Keep your community informed, welcome new visitors and answer enquiries about weddings, christenings and funerals all through your free church website on ACNY.
Benefits of using AChurchNearYou.com as your main church website
- It’s free! No developer or admin fees
- Mobile friendly – Google search prioritises web pages which are mobile friendly.
- Visible on search – Your AChurchNearYou.com site will often appear on the first page of search engine results.
- It’s secure – We handle site security and help with access problems. Never lose access to your own website even if volunteers move away.
- Free support – The help articles on the editor help centre are available 24/7 and you can contact us Monday to Friday. We provide regular training webinars with daytime and evening slots.
- Reach new people in your community - 80% visitors to the site are there for the first time.
- Benefit from paid advertising - At Easter and Christmas, the Digital team invests in paid advertising on social media that drives new audiences to find a church near them through the site.
- Add your own pages and customise your homepage - Keep things simple with the basic pages provided, or add your own pages to highlight aspects of church life
- Always improving, in response to editor feedback - We are continuously developing the site features and design in response to editor feedback - see what's coming soon.
- Optional timesaving tools - For example, handle wedding, funeral and baptism enquiries more easily because the AChurchNearYou.com contact form is integrated with the Life Events Diary.
We regularly run webinars about using A Church Near You as your main church website, this is a great way to see more about what it can do.
How to use ACNY as your main church website
To get started, try these steps:
- Edit your homepage, adding a welcome message, photo and current news and events.
- List your regular and one-off services and events in the events calendar.
- Create custom pages to reflect important aspects of church life.
- Add contact details to the get in touch page, including an email address for messages from the public. The email address won’t be visible to the public, but when the public contact your church through the AChurchNearYou.com contact form we will automatically send thier message to your specified email address.
- Tell people how to find you on the Find us page. Bus routes, parking information and the numbers for local taxi firms will help new visitors feel welcome.
- Add information about your facilities such as building accessibility, groups, and community projects, to help local people find your church.
Once you have these details in place, visit the Marketplace to find out about other features you can add, such as the online donations feature and the Life Events Diary which makes it quick and easy to manage enquiries about funerals, weddings and baptisms/christenings.
What if using AChurchNearYou.com as my main church website isn't right for me?