Poor images.
We see them all over the place.
One place we should never see them is on church websites. To have the best Christian website for your church, it’s important to use quality images. In this post, we discuss why quality images are important and look at the ongoing debate about whether stock images should be used.
Why are quality images important?
It’s important to consider why we use images in the first place. You’ve heard the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words” – perhaps a thousand words is selling it short. When an image is used on a church website it tells your website visitors a lot about your church – what is important to your church, what the people at your church are like, how they look, what they like to do and more.
What happens when poor images are used on a website?
When a church puts images on their website that are blurry, stretched, not cropped correctly, or include poor text overlays, there are several negative things that happen.
Website visitors think…
- Do they not know how bad these look or do they just not care?
- If they don’t know or don’t care about the images on their website, what else is the church clueless about – music? children’s ministry?
This is why poor images detract and distracts from everything else the website is attempting to communicate.
On the other hand, we don’t want to mislead people with the images we use. We don’t want our images to imply we’re more ethnically diverse that we really are, or our facilities are grander than they really are, or everyone is always joyful when they’re not.
Use quality images on your website, not to wow people with the images but to help them understand and focus on the message. – Mark Steinbrueck
How do you get good, quality images?
Here are two suggestions.
1) Assign the task of taking good pictures to someone who has an aptitude for photography & likes to take good pictures.
This may seem like a no-brainer but unless you find someone who enjoys taking good pictures, has the ability/equipment to do it, and are intentional in asking them to do it, it won’t happen.
2) Use stock photography.
There is an ongoing conversation about whether a church website should use stock photography. Here’s a full article that addresses this issue: Is it OK to use stock photos on my church website?
My recommendation is to use stock photography only as a temporary solution until you can take good photographs to replace them.
That’s why we developed page templates for our WP-EZ Website Builder. When you select a theme for your website, it comes with 6-8 page templates, which are pages that are already designed with sample text and stock images, so all you have to do is swap out the text and images for your own personalized text and images.
For more on the topic of quality images see 7 Church Website Photo Problems You Need to Fix ASAP
Work with our team
If you’d like the OurChurch.com team to work with you on your church website design or church SEO, complete the consultation request form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop). If you’d like to build a church website with our WP-EZ church website builder, click and get started!
Comment and Discuss…
- Do you need to replace some images with good, quality images?
Read more articles in this series: Best Christian/Church Websites 10 Point Checklist