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Why do website menus have to be so complicated?
For most organizations, they don't have to be.
For Churches, they can be a headache. Why is this, though?
Picture this:
A corporation with many different departments, all wanting to put their information on the homepage and on the menu.
It's not going to happen - this is a scenario that wouldn't make sense.
Why? It's simple - the departments of corporations and companies are mostly internal. There's no need for them to appear on the menu or on the homepage.
Why would the finance department want to put something on the homepage or as a main menu button?
Now comes the aha moment!
Most departments at a Church are external, not internal.
This means that, for the most part, the departments are going to want to promote themselves so that members and guests can find out about them easily.
The Music department may need new choir members or want to promote their Christmas Cantata.
The children's department wants to make sure parents know the right information.
How can a Church cater to these needs?
A lot go with a carousel on the homepage. This way, everything that's important can appear on the homepage.
From a Church's perspective, it makes perfect sense - from a designer's perspective, it doesn't help.
There's no real SEO benefit to doing this.
What if there were a way to handle this?
There needs to be one main contact person at each Church that works with the team doing the website. One main contact that decides what goes where.
What this does is eliminate the need to have multiple departments having their own say in what goes where.
On the website menu, there should be no more than 7 or 8 main menu items - preferably, less.
Here's a sample menu order:
Home
About (I'm New could be before and separate)
Ministries (with each ministry coming under this main menu item)
Resources
Give (this could be a button to the right, instead)
Contact
Anything beyond this isn't really necessary.
We tend to overcomplicate things, especially websites, but this is a really simple website layout for your Church's website menu.