This section of the website is designed so that you can refer to detailed information about how to be creative with the tone of voice and photography on your website to make it your own and give it the "flavour" of your faith community.
Above all look at your new website as a way of "reclaiming" your Church's position as the community centre, a hub of hospitality and welcome and an expression of God's love to those who need it most.
Keep in mind that this website is your advertisement to the community around you. Look at it as your "advertisement" on the internet. If your website is your advertisement about who you are, it's not about your community, but what your community offers someone who is looking for a community of believers.
Also keep in mind that many people will access the website on their mobile device, so keep your text and information informative, precise and your language warm and inviting.
The Microsite Project is designed to help you advertise your Church to the wider community, so the types of people who will be searching for your site will be church shoppers, people on holidays, spiritually homeless and seasonal church goers - those interested in finding a church at Easter or Christmas. Keep these people in mind when creating your website.
The basic elements of your website should contain a page welcoming newcomers to the site, a page about all the things you offer, such as youth groups, home groups, special interest groups and other activities. We would suggest if you have little capacity to keep your website updated at the very least you have the following pages set up and ready for Google search engines:
Using the Microsites platform, you can select from the pre-configured domain https://anything.uca.org.au. The choice of anything is up to you (provided it's not already taken!).
When thinking about people outside of your Congregation, people in your area who are looking for a church will usually go to Google and type "<Suburb Name> Church". So, for example if they were in Maroubra, they might type "Maroubra Church" into the search engine.
When selecting your URL, you want to make the site as easy to find as possible for people in your area who are not yet members of your Congregation. If we include the suburb name in the domain name, it will help your site to rank more prominently for local searches.
So for example, you may call your website Maroubra Uniting Church, and your URL would ideally be maroubra.uca.org.au. The uca.org.au suffix of the website denotes it is part of the Uniting Church network.
Tip: Try a quick search now to see which churches rank well in your area!
There is nothing worse than going to a website and realising all the information is not up to date. Worse still, people searching for your website and turning up when you may have moved service times, or you are meeting at a different location.
On the training days we will assist you to set up a basic framework for your website which includes a home page, about page and contact us page. We will also assist you with other pages you can set up if you are feeling adventurous like a calendar, news and podcast page.
We suggest while your website is being surfaced on Google via search engines that you make sure any information you have copied and pasted from templates is up to date with your church information.