00:03:29):

Yes.

Mike Kurrle (00:03:31):

You knocked my mom off the top spot. She was the top fan for, for years. So.

Rohn Gibson (00:03:39):

That’s awesome. All right. Pastor Kip. Good to see you here. This one and brother out in Linton, Indiana. All right. All right. Well, it is so good to have you all with us, Sheila. Welcome. Good to have you here. All right. So we are going to do, this is the first time we’re going to be doing this kind of a unique episode, but we will be doing more of them. We’re going to be doing some website reviews today, and we’ve had quite a few people submit their application for their website to be reviewed. So we’re really looking forward to diving into that today, because again, we just got a great, a great session for you today. So if you haven’t given Stream Yard access, there’s a link. I believe in the description above or below.

Rohn Gibson (00:04:23):

I can’t remember off the top of my head here, but make sure you get Stream Yard access. So if you have questions we can actually see them and show them on the screen. And all of you are already way ahead of the curve because that’s why we can see your faces. And again, welcome to a few people. Leanora welcome, Anthony. Welcome, man. This is awesome. We’ve got a good group here.

Mike Kurrle (00:04:48):

Really cool.

Rohn Gibson (00:04:49):

Yes. All right. So just a couple of quick shout outs to what welcome some new ChurchSpring family members. I love doing this every week. So we’ve got Mount Sinai gospel tab, tabernacle church from Cape Charles, Virginia. They joined the church, bring family here recently. True voices of faith, sunny Meade, Moreno Valley that I did. I say that right? Mike Marino Valley, California. Yep. That’s Mike’s old stomping grounds out there in California.

Rohn Gibson (00:05:20):

Historic Rugged Cross Baptist church, Brooklyn, New York, and then Cascade Covenant Church, North Bend Washington. We are just literally, I mean, just as a true privilege to be able to serve you. And we welcome you to the church ring family. Awesome. Well, for those of you who are new to ChurchSpring, if you are brand new to ChurchSpring, who are you guys just a quick, very fast overview. So ChurchSpring, we help churches build intuitive, affordable frustration-free church websites. So that’s our goal. That’s what we do. Obviously we have goals and a mission beyond that, but is just how we really right now strive to serve the church is by providing intuitive, affordable frustration-free websites. So we are thrilled to be on that mission. Again, thank you all for joining. I’m excited about this episode. Super, super excited, cause there’s a lot of pastors out there.

Rohn Gibson (00:06:17):

I mean, we get questions all the time about what do I do next? What’s the next thing? How do I improve my church website? What, what, what needs to be done? I’m not a digital marketer. This isn’t what I do for a living. So today our goal is we want to remove the guesswork on how to improve your church website to ultimately achieve whatever your number one goal for your website is. So you all know for those who have joined us and if not, if this is the first time you’re watching our goal is that we want to help you through your website, achieve your number one outcomes. So if that’s growing your church, if that’s communicating better to your existing church members, our goal is we want to help you do that. So before we dive in to our five, our top five, so just quickly, just kind of quickly name off the ones that we’re going to reviewing today.

Rohn Gibson (00:07:08):

So we’re going to reviewing Cornerstone Baptist Church, One Hope Christian Fellowship, College Corner, Presbyterian Church, New Beginnings Church of the Living God, as well as Springfield AME Church. So we are excited to dive into those and give you some actionable feedback. But before we do, like I said, there’s a new face on ChurchSpring Live. And I’m excited to introduce you to him. I remember sitting at our dining room table, my dining room table when ChurchSpring was just like this idea. And man, God has brought us on a journey and.

Mike Kurrle (00:07:48):

Yeah, it’s been awesome.

Rohn Gibson (00:07:50):

It’s hard not to get emotional, just how God provided and how God’s led. So, introduce yourself, Mike!

Mike Kurrle (00:07:57):

All right, sounds good. So I’m Mike Kurrle. I am one of the co-founders of ChurchSpring. I am actually really excited to be with you today. I’ll have to admit though and confess, I am also nervous. So when Ron said you’re on next week, I think I’ve been nervous most of the week leading up to it. So, so if I pass out here, Ron, just keep going. And but yeah, it’s good to see you. I’m excited to be with you. I’m a co-founder and creative director at ChurchSpring. So I do a lot of the artwork do a lot of front end programming, a lot of the planning and kind of vision casting for the products and features. I am a husband and a father. I have a wife, Nadia and five kids, four boys and, and a girl. So Noah, Isaac, Elsa, Weston, and Bennett.

Mike Kurrle (00:08:46):

So Ellis is right in the middle. There. She can go from like a, a tea party to a warrior in a, in, in just a split second. That’s a fun family. But yeah, so I’m excited to be here with you guys and, and hopefully bring a lot of value to you and your church. I’m super encouraged when we’re going through the reviews here. I was just overwhelmed with encouragement just to see the gospel present, to see the things that are a part of the heart of God, also part of the heart of your churches. So I love seeing that and it’s, it’s great to serve churches like you guys.

Rohn Gibson (00:09:21):

Awesome for super pumped to have you here. Um I mean, there’s not a church that is here that uses church that hasn’t been positive positively impacted by your, that just the abilities that God’s given you. So I’m excited to dive more yeah. Specifically into websites. This is going to be a fun episode. That’s going to be a lot of fun to dive into these and give actionable things to get people unstuck.

Mike Kurrle (00:09:46):

Yeah.

Rohn Gibson (00:09:47):

So super excited about that. And we want you all to engage with us. You already started. That’s great. So I’m going to, I’m just going to keep rolling through the outline here. So I’m super excited to have you with us. We want you to engage. So if you have questions, ask, so if we get into something and maybe we weren’t a hundred percent clear, maybe just didn’t quite land with you. That happens with me a lot. I’m a very simple guy. So there’s some really smart people out there that say that I’m like, okay, that just didn’t quite land my brain correctly. So if you need clarification or if you have questions definitely engage with us, put your question in.

Rohn Gibson (00:10:25):

Also feel free to like it love it. We’ve already got some, we’ve got to get, I already got some love coming in here this morning. Here we go. Another one. Yeah, yeah,

Rohn Gibson (00:10:35):

Yeah. This is awesome. So like it love it, share it. If you have a friend or maybe there’s volunteer in your church that can really benefit from watching this episode, literally watching. And I say this in a loving way, watching kind of a breakdown of a site on how to improve it and make it more effective for your church. Feel free to tag them and maybe even text them and say, Hey, go check out the ChurchSpring page and join us right now. So that would be awesome. In addition, we always say this, we’re going to cover a lot of ground here. So there will be the replay available. Don’t feel like you have to take impeccable notes. We are going to make this available. You can check out ChurchSpring.com/CSL013. Again, that’s ChurchSpring.com/CSL013

Rohn Gibson (00:11:20):

And you can check out the replay. We’ll have show notes. If there’s any resources that we mentioned in the episode, we’ll be sure to link those up there as well. So we are super pumped to have you with us today. So I’m just going to start off with this question. We kind of talked about it a little bit already, but have you ever felt stuck? Have you ever felt stuck on how to use your website to grow your church or maybe even how to use your website to communicate more effectively to your existing members? So if you’ve ever put yourself or felt like in that category, if that resonates with you type stuck, all caps, that’ll let us know you are really stuck type stuck, all caps in the comments and let us know if you’ve ever been there.

Rohn Gibson (00:12:09):

And I know you’ve been there. I’ve been there. If I could really do five things at one time, I would put stuck in the comments because man, there’s just been those times where it’s like, okay, what do I do now? What’s the next step? What does that next thing that I need to do to accomplish the goal that I have? And it can be really frustrating. So, Ron, yes, UFL stuck. Linda. I’m glad you’re here, Ron. Cause we’re going to be talking about your site today. So this was going to be awesome. Don. I’d say Don, they’re coming in so fast. I’m not I’m they’re popping up. Reverend Johnny, Jerry, Linda. Yes. We’ve all been stuck. This is awesome, Terry, but now you’re unstuck.

Mike Kurrle (00:12:53):

Oh Unstuck. Yeah, that’s good.

Rohn Gibson (00:12:56):

That is wonderful. Jason, how you doing brother? Jason goes to our church. So we’re super excited to have Jason on here as well. It’s going to be fun. All right. So we are going to get you unstuck today. That is our goal. We want to get you unstuck and give you a pathway to take your website to the next level and helping you accomplish your goal. So Mike and I, we’re going to review five church websites today and offer specific feedback. So not like this really high level stuff that doesn’t like tactically land on the ground. And you’re like, okay, that made no sense to me. I’m not sure what specifically am I supposed to do? We’re going to give you very specific feedback on how you can improve your church website. So if we don’t re obviously we’re only doing five today because we know these have been getting long and last week I was in like turbo speed, trying to get there, all the, all the content that we had.

