What a church website should actually do beyond looking nice

Most church website briefs start with how it should look. That's understandable, but the sites that actually get used daily are built around three things that have nothing to do with visual design: can members find last week's sermon, can visitors see when and where to show up, and can giving happen without someone having to be physically present.

A sermon archive that isn't scattered across a YouTube channel and three different social pages is worth more to a congregation than another homepage redesign. The same goes for online giving, it reaches members who've moved away, who are travelling, or who simply forgot their wallet that Sunday.

None of this means design doesn't matter. It means design should serve those three functions first, and look good doing it, rather than the other way around.