Media Outreach

Perhaps one of the most heavily trafficked pages of any church website is the contact & directions page. Whether you have 50 or 500 members, website visitors are always going to need quick and easy access to locating and contacting the church. Here are a few tips that’ll help you utilize that area to the best of your ability:

1. A contact & directions page is not a church directory: It is highly recommended that the contact & directions page be utilized to establish a few individuals as a point of contact, rather than listing the entire staff and their contact information. Doing this will create unnecessary clutter and make it more difficult for a visitor to know who to contact at the church for general inquiries. If you do want to create a listing of church staff on your site, do so on a staff page (Example).
2. Establish a general email address for general inquiries: By establishing one email address as a resource for inquiries, you will ensure that multiple staff members can be of assistance. This address can either be checked by multiple people, or forwarded to as many individuals as is desired. This will also allow staff members to filter their email, so that their personal emails are not intertwined with general inquiries.
3. Get interactive: Through services such as Google Maps and Mapquest, it is now a simple process to embed an interactive map into your website that allows people to get turn-by-turn directions to your church.  By doing this, you will be providing a resource that allows visitors to easily find your church.
4. Get unconventional: Due to the nature of a contact & directions page, it can be difficult to be creative when presenting the information to a visitor. It can even become complicated at times if you are a large church with several different campuses. In cases like these, it pays to think outside the box. By utilizing tools such as a flash map (Example) you will not only organize the information on the page in an efficient manner, but you will introduce a create element to the site that just looks sweet.

A good, efficient contact & directions page can mean the difference between a happy visitor and hundreds of “I can’t find your church” phone calls to the office.  By utilizing these simple suggestions, you will ensure that visitors to your website know exactly who to contact and exactly where you are.

Photo by Ell Brown