Church website layout: what goes on your home page, and in what order

When a pastor asks me to look at their church website, I almost never start with colors or fonts. I start with the order. A good church website layout puts the right things in the right sequence, so a stranger can answer their questions in the time it takes to scroll with one thumb. Get the order right and a plain site works. Get it wrong and a beautiful site still loses people.

So here's the home page order I use, why each piece sits where it does, and two real church sites that show it.

Start with the phone, because that's where guests are

Before the layout, one number. Across six church websites we look after, phones made up 57% of all visits over the last 90 days. On one of those sites it was 68%.

That changes how you should think about your home page. On a laptop, a visitor sees a wide screen and scans. On a phone, they see one narrow strip at a time, top to bottom. Whatever comes first is what they read. Whatever comes fifth, a lot of them never reach.

So when you plan your layout, open your own home page on your phone and scroll it slowly. That's the real page. The desktop version is the one you designed on, but it isn't the one most guests see.

The church website layout that works, top to bottom

Here's the order I'd use on almost any church home page. Your church may add a section or two, but I'd rarely change the order of these.

1. A welcome and one clear next step. A short line that sounds like your church, and a button that says Plan a Visit. Maybe a second one for Watch Online. Not five buttons.
2. Service times and address. Right under the welcome, in plain text a phone can read without zooming. This is the question almost every guest came with.
3. What to expect. A few sentences, or a link to your plan a visit page: what to wear, where to park, what happens with the kids.
4. Real photos of your people. A normal Sunday, not a stock photo of strangers.
5. The latest message. One sermon, so a guest can hear the pastor before they ever walk in.
6. Next steps for people who already come. Groups, serving, kids and youth, giving.
7. What's coming up. A few events that are actually current.
8. The footer. Address again, phone, email, social links and your ministry pages.

Notice the pattern. The top half of the page is for the person who has never been. The bottom half is for the people who already call it home. A lot of the home pages I'm asked to look at have this backwards. They lead with a ministry calendar and a long welcome letter, and the guest has to dig for the one thing they needed.

What this looks like on a real site

Cornerstone Church in Cheshire, Connecticut is my own church, and we built their site. Here's their home page from the top.

It opens with "Welcome home." and two buttons, Plan a Visit and Watch Online. Directly under that are all four Sunday service times, marked in person or online, with the full street address. Then comes the latest message, a short section about the church, what's happening this month, and finally a "Take Your Next Step" grid for baptism, small groups, serving, the Growth Track, kids, youth and giving.

That's the order above, almost exactly. A first-time guest on a phone gets their answer in the first scroll. A member who wants to sign up for the Growth Track finds it lower down, which is fine, because they already know to look.

Calvary Christian Church in Lynnfield, Massachusetts handles the split between guests and members a different way. Near the top it offers three simple doors: "First time? I'm New," "Missed Sunday? Watch a Message," and a Give card. Three kinds of visitor, three buttons, no guessing. It's one of my favorite small touches on any site we've built.

Four layout mistakes I see most often

A slideshow at the top. Rotating banners feel like a fair way to give every ministry a turn. But a guest who is scrolling past won't wait for slide four, and on a phone the words on each slide are often too small to read before it moves. One good photo and one clear line does more.

Service times hidden behind a menu. If a guest has to tap About, then Visit, then scroll to find out when church starts, some of them won't bother. Put it on the home page, near the top, every time.

Everything is a button. When the first screen has a dozen buttons, none of them stand out. Pick the one thing you most want a guest to do, and make that the obvious one.

Old events. An events section that still shows the summer picnic in October tells a guest nobody is minding the site. Show fewer events, and only ones someone will keep current. I wrote more about cutting what you can't maintain in what a small church website really needs.

Where the Plan a Visit button should lead

That first button matters more than anything else on the page, so it has to go somewhere good. A plan a visit page should answer the practical questions: when and where, what to wear, where to park, what happens with the kids, how long the service runs, and who the guest will meet.

The best ones also give the guest an easy way to say "I'm thinking about coming." That little form is where a website stops being a brochure and starts being a front door, because now someone at the church can welcome them by name. Just make sure someone actually follows up. I laid out a weekly routine for that in how to follow up with first-time church guests. Every site we build includes guest follow-up for exactly this reason.

A ten minute layout check you can do this week

Pull up your home page on your phone. Hand it to someone who has never been to your church, a neighbor or a friend from work, and ask one question: "When would you show up, and where would you go?" Then stay quiet and watch them scroll.

If they find it in the first screen, your layout is doing its job. If they hunt for it, you know what to move.

If you'd like a second set of eyes, our free church website health check at healthcheck.whiteoakmedia.io gives you a score and a short report in a few minutes. And if you'd rather have someone rework the layout with you, book a time with me. No pressure either way. I'm always glad to help a church make its front door a little easier to walk through.