Writing Compelling Content for Your Church Website.

There's a saying that "pictures are worth a thousand words." On the Web, because attention spans are so brief and space is so important, words have to be pictures. Confused? Use the advice below to start crafting your text into word-pictures.

Care how it looks.

Web content is a visual medium. Visitors like text that looks good on the page. If a page is not attractive, why would someone stay on that page, let alone read its content? If the text is distracting, visitors move on without reading what you have to say.

Use white space to break up chunks of text to allow the reader to scan the content. Use lists, bullet points, and tables to organize your blocks of text. Use bold and italics to make important words, phrases, and headings stand out. Limit the use of all caps and exclamation points. Include images whenever possible.

Instead of this...

Help us serve those in our community by providing for their needs and DONATE TO OUR FOOD PANTRY!!
Our current needs include: cereal, instant potatoes, canned vegetables, baby formula, and pasta.
Please help us by dropping off your boxes or bags of NON-PERISHABLE foods in the Food Pantry bins in the lobby!

Do this...

Help us serve those in our community by providing for their needs. Donate to our Food Pantry.

Our current needs include:

• cereal
• instant potatoes
• canned vegetables
• baby formula
• pasta

Drop off your boxes or bags of non-perishable foods in the Food Pantry bins in the lobby.

Shorter the better.

Use short, choppy sentences. Chunk these sentences together into brief paragraphs of 2-3 sentences so as not to intimidate the reader with long blocks of text.

Like a newspaper article, answer all the important questions at the beginning (who, what, when, where, why, and how) and explain in more detail as the article continues. Cut out unnecessary information, adjectives, and adverbs. Adhere to the "Keep it Simple" attitude.

Example of short and choppy:

Calvary Baptist Student Ministries:

Impact is our ministry for students in High School. Impact students are committed to a single purpose: living for the glory of God. They meet three times a month in home groups and at a large group meeting twice per month.

Xtreme for Christ is our ministry for students in Junior High. They meet each Thursday at 7:00 P.M. in the Youth Room. Each week is filled with small discussion groups, worship, and hang out time.

Jesus And Me (JAM) is our Children's Ministry. JAM meets every Sunday morning and evening during our main worship services. Each child is given a Bible-based lesson, activity, and memory verse every week.