Why browsing isn’t the whole story
I say it often enough that it’s become a bit of a personal catchphrase: people don’t read websites, they browse them.
It’s true, and it’s useful shorthand when a client wants to cram every ministry update onto the homepage. But I’ve come to think the sentence needs an addition. People don’t read websites, they browse them first.
That “first” matters more than it sounds like it should.
Here’s what tends to happen. A client comes into a website project having absorbed the same advice I’ve given for years, and they want as few words on the page as possible. Big photo, short tagline, a couple of short sentences, a button.
The instinct isn’t wrong exactly, since nobody wants to land on a page and face a wall of text. But it often gets applied past the point that’s actually useful, until the site says almost nothing specific about the church at all.
Two things get lost when that happens.
The first is findability. A search engine has to understand what your church actually is before it can put your website in front of the right person. That understanding comes from words, specifically the words that describe your worship style, your ministries, your neighborhood, the actual texture of who you are. A page with a photo and a tagline gives a search engine almost nothing to work with. A page with real, specific written content about your church gives it something to match against when someone nearby searches for a church like yours.
The second is trust. I’ve sat in more first meetings than I can count where someone who joined the church fairly recently mentions almost as an aside that they read through the church’s website before their first visit, or right after. Not to check the service time. But to get a read on the place. Is this church going to be warm or cold? Does it sound like people I’d want to sit next to? Would I actually be welcome here?
That trust test happens in the words. A visual first impression can tell someone a church looks put together, but design alone can’t tell them whether they’ll belong there. What the design can do is reinforce the words, making what a church says about itself feel more credible once someone starts reading. The visuals set the stage. The words are still what get tested.
So the answer isn’t to pile more words onto a page, and it isn’t to keep stripping them away either. It’s to think about what a website actually needs to do for the person using it, at the moment they’re using it.
Findable means the site has enough specific, real content, the actual language of your ministries, your neighborhood, and your particular flavor of church, for a search engine to understand what you offer and who it’s for.
Browsable means someone skimming on their phone can move through the site quickly. Good navigation, headers and subheads that actually say something, and lists where a list helps someone scan.
Readable means that when someone is past skimming, when they’re seriously deciding whether to visit or whether to stay, the words are there and they say something true about who you are.
Most visitors will browse first. But the ones deciding whether your church is for them will eventually read. The words need to be ready for them.
Go disrupt something,
Christen