Rohn Gibson (00:13:52):

So we’re going to review five. If you’d like to have your website reviewed or considered to be reviewed in the future, we have an application process. We’ll probably do this at least once a quarter, if not more. If you would like to, for us to consider reviewing your site. Now, if you’ve already submitted the application, you don’t need to do it again. But if you’re new and you haven’t submitted the application, you can go to ChurchSpring.com/review, and we will consider reviewing yours during another one of these episodes that we do. So, all right. Are you ready to go?

Mike Kurrle (00:14:24):

Yep. Let’s do this.

Rohn Gibson (00:14:26):

Are you ready to hear actionable feedback that not only these churches can do, but I’m sure there’s going to be super relevant feedback for you to take and approve your church website. If that’s you, if you’re ready to go type, let’s go.

Rohn Gibson (00:14:39):

Otherwise. What does send the broadcast and like go start selling coffee again. That’s that’s how, that’s how we’re going to roll here. So type let’s go in the comments and then we will dive in. All right. All right. Ron’s ready. Good. Good, good, good. All right. So here’s how we’re going to do this. So we’ve got five websites, church websites that we’re going to review today. So I’m going to name the site where they’re from the goal, because ultimately our feedback, we want it to be wrapped around the goal that you’re ultimately trying to achieve with your website. So full disclosure, we are very much multitasking over here today. So just bear with us if we have to pause for a second or whatever. So let me share my screen. All right, here we go. There we go. All right.

Rohn Gibson (00:15:31):

So the first one that we are going to start off with here is Cornerstone Baptist Church. And I really want to not butcher the city name, but I know I’m going to: MaTomine motto METI. Okay. I just apologize in advance cause I’m sure neither of those options were correct, but Minnesota and we are super excited to have you as part of the ChurchSpring family. So you guys can check out that website again, it’s there on your screen? CBCMN.Org. And the goal for this website is number one, get new members to reach new convert. So that is the goal for Cornerstone Baptist Church. And we’ve got some great feedback for you today. So I’m going to toss over to Mike to get us started.

Mike Kurrle (00:16:20):

Sounds good. It looks like you got it right here. Moto meaty. Benjamin gave us a little breakdown there for us. Awesome. Benjamin. I also saw that you had a comment that you had cement blocks on the feet stuck. I have been there for sure. I’ve been doing this for 20 years and man, those early years, even many times now, but so those early years, Holy smokes, it was so much to learn so many things that I didn’t know terminology. I didn’t know. So hopefully we can help you out and pass on some, some wisdom to you guys that will benefit your church here. So Cornerstone Baptist Church just to jump right in here, we spent some time reviewing each of these sites in depth and I’m going to kind of give you some wins, some, some good things that you’re doing.

Mike Kurrle (00:17:07):

And then some things that I think will really help benefit kind of the impact of your church here. So the site overall looks great. I like what you’ve done. You made some personal images and upload those to kind of make the site your own. So custom images are really great throughout your site. The church photo in the background, if you scroll to the top, they’re run. I love how you did the church photo in the background, actually with the colors and everything. It’s just a beautiful look. So everything actually, the way that the image of you noticed that, that, that the church kind of frames the text there it’s just really well done. So it’s a great image for the slider there. You also have a relevant slide. One of your slides is the COVID slide. So I think that’s really neat. You’re kind of leveraging the power of slides are the sliders here. It’s really good. Some are relevant information to your church. That’s great to great content in your ministry section. You have a personal morning devotionals you’ve done, which I think is incredible. I think it’s great for both your ex your church members and then also for visitors, just to get a sense of your heart, to see your personality for you to do that on a daily basis to take the time to do that. It was great.

Mike Kurrle (00:18:17):

So that’s really, really neat. So nice job utilizing also the, just the different features of ChurchSpring, especially the blocks. You’ve done a good job with adding a bunch of blocks throughout your site. So great job on all those things. Site looks great. Think you’re on a, on a wonderful path to begin with here. So a great foundation to start with. There are a couple of things that stood out to me when I was doing the review. So I’m going to give you those now. The logo, just a couple of things on the logo, the it’s it’s working fine. I don’t think there’s any major things with it, but if you do have a white version, I’m curious to see if you had a white version of your logo. If that might stand out a little bit more on that background. Sometimes if the background’s kinda in the mid range or darker range, and you have a darker text on it, the readability kind of falls out a little bit. And I’m not sure if you have access to somebody to help you on, on the spacing of it. This is more of a graphics thing, but if you’ll notice that the Cornerstone Baptist Church has really tight together, if you just space out the Cornerstone and then the Baptist church kind of put a little bit more space vertically between those, it might help the readability a little bit. That’s more of a graphics thing. But

Mike Kurrle (00:19:27):

If you have access to those files or somebody that can help you there, that might be helpful. But anyway, a white version, I’m curious to see if that would be, I would stand out a little bit more and give it a better read of it there on the logo

Mike Kurrle (00:19:39):

In the, you mentioned in your goal to reach new visitors, so navigation organization, I maybe suggest this, you have first time visitors in the, about us there it’s towards the bottom. And if your goal is to reach new visitors, it might be good to kind of start kind of chronological. You think about it more chronologically your navigation about us. Well, I’m a first time visitor, and then you dig in deeper as you go along. So maybe moving that first time visitor to the top of the menu and then kind of moving down logically from there might be a good thing. I also noticed that you had your blog under the, about us, which is fine, but it might make more sense to me under resources and we can help you. That’s something that we’d probably have to help you transition over to the resources section.

Mike Kurrle (00:20:25):

We’re actually working on a feature that allow you to move things between menus. We’re not quite there yet. That’ll be released as soon as we can get it out to you guys. But I think the blog makes a little bit more sense. And you, you can correct me if I’m wrong here. If you had some, some logic behind that or strategy behind that, but the blog kind of makes more sense under the resources section to me too. So those are a couple of things on the navigation and organization that might be helpful for you. And then if we go to the, the some blocks, I’m trying to think, Oh, it’s the contact us. If you go to the contact us and then prayer requests, if you don’t mind, let me scroll down here,

Rohn Gibson (00:21:07):

Tag team in here. Alright.

Mike Kurrle (00:21:10):

Yeah, there we go. Yeah. Very good. So there is a dark background, which is totally fine, but if you notice again, what I mentioned a little bit earlier about readability so important, let me, let me maybe back up a second here, In design, there’s always form and function. And when it comes to websites, function is always more important than form. And so if you think about design is really kind of the plate that you’re delivering up the content. So it should be more in the background and supporting the content and it really should take a back step to the content that you’re delivering information that people are seeing. And so in this case, we have a darker background with some darker text on it. There’s a feature when you’re logged in, there’s a little color feature. The bottom of this block, we call them blocks. So the gray area here, there’ll be a little color menu.

Mike Kurrle (00:22:03):

If you hover over that color menu, you’ll see a little color sliders and some choosers and some swatches you can choose. At the bottom right of that menu, there is a white and a black font color. So you can just simply hover over that menu in this block here and click on the white. And you’ll see that the white text on this dark gray background will be a lot more readable. It’s not bad to have a dark background, but if there’s a lot of text on a dark background and especially if it’s dark texts, it makes it makes it a little bit harder, harder to read. So I’m seeing you got to reply here to happen when you switched to the Galilee. Yeah, yeah. Yup.

Rohn Gibson (00:22:43):

So that’s the thing. Some of these designs are pretty, you know, they have pretty strong design elements. So Galilee is a great example of that, where it’s definitely more of a very curved very fresh new design. So sometimes blocks too. You really have to look at them and say, okay, do you even want that block background? Right. So you may actually just want to make this white, so not even have a color back there. So it just looks and just flows better instead of having like this curve look within this really super straightened again, we’re, we’re giving design very specific design feedback right now, but that, that does impact the viewer.

Mike Kurrle (00:23:20):

It does.

Rohn Gibson (00:23:22):

If somebody comes to your site, It’s hard to read. So it’s like, okay, connect the dots between, you know, why is design important? Well, ultimately, what, what Mike shared as far as it kind of being the plate. I think that’s a really good example. But ultimately if people come to your site and it’s really hard to read or difficult to navigate, or they don’t find what they’re looking for right away, they’re going to leave, they’re going to abandon the site and that is not what you want to have happen. If you actually want to walk in the

Rohn Gibson (00:23:46):

Door to your church, you want to make it super easy for them to be able to find what they’re looking for on your website and make it super easy for them to read, to actually educate themselves on what you’re all about. So, yeah. Great feedback.

Mike Kurrle (00:23:59):

Yeah. That’s good. And I saw that Benjamin mentioned, you mentioned that you just kind of, hadn’t got to that spot there, and there’s actually a couple of other sites. We’ll mention this on here too. If you did want it to stand out a little bit different, so I want to point this out. It may be, it’s something you overlooked. It sounds like when you switched to this design, you haven’t gotten to this tab yet, but if you do want to make a distinguished distinguishing move between the services bar at the top there, and then your content below just even a simple light gray, like really, really subtle light gray will help your readers kind of understand that this is the block or the change or transition from this content that I just took in to the next content.

