Planning and architecting a multisite church website is a balancing act. On one hand, individual campuses need to be able to effectively communicate with their unique congregations. On the other hand, consistency and alignment are necessary to create a unified and consistent brand across campuses. Striking the right balance between autonomy and alignment is critical for creating a multisite church website that effectively serves its congregation and the broader community.
Before we dive into the specifics involved when balancing autonomy and alignment, let’s start by defining our terms.
Autonomy refers to the ability of an individual campus to make decisions that best serve their unique communities. This can include messaging, content, events, and more.
Alignment, on the other hand, refers to the need for cohesion and consistency across campuses in terms of design, navigation, and key messaging.
The Importance of Striking the Right Balance
There are many reasons why it is important to find the right balance between autonomy and alignment. Here are a few:
- Maintain a cohesive brand experience: When a visitor navigates between different campus pages or websites, they should feel like they are still on the same website. This helps to reinforce the overall brand experience and increases trust in the organization.
- Appealing to individual communities: Different campuses may have different needs and preferences when it comes to design and content. Giving them some autonomy to cater to the needs of their specific community can help increase engagement and attendance.
- Streamlining website management: A balance of autonomy and alignment can make it easier to manage the website across multiple campuses. Utilizing a technology like we’ve created for content management can leverage the same content for multiple locations, while still keeping events, staff, etc. contextualized to the specific location. (We are super excited about this… contact us to learn more.)
Considerations for Autonomy
Some level of autonomy will always be needed to create a successful multisite church website, even if it is simply a page with the information for that campus as you see with Life.Church. But too much autonomy can lead to a disjointed experience, content management issues, and a frustrated congregation. Here are a few areas where we think autonomy is important for individual campuses:
- Staff: It is important for the community and congregation to know who the leaders are for each campus. Even if leaders hold responsibilities for multiple campuses, showing them in an individual campus context will create a stronger connection with the congregation.
- Messaging: Each campus should have some unique content that resonates with their community and helps them to know what to expect. This will help foster engagement and increase attendance.
- Events: Most events are almost always unique to the individual campus. Making it easy to discover what events are happening at a location is critical for increasing engagement and helping people feel like they belong.
Considerations for Alignment
While it’s important to give individual campuses some autonomy, it’s equally important to maintain alignment across campuses. Here are a few areas where alignment is necessary:
- Design: While individual campuses may have some variation in branding, the overall design should remain consistent across all campuses. The most important things to keep consistent are font choice, color scheme, and layout.
- Navigation: The navigation should be consistent across all campuses’ websites to create a cohesive user experience. This can include things like the menu structure and the location of important links and buttons.
- Messaging: While individual campuses may have some variation in messaging, there should be consistency in the overall brand messaging. We recommend that campuses share a single mission statement and statement of faith. There should also be a sense that all of the campuses are working together for a common goal.
Strategies for Balancing Autonomy and Alignment
So how can you strike the right balance between autonomy and alignment in your multisite church website design? Here are a few strategies:
- Establish guidelines: Create a set of guidelines that outline what areas are open for individual campuses to make decisions and what areas should remain aligned across all campuses. This can help to ensure consistency while still allowing for some autonomy.
- Involve campus leaders in the design process: Get input from campus leaders when designing the website to ensure that their needs and preferences are taken into consideration. This can help to increase engagement and buy-in from individual campuses.
- Monitor and adjust: Regularly monitor the website to ensure that there’s a balance between autonomy and alignment. If one area is leaning too heavily towards autonomy or alignment, adjust accordingly to maintain the right balance.
Examples of Successful Balancing of Autonomy and Alignment
We are very excited about the work we’ve had the opportunity to do for multisite churches. Here are a couple of examples that we think are doing particularly well:
- NorthWay Church in Pittsburgh: NorthWay’s new website creates a strong brand on the home page and invites the user into a campus-specific experience. Each campus shares a number of pages that use contextualized modules to show campus-specific information. This makes it easy to manage the majority of the content in a single location while keeping each page relevant to the individual campus context.
- Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville: Christ Presbyterian opted to forego all top-level navigation for non-campus pages. Once a campus is selected the navigation remains consistent across campuses and the header shows the visitor what campus they are viewing.
Conclusion
Balancing autonomy and alignment is key to creating a successful multisite church website. By giving individual campuses some autonomy while maintaining alignment across all campuses, you can create a cohesive and engaging brand experience that serves each individual community. Remember to establish guidelines, involve campus leaders in the design process, and regularly monitor and adjust to maintain the right balance.
If you need help finding the right balance of autonomy and alignment, we’d love to help! Just send us a message and we’ll help make your church more effective in your community.
