I've looked at a lot of bad church websites over the last twenty years. Usually, what makes a church website bad isn't a lack of content but things on the site that just do not need to be there.

Imagine you go to a nice restaurant. You walk in and immediately notice that all over the restaurant is the restaurateur's creepy doll collection. There is a doll on every table. There are dolls on all the walls. Besides the general creepiness of it, you'd immediately know that the restaurant lacks professionalism. There is a reason why you don't see that kind of bric-a-brac in professional settings: it doesn't belong there and detracts from, rather than adds to, the atmosphere.

Designers are taught that the difference between a good design and a bad design often isn't what is there, but what is not there. There is a reason "less is more" is a popular adage.

The following things do not belong on your church's website. In my opinion, they detract from the main purpose of the site (which is to get potential visitors to come to your church) and do not serve the secondary purpose (which is to equip and inform your church members). So if you have these things on your site, make them go away now.

There was a period in the mid-2000s when someone thought it was a good idea to put animated sliders on every website. You know what I'm talking about: the carousel at the top of the page that slides a different image across the screen every few seconds.

These were popularized on news websites like MSNBC, where the designers were trying to make the most out of the limited "above the fold" content area, but at some point, the people who made websites thought they needed to be everywhere, and they made their way onto many church websites.

There are two reasons you should avoid sliders (and other animations) on your church website:

First, because they are out of style and have been for a long time. Few things make a website look more dated than an unnecessary slider.

Second, (and more importantly) they don't serve the purpose of a church website. No one in the history of mankind has ever visited a church because they had a "cool" slider on their website.

What they actually do is dilute your message. Remember, your website's main job is to present your church to would-be visitors. You should have a singular message you are presenting, not a rotating array of advertisements.

Because that is what sliders always have been—an advertising tool. Our brains have learned to ignore them and other web animations. So unless you want people ignoring your church website, don't put them on there.

It's incredibly common to find a church website with an "upcoming event" that happened years ago.

What does this say to your potential guests?

It's better to have no events on your church website than old events. This is one reason the event section of Ultimate Church Websites completely disappears once the events are in the past—there is no reason for them to be there.

On a related note, don't clutter your events calendar with regular church services. Put those in the service schedule. Save events for actual events, not things you do every week.

And one more thing (this is just my taste), you don't need a Google Calendar-style event section. A simple list will do just fine.

I strongly believe that what people need isn't our opinions about politics and every controversial issue—what they need is the gospel and an understanding of the scripture. Maybe your church is the kind of place where you go off every Sunday on the latest conspiracy theory, but if that is the case, let people find that out when they show up, not on the website. Too many opinions on the church website is a turn-off and defeats the purpose.

Your church should have a picture of your pastor(s) and main staff, but I've seen churches where literally every single person who does anything in the church is on the about page. Why? Is "occasional bathroom cleaner" really a title that deserves a spot on the website? Are potential visitors really interested in knowing who the "door greeters" are? Write something up about the key members of your pastoral staff and leave it there.

There are two common ways churches can post deceptive pictures on their website:

First, the most common way is to use stock photography in a way that makes people think that it's people in your church. Sometimes, to make your church seem more cool and relevant, or more diverse, people will opt for stock photos. The problem is that everyone knows when a stock photo is a stock photo, and the practice seems deceptive.

The second way I've seen this is to post photos of other people's ministry as your own. Any gains you get by posting these photos on your website will turn into losses the moment the visitor shows up and realizes they were duped by fake images.

A LONG time ago, (like twenty-five years ago) there was a trend of putting visitor counters on websites. (These weren't tracking in-person visits, but the number of people visiting the page online.) Occasionally, I'll still see these counters on church websites.

Keeping track of your web visitors can be helpful (I built it into the backend of Ultimate Church Websites), but there is no reason for it to be on a public-facing page. Whenever I see it, I have about the same reaction as seeing someone wearing bell-bottoms unironically: I pity them as someone who obviously missed a memo a long time ago.

I write A LOT of content. (I average around 20,000 words a week.) Because of that, I'm notorious for skipping over spelling and grammar mistakes. (There almost certainly are some in this blog.) But your church website really needs to not have glaring spelling errors—it doesn't make you look good.

Have someone who is a good editor look over your content before you post it and point out errors. If no human is available, paste your writing into ChatGPT and ask it to fix spelling and grammar issues. Do what you have to do to get spelling and grammar mistakes off your church website.

Another thing that is often on church websites that is an easy fix is broken links. These make it look like your website is broken and can be disorienting to non-technical visitors. Periodically check your site to make sure the links are all working and fix or remove the ones that aren't.

Having content on your site is good. Uploading photos, blog posts, events, sermons, and other content regularly can help your site climb in search engine rankings and drive traffic to your site.

But if you get busy and stop, and the "recent posts" on your homepage are about Trump's first election or COVID-19 guidelines, it has the same effect as old "upcoming events": it tells your visitors that nothing is going on there.

On Ultimate Church Websites, we automatically hide this content from the home page when it is more than a month old. Users can still find it in the blog section, but it will never be labeled as "recent."

Sometimes, if the content isn't evergreen (or something with timeless appeal) it's best to delete it and not clutter up your site with dated content.

Another dated trend is having a section with links to other ministries. This is a holdover from the early days of the internet, when every other site was a blogger or Geocities site. Now, it's just a sign that you are a little behind the times. You probably don't need this on your church website.

If you remove any of these ten things from your site, it will be an instant improvement. Keep it simple.

Remember to keep the main thing the main thing: on your church website that is presenting your ministry well to potential visitors. Keep that in mind and you'll kill a lot of clutter.