Mike Kurrle (00:24:39):

So I like to do little simple switches from like a white, a color to a very, very light gray it’s super subtle. You might not even notice it really, but it, as you’re scrolling through, believe it or not, it’s kind of something that helps you just digest the content a little better. And by the way, nice job on the let’s pray for fuse this little block here. I think that’s a really neat thing you’re you’re doing so yeah, that’s, that’s overall for this. I would say great work. It’s looking really nice and neat. It looks like I got muted there. Yeah. There was like a popping sound with the mic and then you were gone. So anyway. Okay. Sorry. You’re good. You’re good now. No, no worries. I was just saying overall yeah, really good job. Love the way that you’re kind of leveraging the features, the blocks and everything like that. So really customized content. So yeah. Great job.

Rohn Gibson (00:25:38):

I think we may need Yeah. Just switch to your regular.

Mike Kurrle (00:25:41):

Okay. Sounds good.

Rohn Gibson (00:25:42):

Your regular mic sounds like that one’s not liking you very much.

Mike Kurrle (00:25:44):

Yeah, Just keeps on switching. I don’t want bumping and you can hear me okay now.

Rohn Gibson (00:25:48):

Yup. You’re good.

Mike Kurrle (00:25:49):

Sounds good. So yeah, the question came in. If you can rewatch it. Yeah. We definitely can rewatch these after the live feed, so yeah, absolutely.

Rohn Gibson (00:25:59):

And that’s available Churchspring.com/013. Awesome. So one of the quick things I wanted to say and Mike, any other actually, before I jump in, any other thoughts here?

Mike Kurrle (00:26:12):

No, go ahead.

Rohn Gibson (00:26:14):

Okay. So one of the things that I would highly encourage you to do is think, think through strategically, you know, it’s very easy to start disconnecting like a real life experience. When you start doing things online, it’s almost like we we, we make it more complicated than it needs to be. So what I would encourage you to do is look at some of these foundational pages. Mike gave some great thoughts as far as like adjusting your navigation a little bit.

Rohn Gibson (00:26:44):

Um one of the things that I have been recommend, so About Us, That’s kind of a standard thing. You may even want to try even doing some things like I’m New or, you know, things like that, just so they know, okay, this is for me, I’m, I’m brand new. I have no idea about your church. I’ve never been there before. I know when I say I’m new, this tab is for me and the content underneath this tab is going to be exactly what I’m looking for to kind of walk them through. So one of the things that’s a great resource or a great tool that you can add, and maybe even to each one of these tabs is a video.

Rohn Gibson (00:27:17):

So, seeing words on a screen is great and they can kind of break it down. But video is a powerful tool that you can leverage on your church website. So if you imagine it of like somebody walking up to you on the street, or you walking up to somebody on the street and introducing yourself, right? So that’s virtually what your website is doing. So as you look at your what to expect, wouldn’t it be amazing to have? And you can use literally again, the camera that you have in your pocket, your smartphone, and actually do like a video walking into your church. Like, Hey, we want you to understand what this is going to be like when you

Rohn Gibson (00:27:50):

When you come to your first time, visit the Cornerstone Baptist church, here’s, you know, where things are to basically just take any level of anxiety that they have,I have about attending your service and trying to remove that and put that far from their minds. So they can come to your church for the first time feeling comfortable. Where do I park? Do you have Sunday school services? Do you have childcare? Where are the bathrooms? What, what, you know, those kinds of things, what to expect that can really help you achieve your goal, which is ultimately getting new members, which is having new people come to your church in the first place to see if it’s a good fit for them. And then ultimately join the church and start getting involved in your church. So I would highly recommend you. You’ve done a lot of great things.

Rohn Gibson (00:28:40):

Number one, you, you have done A lot of really good things. There’s a lot of really great content. You’ve done some amazing things, right. As Mike has shared. I would just say now it’s time to take those good things that you’ve done and kind of take them to the next level, which would be all right. Let’s look at adding videos to your leadership pages, where your pastor can introduce himself or your, your leadership team. Really thinking about how can you integrate video and to make it super easy for them to walk in the door. Okay, cool.

Mike Kurrle (00:29:08):

And maybe just the last thing for me to the resource section, I love what you’re doing in the resource section there. One, one thing that I saw on the 30 day challenge, which is really cool idea, by the way if we go to the 30 day challenge, you’ll notice sometimes we use texts what we’re talking about, readability again here you have quite a bit of bold text here. So maybe just unbolting that, that, and using bold when it really needs to emphasize something would be helpful. It’s just one of those things that helps a person kind of take in the content and digested a little easier. So, yeah, but I love, I love the content level. What you’re doing with the resource section is really cool.

Rohn Gibson (00:29:49):

Awesome. Awesome. Well, we are going to go a little rapid fire today just because we’ve got five sites to cover. Uso it looks like a Benjamin. I really hope that was helpful if it was, and even if it wasn’t, if this isn’t your site, but man, some of that information was super helpful. Let us know that put yes in the comments. Just so we know that you found something, at least one thing that you can take action on, even on your church website, even if this isn’t your church website, so type yes in the comments. And we’re going to go ahead and let’s Mike, any other thoughts on that one? Otherwise we will get that banner off here and start getting the other one ready. So any other last final thoughts there?

Mike Kurrle (00:30:28):

Nope. I think that’s good. Yeah. And feel free to reach out by the support tickets. Do you need clarification or something like that? We’d be happy to help too. So yes. Yes.

Rohn Gibson (00:30:37):

All right. So next on our list. Let me get everything up here. We have got One Hope Christian Fellowship from Dewey, Arizona. All right. This is great. So the number one goal the One Hope Christian Fellowship would like to achieve here is getting more views. So getting people to their site, getting traffic I’ll ultimately I would, I would, this is probably where my first tip would come in. Actually, yeah, my first tip would come in would be to really think about that goal. So yes, a view is great because it’s measurable, it’s specific, but what is the outcome that you really want to have happened from that view? Right? So is that I want to get views from existing church members. So I know that they’re actually reading the blog posts are coming to the events to find out what’s going on.

Rohn Gibson (00:31:34):

Is that the type of view you want or are you really looking for people to find your site, but ultimately you want them to walk in the door. So then really your goal would be, I want to see more members or new new people come and visit our church. So that would be one just kind of quick feedback right out of the gate would be. So maybe if you can even give us some clarification on that. That would be great. I think this is if I got this right. I think it’s, this is Pastor Ron’s church – let me just bounce over here. Yes. Ron Garner. All right. Perfect.

Rohn Gibson (00:32:12):

So Pastor Ron, give us maybe a little, yes. Okay. Walk in. Yes, indeed. That’s what he’s looking for. So let me just put that up here. So yeah, so ultimately the goal, so that’s good. We’re going to maybe adjust a little bit on the fly here. So your goal isn’t just to get a view of your on your site, right? You actually want to get people walking in the door there of your local church. So that is great. All right, Mike, what are your thoughts?

Mike Kurrle (00:32:36):

Yeah, sounds good. So this is another Galilee design. The last one was Galilee and this is Galilee, but what I love about this is you use some of the customization to really make it look quite a bit different. So first thing I see when I come to your site here is this beautiful photo. And I’m assuming this is your church. But a great photo for the homepage here has, has impact, but also kind of gives me an idea of what to expect as you guys gather as a local fellowship there. It’s really great. So I love that photo you’ve done there. The content 10 is really good, especially when you explain the vision of your church on your homepage. And, and I was just thinking I was as reading it, it’s really God’s vision. I’m encouraged to read, just like I said, at the beginning, I’m really encouraged to read through our customers’ sites and you know, what a day and age where, where we lose grasp or churches lose grasp on the Gospel.

Mike Kurrle (00:33:31):

And God’s word is so great to see churches who are United with God’s vision. I think your church expresses that really well and the content. So great job on the content there. And also saw that you’re using the automatic Bible verse pop up. I’m not sure if all you guys know about that, but we have a little feature in the settings area where you can turn on kind of automatic, automatic Bible detection. And so if you type in a verse just in your content hit save, when you hover over that verse, then a little pop up with the reference counts. It makes it really easy for your visitors. I’m not sure if you guys are like me, but when you’re reading through content, it makes it really nice that you have to go to your Bible app or open up your Bible and try and find that verse to see in context what you’re talking about.

Mike Kurrle (00:34:13):

So it’s really nice to have that available. So great job leveraging the features of the platform here. It looks good. There’s a couple of things that stood out in the review and hopefully helps improve the site’s performance. There’s some background colors that we want to look at here. So you’ve chosen some background colors, which is great. If we scroll down here, you’ll see that some of the colors are different. Some from the color palette and then some that you’ve chosen also on your own, which is fine. And it kinda goes back to the thing we mentioned on the last review or the last website was that darker text on the darker background is hard to read. And so you want to probably switch that to a light font. So again, the bottom of that block, there’ll be a little color menu hover over that.

