d2design sees hundreds of church websites every week. We wanted to take a minute to point out some great church websites we have stumbled upon. We are doing this to encourage churches as they start exploring the option of getting a new church website. Jonathan Suh, the web designer from First Baptist Church Hammond, was kind enough to talk with us. Here is their story…

Q. What were some goals you wanted to achieve with getting a new website?
A. In the past our website was full of information that was useful for someone who was very familiar with our church. We wanted to make a hybrid site that both members and potential visitors could find helpful.

Q. What are some challenges you encountered in the process?
A. We are a large church so sometimes I would receive a lot of requests from different ministries about content they needed posted on the site. One of my goal’s was to keep the front page clean and not over cluttered so I had to really guard that space. Also, the leadership had to learn to put their trust in me with the website and at the same time I wanted to make sure I was understanding their requests clearly.

Here is our designer, Joel Townley’s review…

This website is a great balance of sophistication and style. This site makes me want to click and explore because not only is the homepage great, but it continues to develop and gets better on the secondary pages. Every page is well thought out and designed. Great use of buttons, icons, imagery, and graphics that continues to keep me engaged while not overdoing it. The site maintains it’s sense of sophistication throughout the entire site while still still feeling very welcoming. I also get the feeling that this site accurately portrays the church. What this site gets right, so many other church websites get wrong… A website needs to accurately portray the church. Don’t paint a picture that the church experience cant back up.

Outstanding attention to detail in the design. Things like the secondary navigation locks to the top of the browser as you scroll down, form drop-downs are styled with rounded corners to match the submit button, when rolling over thumbnail images, the image AND the title are highlighted, page layouts subtly adjust throughout the site to best fit the content… I could go on and on. Excellent, excellent website

We’d love to hear what you think. Leave comments below.