The Home Page Welcome: Empty Fluff or Meaningful Greeting

In researching the topic “welcome on the homepage,” I came upon a blog (from 4 years ago) from Follow Bright –a website consulting firm- that advises businesses to avoid the word welcome on their homepage. They post:

“Welcome to our site!” and similar greetings are nothing more than fluffy, empty, purposeless words.

Fluffy text offers zero value whatsoever to your site’s visitors, and fails to engage or interest your prospects. Really, it accomplishes little more than taking up valuable homepage real estate.

Stop wasting your visitors’ time. Using empty/fluffy content only extends the time it takes for your visitors to find the information they care about.”

From Follow Bright

Perhaps, that is good advice for companies that want your business, but parish websites are not welcoming customers, clients or donors, they are welcoming guests, visitors, and members. A brief and warm welcome that focuses on our audiences sets parish websites apart from other sites.

Empty Fluff on Parish Homepages

Many parishes do not include any form of welcome on their homepage. Some post welcome messages that could be called “empty/fluffy content” because they focus on the parish, not on the visitor. Here are two examples of that:

“The _____ parish community welcomes you to journey with us. For more than 40 years, we have found the power of God working through community prayer and the powerful intercession of our patron saint, _________….”

Welcome to _____. We are a large and vibrant community celebrating over 150 years of ministry in the community of _______, as a part of the Diocese of _____.

Sometimes parishes lead with their mission and/or vision statement. In my opinion, that is another example of “empty” language on the homepage. It focuses on the parish agenda when we want to focus first on the visitors.

A Real Welcome

Welcome is always focused on the visitor. To welcome someone according to Merriam-Webster is “to greet hospitably and with courtesy or cordiality.” The online Macmillan Dictionary defines to welcome as to “greet (someone arriving) in a glad, polite, or friendly way.”

Here are three examples of short welcoming parish homepage messages:

Welcome! If you are looking for a Catholic Church to visit, join or return to—you are most welcome to come to St. Anselm. Please join us! (St. Anselm, Chesterland, OH)

Welcome to our Catholic community! If you are new to the area, looking for a place to belong, or are already a member of our parish community – know that there is always a place for you as we gather around the table of the Lord. (St. John Bosco, Parma Heights, OH)

“Our door is open, our table is set, there is a place for you. (St. Edward, Youngstown, OH)

The homepage welcomes of these three parishes are further expanded on interior pages that address the specific questions of people interested in joining the parish, becoming Catholic or returning to the practice of their faith. That is being truly welcoming.

If your parish homepage has a good way of expressing welcome, please share it in the comments below.

Having a welcoming website is more than saying welcome on the home page and I will write more about that in the next post.