Mike Kurrle (00:34:58):

And you’ll see in the bottom right of that menu, there’s a black and white text color change. You can just click on the white and it’s just simple like that. It saves it automatically for you. So I think whatever you see, some of that throughout your site, I think it would be best to switch to a white font. Also consider that just like we talked about the last one, you might just go to a lighter, a lighter color as well, especially when you have long blocks of text. Okay. If it’s just a short block of text, that’s not a problem. Kind of like the homepage one here. That might be the about as long as you’d want to get with a dark background. If you get really long pages, I mean, pretty long where there’s multiple pages worth of scrolling and a dark background, it can be actually pretty fatiguing on your eyes and you get tired even though the content might be great, but you as a viewer or reader might start to disengage a little bit, not really know why.

Mike Kurrle (00:35:48):

And it’s because you’re starting to get fatigued as you’re reading through. So you really want to make sure it’s, it’s readable for the viewer so that something to consider when you get to longer blocks of texts there too. So let’s see here of pages sermons event, let’s go to the sermons at events. This is actually a good example of that. Yeah. It doesn’t matter which one you go, Jedi, and then actually you have pastor Ron’s blog too. I was reading through, which is great. And it looks like this one’s okay now let’s see here. Yeah. So this is, this is an example where a lot of text on the page, a lot of scrolling and so a white background is good. Let’s go to the sermons. Then this may have changed. Okay. Yeah. So this may be one you want to switch to a white or light gray.

Mike Kurrle (00:36:37):

They both would work, but a white would probably be best again, cause you’re scrolling through a lot of content. You want to make sure that those, the content you’re delivering, which is your sermons, is the thing that really stands out to the viewer. And then just because it’s a longer page sometimes the darker backgrounds make it a little harder to digest everything. So white background might be better on a longer page like that. And then let’s see here, I think the same thing on the blog, we can go to the blog section you’re on if you don’t mind.

Mike Kurrle (00:37:08):

Yeah. Yeah. Let’s do Pastor Ron’s blog. Yeah. And so we give you some swatches, when you hover over the content, there are some swatches that are actually a part of,uthe color palette. So you might just, it’s an easy way to choose a color that works well with,uthe color palette you’re on. But this is another example where probably be best to do a lighter background, just because there’s a lot of, a lot of content, a lot of text to read and it will it’ll help,ustand out to help the text stand out. So that is pretty much it. Everything else looks really good. I love your custom photos that you’ve been doing throughout really making the site your own. Uagain, helpful. Ron mentioned,udoing videos and pictures like you have on your homepage. I think for new visitors. I think that would be amazing because this gives you this photo here gives you a great feel of your church.

Rohn Gibson (00:38:10):

It sounds like this photo is actually not his church. Thank you for that. So that, that would be a recommendation, right?

Mike Kurrle (00:38:16):

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. If you can get any, you know what, these days, like Ron’s been saying in multiple episodes, these phones, these days take amazing photos, just take a ton of them, stand back, different angles. This one is actually really nice. Because it’s, it’s not incredibly busy. You don’t want too busy of photos behind the text.

Mike Kurrle (00:38:36):

And yeah, just really is a great example of giving somebody an idea of what the church might be like. So just have somebody during one of the services, take a bunch of photos and you can do multiple services. You will find a couple of photos that will work really well. Go ahead and use

Rohn Gibson (00:38:52):

This photo. Obviously you like this photo, that’s why you you’ve used it on your site pastor Ron. So even whether it’s you or somebody else say, I want a photo like this, like, so they can kind of see a model of what you’re looking for to really represent your church. Well, so I think that’s, that’s great. A couple of, of other, did you have any last things otherwise?

Mike Kurrle (00:39:15):

No, go ahead, go ahead.

Rohn Gibson (00:39:20):

Okay. So first thing, um, site looks great. You’ve done an amazing job. I know you’ve been here, you’ve been learning, and you’ve been implementing, and that is so awesome, Ron. So keep up the great work. Just want to encourage you there. Uthe thing that I would encourage is mobile first. So a lot times when we’re editing on our computers, like that’s what we think about, but in reality,udepending on your area, but upwards of 70% of the people that visit your church website are actually going to be viewing it on a mobile device. That’s just the reality of the world we live in today. More people have these,

Rohn Gibson (00:39:55):

And have internet access available on their phones and these devices than they do on their computer. So how, what does that mean? Why is that important? Well, what that means is it’s really important that we, and we look at content that it’s more about smaller chunks of content, right? Cause if this Looks long, I forget which page we were just all this section right here. If this feels a little long or, you know, maybe even another section, imagine what that feels like on a mobile device and what I would encourage you to do. Everyone listening,

Rohn Gibson (00:40:26):

Not just you, Pastor Ron, but everybody listening is that actually pull up your phone on your mobile device and navigate it like a person that, you know, act like you’re a person that doesn’t know anything about your church – what’s difficult? What’s difficult to read, where’s there too much content that it can be more concise. Um but content chunking is what we call it is super important. So one of the areas specifically that I would, I would tell you that I would recommend shortening up would be some of these Sliders, like these different areas. I would, maybe have two sentences. Like I kind of a two sentence max here short, powerful, and then put a button.

Rohn Gibson (00:41:10):

Like if you need to communicate more, because ultimately what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to communicate more information. That’s not bad. Like that’s not bad at all, but give them a little snippet of it and then give them a call to action, to go to another page on your site, where then you get more exhaustive in whatever that content might be like. For example, COVID, we’ve seen some churches who literally, I mean, they, I don’t even know how many words are in it or characters, but there were a lot, just a slider was like, no, no, no, that’s not the way to do that. Just put COVID update find out the latest news about blah, blah, blah, whatever our church’s positioning or what we’re doing in response to COVID click on, learn more, put a, learn more button. They can click learn more. And that can take them to the page where they can, whether they can find that out. But this is so important, Ron, when it comes to achieving your goal, if 70% are going to view your website on this, this is the front door to your church, not the door to your church. This is the front door to your church. This may be the only part of your church that some people ever see is your church website on their mobile device. So with that in mind, go check out the site on a mobile device, what needs to change, what content needs to be shrunk down to Mike’s point. And we’re going to echo this all throughout it. Video is one of the most under utilized tools for your church specifically when it comes to reaching new members. Okay.

Rohn Gibson (00:42:44):

So, use and leverage video now, just one last tip, and then I’m going to be done on this cause we got to keep rolling. But one tip that I would give you is don’t try to over produce these videos. Literally do not try to produce these videos. Many churches don’t do it because they can’t do it perfect. They look at all these other standards of churches using videos and like, I can’t do it like that. So I’m not going to do it at all. Do not do that. Don’t do that. Literally, if it’s your phone and maybe a little desktop tripod, which we’ve talked about in a previous episode, or if you want to know which ones we recommend, you can reach out to us in support. And we’re more than happy to share that with you. But just do it. Done is better than perfect.

Rohn Gibson (00:43:26):

Like we’ve talked about a previous episode, imperfect action is better than perfect inaction. So take action. Use the video. Literally, even if it’s you holding your phone like this saying, Hey, my name’s Pastor Ron at One Hope Christian Fellowship. I would love to have you join us this Sunday. Here’s what you can expect when you come here, literally something that simple you can do and you can use to get you gone. So let’s see. How can I upload a short video to the site? So Mike, you want to talk about that? Otherwise I’ll just,

Mike Kurrle (00:43:57):

Yeah we like to do is upload the videos to YouTube. So you have a YouTube channel. It’s great to have all your videos there. So we’ll upload the video to YouTube and then you can simply just edit click to edit the block. And then there’s a a video, an icon to insert the video there and you hit save. And the video shows up as a player in, so start, start with Vimeo or YouTube and then, and then come over to the site and paste in the embed code. So

Rohn Gibson (00:44:25):

And we would recommend, I would recommend a YouTube at least to get started. A lot of people don’t know this, but YouTube like is, is the second largest search engine on the planet next to Google. And there’s a ton of searches that are done in YouTube. So having your video on YouTube can help your church because people are going to be searching there. And then also you can take that video embedded on your site. And again, if you have questions on that, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We have tons of help documentation as well as our customer success team would love to help you get those videos on your site. So everyone listening, right there is a specific action item that you can take. Even this week. I mean, literally

Rohn Gibson (00:45:07):

Good right now, plus maybe not right now, cause you’re watching us. But right after this, pull up your phone hit record, upload it to YouTube embedded on your site and you will be up and ready to go. So I think we hit the mark. Pastor Ron is saying Bravo. Awesome, brother, hope this was super helpful. Again, great job. Yeah, this is excellent. Great job. You’re doing a lot of the right things. Now. It’s just time to kind of take that next step. And I think content chunking, you know, Mike’s given some really good advice and really, as you look at that content on your mobile device, I think that’s even going to amplify the need. So look at it on a mobile device, implement some of those best practices that Mike’s talked about on the design side, really think about video. And I’m going to stop there. I can keep going, but I’m going to stop there, but keep up the great work, Ron, you’re doing an incredible job of taking action on what we are I’ve talked about in previous episodes. So let me,

Mike Kurrle (00:46:03):

There’s one other, one of the questions I’ll address as you go. So Austin Church has asked if there’s a temp and I’ll just address this really quick. There’s a template that you can put in content and then click read more to expand. It expands the bullets. That’s a great idea. So you’re kind of implementing what Ron was saying, starting with shorter text. If people want to learn more, they can click read more. We don’t have a template that automatically expands, but what I would suggest there is just starting with a block, adding a learn more or read more link. And when you click that, it would take you to a separate custom page where you have the full, full content. That might be a way to do that. I think that would probably be the best.

