What is your communications strategy?
Do you have one?
Or are you just throwing information out there haphazardly using a bunch of different tools – website, email, social media, texts – hoping people see some of it?
Your Website as Your Communications Hub
If you don’t have a communications strategy or your communications strategy does not seem to be working well, I invite you to consider the benefits to making your website the hub of your communications.
What is a hub?
Think about the train, subway, or metro system in a major city. Usually there are lines that run between the center of the city and the outskirts of the city or suburbs.
In the center of the city there is usually at least one “hub” station where multiple train lines have stops. In the hub station, people can get off one train and get on another. Think Grand Central Station in New Your City.
This is the idea behind making your website the hub of your communications. All of your other communications tools – email, social media, texts, print, verbal announcements (if you’re org is a church) – can tell people to “go to our website for more information.” And the website can then direct people out to register for an event, contact someone, or place an order.
7 Reasons Your Website Is an Ideal Communications Hub
A website can serve as an excellent communications hub because:
- It is accessible all the time (unlike verbal announcements made in a worship service which are often missed)
- It is accessible everywhere (unlike paper bulletins, programs and newsletters which are often lost)
- You control the design and format (unlike social media sites that determine the format of your profile on their site)
- You can optimize it for search engines (unlike social media sites and offline communications)
- You can put as much content as you like on it and organize it however you like (unlike verbal and paper communication and email which have time and space limits)
- The content you include can be text, audio, or video
- You can include links to that content in other forms of content.
Turn Visitors into Subscribers
But your people – church members, students, customers, volunteers, etc – are not going to check your site every day for new information. So, the goal of every website should be two fold:
- Help people find the specific information they’re looking for or do the specific action they want to do.
- Get the first-time visitor to subscribe to ongoing communication.
How to better help people find the info they’re looking for is a big topic we’ll cover in an upcoming article in this series.
It’s critically important to turn a first-time visitor into a regular, engaged part of your community. On-going communication may include any of the following:
- Subscribing to your e-newsletter
- Subscribing to the RSS feed of your blog
- Liking your Facebook page
- Following you on Twitter
- Adding their phone number to an automated calling or texting service
Design Your Website to Subscribe
The design of a website can have a huge impact on the number of visitors become subscribers. Here are 7 web design tips that can help you increase the number of subscribers and make your site a stronger hub of communications.
- Prominently display social media icons at the top of your site on every page.
- Include a call to action near those icons like “Like us on Facebook” and “Follow us on Twitter”
- Include a “subscribe to newsletter” prominently on the homepage and somewhere on every page.
- Include a call to action near the newsletter subscribe widget.
- Consider including widgets that show your latest Tweets or Facebook updates.
- If you blog, prominently display RSS/subscribe icons towards the top of the blog
- If your organization publishes a print newsletter, make it available on your website, and make it possible to subscribe on your website to receive it via email.
Of course, once you decide your website is going to be the hub of your communications and you decide to make it possible for people to receive info from any of the means mentioned above, you’ve got to get any new information on your site quickly and consistently.
And you’ve got to notify subscribers of that information consistently. But that getting beyond the issue of design and the scope of this post.
Subscribe to our weekly email to get future articles in this series!
- Is your Google Business Profile your new church homepage?
- 9 Common Aesthetic Web Design Mistakes to Avoid
- What are the Best Christian Blogging Platforms?
- More articles in this series coming soon!
The bottom line…
A website has unique attributes to make it a powerful hub of communications, connections & growth!
Want our team to build you a website this is a powerful hub of communications?
We would love to talk more with you about website design, search engine optimization (SEO) or Google Ads management.
Complete the form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop) to schedule a call!
Comment and Discuss
- Does making your website the hub of your communications seem like an effective strategy to you? Why or why not?
- What are you going to do next to make your website a better communications hub?
Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com
Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.
An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.
Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication.