How does your website communicate that it's a multi-site church, one church with multiple locations? Yes, there are times when website design and the multi-site church strategy collide. I've found that there are (at least) 4 ways to list your campus locations:
- List the campus locations in the pull-down navigation menu,
e.g. Real Life Fellowship with 5 locations:
- List all campus locations on a full web page,
e.g. Willow Creek Community Church with 6 locations:
- List all campus locations as a separate top navigation bar,
e.g. McLean Bible Church with 6 campuses:
- List all campus locations in the middle of the home page,
e.g. The Oaks Fellowship with 3 locations:
Browse through this photo album to see 12+ church websites and how their campus locations are listed. As a church continues to extend its ministries and services to more campus locations through a multi-site church strategy, this affects the church's website design. Some questions to consider: Does the website design limit the number of locations? Are the locations and times easy to find from the home page? Can an average website visitor find the church's contact info?
Another way is to not list a church's multi-site locations at all, as in having a separate website for each campus location, like Bayside Church. [ed.note: Bayside uses the multi-site strategy in conjunction with church planting; and a website with its multi-site locations linked is in the works]
Could it be that some people just want to know if the church is located close to where they live, rather than if a church is in multiple locations? What do you think? Which multi-site church website strategy do you think works well? Are there other ways to list campus locations?
// DJ CHUANG, Leadership Community Director at Leadership Network
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