Rohn Gibson (00:46:42):

Yeah, Really what we’re talking about is content architecture, right? So what is the flow of people through the content on your site? And a block is not necessarily meant to be, you know, paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs of content. There may be times where that’s the case, but typically the first introduction is a snippet where then they click and go through. So hopefully that is helpful. All right, let’s bounce over to the next one here. Let me get my mouse under control. All right. So we’re going to walk through, Let me scroll to the top.

Rohn Gibson (00:47:15):

We are going to talk about College Corner Presbyterian Church and College Corner, Ohio. I didn’t even know this was a place. I’m an Ohio guy, and I didn’t even know College Corner existed. This is awesome.

Mike Kurrle (00:47:29):

Here we go.

Rohn Gibson (00:47:32):

Yes, I’m not saying… I wasn’t even going to go there.

Mike Kurrle (00:47:35):

I think we should go back to all the episodes and count up the amount of times that Rohn doesn’t mention the Buckeyes here.

Rohn Gibson (00:47:40):

It would be less than 13.

Mike Kurrle (00:47:46):

That’s good, so this one. So let’s, let’s dive in here. I know we’re getting get long here on time. So yeah, first of all, you’ve done a really nice job again with the custom images. I think this is the stained glass window from your church, which is amazing. I love history. I love seeing old architecture and stuff like that. So it’s really neat to kind of look through your site and see those custom images of your church there. So they’ve done a really good job on that. Your, your service page, if you want to click over Rohn and look on your sermons page here.

Mike Kurrle (00:48:21):

Yeah, just a great use of, of imagery there. And the what to expect page let’s really clean. You see the text stands out, you can read it really well. What to expect has another example. This is what I really liked. Cause you’ve chosen a image that’s very clean and simple so that I can look at the text there. And also what’s really neat about this one is you’ve chosen a color, an image that has a color that works really well with your color palette. So really great job on that one. Yeah. So great job on the custom images and also writing your sites. I think there’s a lot of really wonderful content. It’s really easy to read through and digest and take in the, what we believe section is really cool. I love how you formatted it. Based upon the Westminster catechism, that’s something different I haven’t seen before.

Mike Kurrle (00:49:10):

And you had a short version of the Westminster catechism. So that was really good to see if you want to click there. Again, really easy to digest sectioned out and laid out really well where I know as I’m reading down the next section, okay, I’m moving into the next section, moving in the next section. So great job on the content and format of your content. It’s really easy to, to read there. Passage after you’re listening. Usounds like you’ve been on an amazing journey. I was reading your bio and it’s kinda, kinda neat to read that,uyou, you ran cross country. I also ran cross country. You didn’t college. I didn’t, but,ubut sounds like you’ve been around the world quite a bit. So it was fun to, to read the content on your sites. And really, I love this on your leadership page here.

Mike Kurrle (00:49:53):

You, you wrote this, I just want to share this with everybody. God’s Providence by God’s Providence Pastor Jeff was raised in a Catholic family, went to a Methodist school to become a Baptist and went to a Baptist school to become a Presbyterian on an amazing journey, but not all through the flavors of Christianity. So yeah, just wanted to say your content is great. You’re doing a great job on the content there and yeah, the way you formatted things are really good. So let’s look at a few easy changes. I think that could make a big difference on your sites. Let’s go to the homepage, Rohn, if you don’t mind, we’re going to talk about readability here. So while I love that stained glass window, this is an example where I’ll talk about readability quite a bit. But busy-ness can be really hard.

Mike Kurrle (00:50:46):

If the, if you use text on a busy background, it can make it hard to read, read. And while this is a beautiful image, I might use a closeup image like this. Maybe in a slider like this worships slider, we’re seeing here more in the foreground photo and less than the background photo you’ve used another picture of your your church. I can’t remember exactly where it was, but I saw it on one of the secondary pages and it was in the header and it was zoomed out. So you can see the stained glass windows, but it was zoomed out in such a way where it wasn’t as busy. So yeah, here it is. This is a good one. So you can see the stained glass Linda, which is a feature of your church and that’s great. But if you look at how much easier it is to read the word history there, and I think if you did something like this on the homepage, it would really be helpful for readability.

Mike Kurrle (00:51:34):

So think about that when you guys are doing these homepage or background images, try to pick images that are, that are catching to the eye, that’s important, but again, design should support the content. It shouldn’t come up to the foreground and lose the functionality of the site. And if we can’t read it, then obviously you’re not getting across the message. So finding the photos that really kind of are more subdued, less busy and I would use a photo like this. It’s a great photo, but more in foreground, maybe an event or, or a call out image in the content that the content wraps around. Like you’ve got a history page of your church. You could do, I think you do on the site and guys reading through that. But anyway, so that’s something to think about there. Also, let’s see, I think this is on the, you got, see the about section run.

Mike Kurrle (00:52:24):

I don’t know if it was what to expect. Let’s see here. Yeah, this is, this is good. This is perfect here. So you can notice on this, the headers are spaced a little bit weird. So you usually want the header to separate quite a bit from the text below it. So if we scroll down and the word faith, there is a great example of family and leadership, all great things. But usually what you want to do is have the header separate from the text above. So you have space under family. For example, you have quite a bit of space between the text that happens below it. It almost feels like family is a part of what was above. So I would probably go to the end of the, each paragraph. So click to edit when you’re in the logged in click to edit the page and at the end of each paragraph hit a, hit a return or to under each paragraph. And that really helped you space out the content. And again, it’s for readability and the ability to just kind of process all the information that are of visitor as they read it, you to process the information a little bit easier to understanding that you’re jumping from one section to the next there. So that’s just a easy fix for going to ministries were the worship header. I want to take a look at that.

Mike Kurrle (00:53:41):

There’s, there’s a feature we have that allows it to change the opacity. I’m I kind of seeing a cross image in the background there, and I think it would probably be nice to log in and then hover over the color menu and or the background menu, I think it is. And then you can change the opacity. Actually it’s a color menu. That’s right. There’s a color menu hover over it. And there’s an opacity slider. I would just pull that down a little bit. You may have chosen to pull up the opacity cause this might’ve been a busy image and that’s one way to subdue an image is to, to make it more opaque or not as see-through or transparent. So you can slide it up and, and and push back the image a little bit more. But I think this one’s maybe pushed back a little bit too much, be nice to, I’m almost intrigued to figure out what is actually happening back there, so that maybe it’s just hover over that one, changed the opacity a little bit.

Mike Kurrle (00:54:33):

So you can really see the image shine through. Let’s look at ministries ministries in small groups. And I’m sorry, I’m assuming you’re still working on this. But there’s no content I noticed here. Same thing you could probably do the opacity slider to have the image show through, but just kind of work through the site’s live. It’s always good to make sure that you run through the whole site before you get alive run through the whole site, make sure you have the content that you need. I’m actually really I love small groups. I, and if you guys have information on small groups, I’d love to hear about it. So I’m curious to see what you guys do in your church for small groups. I know that you have them, but because the contents there, I’m not exactly sure what the format, small groups or what’s all involved there. So lunch bunch, let’s go to that ministries and lunch bunch. That sounds fun. Actually.

Rohn Gibson (00:55:24):

It makes me hungry.

Mike Kurrle (00:55:27):

So what’s really cool. I want to point out something here. You have an image at the top. It’s maybe a little bit busy, but again, you can do two things. You can either choose a different photo or you I think in this case you might be able to just change the opacity and make it less opaque. So use the color overlay to push, to kind of subdue the image a little bit and it’ll make the lunch bunch a little bit more readable. But I like what you’ve done is you’ve chosen actually color that’s in the image. So that looks nice. It kind of helps pull it the colors together. But if we scroll down the very bottom, you’ll notice that the color you have chosen there is different from the color palette that your design is using. And so there’s a little bit of a kind of a, I guess you’d say a clash between those colors.

Mike Kurrle (00:56:11):

And so I’d maybe recommend two things. If you really like those colors, maybe this was one of those instances where you chose this color and then switched to a new design or switch to a different color palette. And you just haven’t made that change yet. But if this is the color you’d really like to use, I’d recommend two things maybe doing, or one of two things, maybe adding another block below this blue section and maybe a call to action or something like that, and just do a white background. So there’s some separation between that blue and the footer blue. That’s a little bit different there that will help. But ultimately it probably be best to try and select a color that, that works consistently with, with your color palette. And again, if you want to select one, those colors, you just hover over the color menu.

Mike Kurrle (00:56:55):

And we have a bunch of swatches that are associated with those with those color pallets. And you could choose one of those if you want to make it quick and easy. So otherwise you can choose a customer as well. That’s, that’s there. Let’s see here. Walk to work. Let’s go to that. I’m trying to remember that was, ministry’s walked to work. There we go. Yeah, really cool. This reminded me of I’ll say this plug real quick. If you guys haven’t seen the documentary Godspeed, if you go to Vimeo and just type in Godspeed, it’s an amazing documentary. This your content here reminded me a lot of this documentary. I love it. If you guys are wondering what it’s like to engage your community for the gospel, that that’s a, that documentary is really helpful. What you’ve written here was helpful too.

Mike Kurrle (00:57:45):

Kind of gives you an insight or example of what it looks like to just redeem your life for the gospel of Christ in your community. Walking to work is one of them praying as you go to work, trying to engage with whoever God brings across your path. Not thinking that I’ve got to get to work, but maybe I’m walking to work because God wanted these people to interact with me, or God wanted me to interact with these people. And so the locked works section. I love that. I think it was really good. I think it’s a great example for your church. Maybe even a challenge. I, if I’m, if I’m not correct here, correct me, but I it’s been awhile since I read that section, but it might be, it just kind of, you gave an example of what you do and maybe there’s a call to your church. Hey, consider walking to work yourselves, you know, live in a small community like, like you do here. So that was good. I’m going to see if I had anything. I think that was just a note. So, So overall, those are the suggestions I have

Mike Kurrle (00:58:41):

When reviewing your site’s contents, grades. Yeah. Six acres section was really fun to read. So yeah, you’ve done a great job. Hopefully those things are, are pretty easy changes for you. I think there’s simple changes and it can make a big, big difference for your church.

Rohn Gibson (00:58:59):

Agreed. Honestly, I feel like you’ve nailed it. One thought would be, you know, you talk about your goal. So I actually missed saying that initially, but it’s communal fluidity and communication. So I’m going to assume that this is communicating to the existing church members, if that’s not mistaken and it’s communication, otherwise let us know. But I think just in general, if you don’t have a church logo consider having one done,

Rohn Gibson (00:59:26):

Whether it’s a volunteer, your church or otherwise part of good visual communication is consistency and branding, which your logo is kind of part of your church. Visual brand is really a powerful tool when it comes to communicating the message. It seems like, Oh, I’m thinking about words. I’m not thinking about visual communication.

Rohn Gibson (00:59:47):

Cause visual ccommunication is important as well. So really consider,uhaving that logo there and then like we, and I’m not going to echo this, like we said earlier, but this idea of look at it on your mobile device, knowing that the majority of the people who visit your site are going to visit on a mobile device, definitely check it out. Are there areas that you need to shrink up the content,uchunk it maybe in a different way.

Rohn Gibson (01:00:09):

I would encourage you to do that as well, but ultimately great job. And I totally echo what Mike said, love these pictures, love that love the imagery. When it, when it comes to the, those big images, you just want to get images that are not as busy. So it’s beautiful and images. This is there’s still ways to make it work, but just kind of really look at how to simplify that image, but awesome job, really great site. I’m excited to have you part of the ChurchSpring family.

Rohn Gibson (01:00:39):

Well, let me switch banners here. If there’s any questions again, if you have questions, as we’re talking about this feel free to add them in the comments, and we will address those. And I know we’re,ulike always we’re at an hour, so we’re going to keep trucking here. So we’ve got New Beginnings Church and real quickly just kind of the overview here. So this is New Beginnings,uChurch of the Living God in Cincinnati, Ohio. I promise we did not pick all the Ohio churches. This is how I came in. Maybe because we mentioned it so much in the transcript where we’re attracting Ohio churches. I don’t know. Praise the Lord!

Rohn Gibson (01:01:17):

So anyway, their goal is better attention from visitors. So Mike, what are your thoughts? Yeah, this is good. So this is the Acts design. I kind of liked, I liked the combination. This is one of the first times I’ve seen the blue and gold color scheme with this design actually looks really nice and clean. So great job on selecting a color palette, I think is a good choice there. And you’ll see, on the secondary pages with this color palette, you’ve chosen on the secondary pages. The, it makes the content really clean and easy to read. So if you scroll down here yeah, really nice and clean. Well that one doesn’t have a whole lot of content, but but nonetheless, the color palette you’ve chosen here, I think it looks really good. I read through your evangelism page and I love to see your hearts. I think God is calling us back to the, kind of the core foundational elements of the church, evangelism, discipleship, and spreading the gospel. I loved looking at your evangelism. So the content of your site is really good. And I also looked at your you might consider on the evangelism page, just fleshing that out a little bit helping us understand what

Mike Kurrle (01:02:20):

Evangelism looks like. So you’ve given us kind of the purpose, but maybe give a little bit more for us to understand what evangelism looks like. It’s not that the church doesn’t want to do evangelism. What I’m finding is the church needs more examples of what it looks like to do evangelism, same thing for discipleship too. So so we know we’re supposed to make disciples. We know we’re supposed to spread the gospel of Christ. However, there are a lot of people I’ve met that have a desire that’s burning in them to do it, but they, because they don’t know what it looks like in this day and age. They have a hard time getting over that hurdle. So helping them

Rohn Gibson (01:02:57):

Previous, one of that whole walk to work idea, I think is a great example of how does that play out? Yeah,

Mike Kurrle (01:03:02):

Yeah, yeah. That’s very good. So great job on all of this. I also liked your the, the quote you had on, on the youth pages that says ministering to youth ages three through 18. Our mission is to prepare all of our youth to know Jesus Christ and to find their ultimate joy and satisfaction in him. I mean, that is the gospel right there. I love that. It’s, it’s not just about the forgiveness of sins. It’s about being in the presence of Christ, where we find joy and we’re completely satisfied in him. So I love that, how clear that is. And I love that you’re sharing that with the youth. So great job on the content. There, there are couple things that stood out to us during the review. So let’s go over some of those things, I think it’ll help your site have a stronger impact here.

Mike Kurrle (01:03:46):

The first thing, obviously we’ll probably notice very first right off the bat is, is the logo it’s missing a name or logo. So I’d recommend if you have a logo upload that and put that into place, if not, just use the text there’s we have two options. When you hover over that area, when you’re logged in Hubbard, that area, there’s a little edit icon. You click that pops up a little window and that window has two options, just plain text or a logo or image graphic of your logo that you could upload. So I would do that, make sure that people know you have it here on your first slide, which is good, but just make sure that people know what shirts they’ve landed on here. And then also the logo services is a homepage. So without the logo at the top left, it’s kind of hard to know how to get back to the homepage without hitting the back button a bunch of times.

Rohn Gibson (01:04:34):

And while we do want creativity, like we, we want you to be creative on how you utilize it. There are also standards in web design, right? So, you know, the majority of people, no, I should say there are some that don’t, but the majority of people know, okay, that logo on the left hand side or wherever that logo is when I click there, that takes me back to the homepage. So you, you want to be, you want to understand that, yes, we want you to be creative and it’s great that you put the logo down here, which is awesome that you have one now, even if it’s just putting the church name up here, having that there. So those who are used to those standards, which is the majority can navigate your site with ease.

Mike Kurrle (01:05:13):

Yeah, that sounds good. And we won’t spend a whole lot of time on this next one cause talked about it quite a bit, but there’s some background places where you’ve chosen darker background colors, which is fine. But again, just, just make sure that when you do have those backer darker background image or color, sorry that you do choose like a light or a white font, which is optional. So again, just a reminder log in, hover over on that block, that constant area, little color menu, and then select the white text or white font color, I think it’s called in the menu. So that really helped yeah. With readability. The, I knew here page let’s go to that. They’re welcome. There we go. Yeah. Ron has talked about this a lot. We’ve mentioned this before, but I think this also applies to your site videos doing some videos, some photos of people at your church, give the people who are visiting a sense of what they’re going to expect when they come to your church.

Mike Kurrle (01:06:12):

You know, anything we do, we get even coming on here live for the first time with you guys. I was excited about it, but I was also nervous. Why? Because I’d never done it before. And I’ve, I’ve never been in this scenario before. And so I didn’t know what to expect. And if you gave me what I might expect when coming to your church, it’s one hurdle that I don’t have to get over. I’m like, Oh, okay. I see the pastor space. I see the church. I see, you know, the environment I’ll be in. Yeah, that that’s really helpful in breaking down some barriers getting people to church, especially people who are not familiar with the church. I’m not sure how you grew up. I didn’t grow up in the church. I came to Christ when I was in my early twenties going to the church building was weird for me.

Mike Kurrle (01:06:57):

It was really hard to, to get in the walls. So excuse me. So to have a page where I could have seen, and I just kind of get myself more comfortable with what I’d expect when I get there can be a huge barrier for people to give her, especially these days, we’re finding more and more generations and multiple generations that have not even been in the church. So having that is, is crucial to help people get over those barriers. So that’s, that’s kind of the gist of, of what I have for you guys. I think it’s great. You’re gonna done a great job with the site. Just those few comments, and I think you’re on a good track on, do you have anything?

Rohn Gibson (01:07:36):

No. I mean, honestly I think we would be echoing some of the things we’ve said earlier, you know, ultimately the end goal here is better attention and I’m assuming like was mentioned earlier, walk-ins, you know, having people come and visit your congregation and you’ve done a lot of the right things, which is super exciting now it’s again, just take them to the next, the, the, the next level. So I think adding those videos, having images that really represent your church well and I mean, honestly, just the action item that you absolutely have to do is get your church name up in that top left side. So you can easily upload your logo, add your church name, that’s one specific action item that you can go and do real literally right now.

Rohn Gibson (01:08:16):

And you could have fixed within 30 seconds. So yeah, a lot of really good stuff here though. Cool. Yeah. That’s great. That’s great. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Mike Kurrle (01:08:25):

Okay. I was just going to say, Rohn, you had a resource, I believe in on a past episode about wasn’t there a place that you guys have for logos? I’m not sure if you guys remember that there was,

Rohn Gibson (01:08:36):

We’ll put that in the show notes. I don’t remember what it is right off hand, but we will put that in the show notes so you can go check it out. The cool thing is I’m gonna, So this is what happens. If you don’t have that link up here, then the person has to figure out a way to get back to the homepage. Um but the good news is that you have a logo. Now it’s just get the name up here. And I know a lot of people like, Oh, well it looks right.

Rohn Gibson (01:08:58):

Really good right here. And it does. I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna say that it doesn’t. And it’s great that it looks so good right there, but still put that up here. Don’t be too worried about It’s repetitive and whatever. This is your church name. You want people to know no matter what page. Cause obviously this only shows up on the homepage. If I come over here to the men’s ministry page Now what? Yeah. If they, and a lot of, yeah, People assume the first page people come to is the homepage. Now that’s true. The majority of the people are going to come to your homepage. However, there’s going to be a ton of traffic that you get, especially as you continue to add traffic that isn’t to your homepage. How do I know what church I’m on right now?

Rohn Gibson (01:09:38):

Other than Obviously this is on the screen, which it wouldn’t be on a mobile device. So make sure you have your logo up there. I think we’ve said that enough and made that point. So ultimately great job. A lot of really good things. I echo the color palette selection, all of those things

Mike Kurrle (01:09:55):

Real quick on the homepage. Again,  love the photo of the people in your church. That’s great. I can kind of echo that enough. One thing you might consider is located on this, this one here, but to see faces and smiles is also great too. So I get a sense of the people in your church, but it’d be even nicer to see them facing me smiling or just interacting where I could see faces a little bit more. So that’s a subtle thing, but it is helpful to see it’s a friendly, welcoming environment. Yeah. Great. It’s great. It’s a great,

Rohn Gibson (01:10:29):

Awesome. Well, let’s see onto the last one. Number five here We have got spring field. Let me put it up here. AME church and Gretna. Hope I’m saying that correctly. Gretna, just saying I know. Right. So I got, yeah, I got to work on that confidence thing when saying people’s names that I’m not sure how to pronounce. So the goal that was mentioned was to be a reader Source for membership as well, Evangelistic tool for outreach, for nonbelievers and Believers. So we’ve kind of got to, So the first thing I would say, just when it comes to your goal is really to find what is the number one goal.

Rohn Gibson (01:11:14):

Is the number one goal to be we just want to be a communications tool. It doesn’t mean you can’t do both. So let me just say that it doesn’t mean you can’t do both, but be very clear on what is the number one goal. Cause right now you have multiple goals here. So anyway, just to reiterate that before you might get before Mike you jump in is the number one goal to be a resource for membership as well as evangelistic tool for outreach, for nonbelievers and believers. What are your thoughts?

Mike Kurrle (01:11:38):

Yeah, that’s good. And that might, I’ll just hang on that real quick. That will influence the way that you change the navigation. So we can, we can talk about that a little bit later, but I’ll start off with some of the, some of the big wins. I love again, the photos, you have a photo of your church here, the color palette, this is really important, like color palettes that you’ve chosen, the black and red really highlights kind of what I’m seeing in the photo there too.

Mike Kurrle (01:12:03):

I’m assuming that maybe this is a part of your brand or the church’s color scheme potentially, but the building there that I’m seeing has red highlights and then your website here has some red accents. So really great job. You’ve done a good job of picking the right color palette I believe for, for your church. So that’s great. Let’s see here. Great job on the, the photos as well. I think seeing the church, seeing people’s faces that’s that one specifically, I love that one. I love that one, like the kids and people singing in the background. That’s great. Personal images throughout our, our, our awesome messages also knows that you have messages relevant to COVID. I’m not sure where I saw that, but if it was on the slider or somewhere, but I think that’s really important. So keeping your site up to date when relevant things happen in our culture is really important. And it’s really easy to do with those sliders. So great job on on the COVID and the personal messages regarding that. So let’s move over to some things that I think we we can change some to really help you out here. Let’s go to the Be in the Know slide. So the home base are, you flipped away from that and taking it right back.

Rohn Gibson (01:13:18):

All right, let’s see here. What to Expect

Mike Kurrle (01:13:21):

Right here? This one, and you might have to keep us here on if it keeps rotating nuts, generally speaking, we probably can’t tell on on the screen here, but when you visit the site, it’s, it’s noticeable. You have a preview image from a stock photography site. And so you’ll see these diagonal lines kind of going through. It’s just a reminder, that’s a preview image. It’s not supposed to be used for the actual site. So I’d recommend, you know, finding a, maybe a replacement images image that doesn’t have the watermark like that. So whenever you’re looking for images on the web, make sure that first of all, it’s an image you can use legally. And then also that it’s a good quality. This one is example, it’s a preview one. We’re really not supposed to use those. On the main part of the site, it’s one of the reasons actually developed the ChurchSpring library where we have all of the stock photography there.

Mike Kurrle (01:14:16):

And we’re adding to that. In fact, we’re going to announce some something about that later, but we’ve added a bunch of photos that we know you can use. So look through that ChurchSpring library, see if you can find a photo replacement for that one there. And that can go, that’ll be, it puts you in a better position there. Let’s talk about some image quality here go to about us. The, about us and leadership page might be hard to see again on the screen but about us and then the leadership page here. A couple of things I want to talk about. One is usually we talked about business in the background. A lot of times text can create a business background, especially it’s not about a bad thing if we didn’t have the word leadership there, but because we do have the word leadership there, and that’s really important because we want to identify the page we’re on.

Mike Kurrle (01:15:06):

Maybe choosing a photo that doesn’t have text behind it would help it be more readable. And then also you’ll notice that it’s a little bit fuzzy. The reason is whenever we take a small image and upload it to a place that it’s going to be displayed really large, it gets fuzzy. Okay. So small images that are going in larger, if you scale them up. So small images that get bigger, generally speaking, you’re going to see a lot of fuzziness in the opposite. If you have a really high or big image and it’s going to small space, that won’t happen. Cause everything’s getting condensed and the pixels are all still there, here, you’re taking a little pixels and you’re scaling it up. And then now you’re starting to see all those individual pixels. It’s like when you walk up to a TV and get really close, you can see everything while you used to be able to, these TV’s are so nice.

Mike Kurrle (01:15:55):

But anyway so I think just look through image quality. I think another one as ministries and missions page,ujust kind of be considered of finding images that they’re going to go to in a large spot, that you have a big image that you’re putting in a large spot, smaller images when you scale them up, we’ll get fuzzy like this. So,ulet’s see here, readability. Ulet’s yep. We already talked about that events. We go to the events is another example. I’ll just for the sake of time, I’ll make sure they gonna just be repeating myself here too. Ubut the events, here’s a, here’s a good example. Sometimes when you,uif you were to click on one of those events, it would take you to the specific event page and then the header would have texts behind it. It makes it hard to read. So events and sermons is another area. Well, it looks good on that page, on the list view. When you come to the actual page here, you’ll notice that’s a little harder to read. So that’s, that’s what I have for readability. I’m a goal reaching new people that I’m new section, we’ve talked about it before, but I’d recommend it for you as well. That I’m new section, add some videos, some photos of people in your church,ureally helped – imagine yourself being a new Visitor.

Mike Kurrle (01:17:10):

What would you experience? What would you want to see on this page? What are some hurdles and some barriers you’d want to overcome before you step foot in the door. Uand then, and then put content on the site that really helps them break down those barriers, but that’s, that’s an overall site looks really good. Again. I think you’re doing a great work. Those few things should really help any, any thoughts Rohn?

Rohn Gibson (01:17:31):

Yeah. I mean, honestly I think this is a church that does an amazing job of setting -like aligning expectations, right? So what you see online really aligned you with what you’re going to experience when you walk in those doors that are right there on your screen. So I think keep up the great work. I would just continue to encourage to, for you to continue in that way. And then as we’ve said, and just continue to echo video, make it as comfortable for them to walk in the door and you’ve done an exceptional, I would say first step in actually using imagery that really represents your church well.

Rohn Gibson (01:18:08):

So continue doing that and now just take that up a notch, but amazing job. And I would just say, keep up the great work. Even the news section, we’ve talked a lot about content over the last little bit, and you’re doing an incredible job with that. So keep up the great work there. All right, well, we are an hour and 18 minutes in and we’ve got five website reviews now complete. So.

Rohn Gibson (01:18:34):

Now is the time where it’s important to take action. Let me, let me get my banners organized here. So important, Mike and I have given a ton of information and now it’s time to take action. So what is one tip? And I actually want to, I’m going to engage in the comments. What is one practical thing that you’ve heard today? That even if it wasn’t your site or maybe it was your site, what is one practical tip we’ve shared today that you want to implement before next Thursday? So put that in the comments. Let us know what is one thing that you are going to commit to take action on before next Thursday? All right. Let’s see Benjamin. You’re welcome brother. Yeah. It’s our pleasure to be able to do that.

Mike Kurrle (01:19:23):

It was fun

Rohn Gibson (01:19:23):

We look forward to doing a look forward to doing more of these practical. There we go. Ron. Excellent Add videos. Wonderful.

Mike Kurrle (01:19:34):

Seem like that might be a one that applies for everybody.

Rohn Gibson (01:19:40):

Logo on every page. Yes. Text blocks and color palettes. Yes. Yes. Better graphic choices. Excellent simplified text. Oh, here we go. Good. I’m glad that one landed changing content to mobile. So making sure that’s the beauty of the ChurchSpring site, like we’re going to format it and make it work on a mobile device, but really thinking through, okay. What does somebody really need to see on a mobile device? Knowing the majority of your visitors are that? And here’s one overarching. So this is just, this is a free one.

Rohn Gibson (01:20:17):

Actually, they’re all free, but here’s another free one. Make sure. You have Google analytics on your, on your church website. If you do not have Google analytics on your church website, reach out to us. And then it’s not just Ron Gibson saying 70% or around there are going to be mobile visitors. You can actually go into Google analytics and see for yourself what percentage of visitors are actually coming. So there you go, logo on every page. Go ahead.

Mike Kurrle (01:20:42):

Yeah. I was gonna say quick note on that. It’s actually really encouraging, too. So you might think of it as kind of a scientific stats driven thing. When I first logged into our church’s Google analytics and saw how many people were listening to sermons, hearing the gospel, not in just our community, but even around the world. People were finding our church, people regularly in other States were listening to,uour sermons on our page. It’s, it’s incredibly encouraging and also helps you to see what’s the most important content that people are, are looking for. So, anyway.

Rohn Gibson (01:21:14):

Alright, well, we’ve got a lot of people getting ready to take action. Wonderful. Wonderful. Okay. So real quickly if you’re watching this. I know we had somebody earlier that said they’d used ChurchSpring and somebody didn’t have time to manage it. And now they’re going to come back. So if you’re new to ChurchSpring and you are just like, okay, this looks really good. This these sites look way better than my church website. And I’d love to be able to find out more, feel free to join Mike and I we have a demo every single day. Well, I won’t say every single day, except Sundays, we don’t do demos on Sundays. Don’t make it available. So you can go to ChurchSpring.com/demo and sign up for a time. And Mike will walk you through literally how to go from no church website or maybe a church website that you don’t really feel comfortable and confident in to creating a ChurchSpring website in less than 90 seconds.

Rohn Gibson (01:22:02):

Then we actually walk you through all the top features of ChurchSpring. So we’d love to have you join us for that churchspring.com/demo. And if you have questions there, our team is there to answer any of your questions in the chat. So ChurchSpring.Com/Demo. And then if you’re watching and it’s like, man, this is amazing. How can I try this? What can I do to get started? We offer a seven day free trial where literally you have to make zero commitment to us. You can sign up for a seven day trial, get in and mess around with it and see if it’s a good fit for you. And if it’s not cancel, if it is just keep on going with the plan that you’ve decided on during signup and you’re ready to roll moving forward. So we’re excited to welcome a welcome you. And for those that are existing ChurchSpring members it’s just awesome to be able to do these types of things and reviewing your site and telling you,

Rohn Gibson (01:22:52):

You had to take it to the next level. So we have got a, some new features, some updates that we want to talk about. So let me share my screen again. And Mike, why don’t you give us a little run-through here.

Mike Kurrle (01:23:08):

Yeah, so we have a set of 50 new we’ve we’ve said it’s 50, but it’s actually, we can’t count. It’s 63. I believe it is the total number of fall images for you guys to use again, relevant content. We’ve been talking about a little bit today. It’s ChurchSpring makes it easy to update your website. We’re giving you a bunch of new fall images back to school. Think of back to school the different events that happen during fall. Hopefully these images will really help you convey the message that you’re trying to get across to your visitors. I wanna give a shout out to Jen, Jen Hockema, you guys might interact with her in support. She has a heart for the church. She has spent a lot of time picking handpicking these images for you guys. So hopefully it is really beneficial for your church, but beautiful images.

Mike Kurrle (01:23:59):

Again, everything here that you see is completely free to use and your website. And I think that they are great for everything from sermons to background images, we picked up a big variety of things that are up close and detailed and also more subdued. So you can put them in backgrounds or up front too. So hopefully you guys enjoyed those and we always have you know, kind of a pitch to ask you guys, what photos do you like to see? We would love to give you the photos you’re really looking for. So if you guys have some, some requests for photos, put that in the comments down there, and we’ll take a look at those and make sure that do our best to get more photos that you’re looking for in this ChurchSpring library.

Rohn Gibson (01:24:39):

Awesome. Yeah. And these images, the ones that we do adjust upload will automatically be at the top. So you’ll have easy access to those here, moving forward. So

Mike Kurrle (01:24:50):

I gotta, I got to show this. This is awesome. This is awesome. Reverend Johnny, you know me, I don’t know what it is about me. People like kidding me, but this is, this: “Isabelle’s job is safe.” Believe me. I totally agree. So I hope, I hope it has been beneficial, but I like you, I’m looking forward to Isabel being willing to share that. That’s funny. I love it.

Rohn Gibson (01:25:20):

Oh, that’s awesome. That’s so awesome. Well, you know, they always say, when you give people a hard time, it means you really love them. Like, so that’s, that’s great.

Rohn Gibson (01:25:29):

Alright. Alright. Well, I’m just scanning back through here real quick. See if there’s any questions that we missed, it looks like we’ve got the majority of the things covered. So awesome. Well now it’s time to take action. It’s time to take those things that you’ve put that you’re committing to put those into action. We would love for you to come back and either share a comment on our blog for this episode, or even come back to this video specifically, and share a link- share it to your site,

Rohn Gibson (01:25:58):

Where we can check that out. And we would absolutely love that. So our pleasure, Ron nothing that would make us more happy than to go and check out your wife’s.

Mike Kurrle (01:26:14):

Oops. Looks like we are breaking-up here a little bit. So if you guys can still hear me,uyeah, it has been, has been our pleasure. It was a ton of fun.

Rohn Gibson (01:26:26):

There we go.

Mike Kurrle (01:26:28):

Decide you back, Rohn, all right. I was just gonna say it has been a ton of fun to look through the site incredibly encouraging. So go ahead. Rohn.

Rohn Gibson (01:26:37):

Yeah. Awesome. All right. So next week we’re continuing this series on live streaming and we’re going to tell you (and Siri decided to like pop up cause she thinks I’m talking to her.) so next week we’re continuing the series and we’re going to talk through how to take your live streaming, even up another notch. Literally next week, I’m going to share with you the exact equipment that we use at our church to live stream our services. So the camera, the encoder, the things we use to switch all of the tools and the recipe for success to take your live stream to the next level. We are going to share that next week in episode zero one four. So you absolutely do not want to miss that up episode, man. It’s been great. So awesome. Hanging out with you guys.

Mike Kurrle (01:27:28):

That’s Rohn brings in the smart people when, when you guys are doing all this technical stuff and when you’re talking about colors and whatever, I, I get my, my show. So yeah, they’ll bring Isabelle in with all the brains you guys will take care of the hard stuff.

Rohn Gibson (01:27:43):

Awesome. Very good. Any last final thoughts, Mike, before we jump off?

Mike Kurrle (01:27:47):

No, it’s been a total pleasure. Thank you guys for letting me join you here. I love seeing the interaction. I really hope these help you. It seems like it has beneficial to you guys. So we want to keep continuing to do that. So thanks for the feedback and encouragement. Love you guys, and continue to work for the gospel. Love it. Love what you guys have been very encouraged by you guys.

Rohn Gibson (01:28:04):

Yes. It’s truly a blessing to serve you all. We’re in the fight with you. So have a great rest of your Thursday, man. My days are all mixed. I’ve have a great rest of your Thursday. Can’t wait to see you next week. Exact same time for episode 14 of ChurchSpring Live. We cannot wait to jump in to leveling up and going to that next level with your live stream. So until then God bless you all. And we look forward to seeing you all next week. Bye everyone.

Mike Kurrle (01:28:28):

See you guys, Bye.