Last spring I did a survey of Continuing Anglican church websites. When a Province's site was under some one person's account, it looked pretty bad for the Province. Almost so for the church -- the latter might get some slack if it was obviously a small mission. But sitting up on a free service with advertising looks a bit worse. It may be better having your church's website on a free server with an obvious Christian element (all the ads are for Bibles, or some such).
Now our church's site is hosted on a paid server, but for all of about $5/month. One family has picked that up as a gift to the church -- it's quite affordable, we have our own domain name (www."ourpatronsaintname".org), and so far the service has been great.
A good design is critical too. I saw one, from our own Province, that I just recoiled from in horror. The background and text colors were horribly ugly (and clashed), they tried to put everything, text and photos, on one page, and it all became a mass jumble I just wanted to leave. I saw another that made you watch something about letting "(somename) the church cat" guide you through the site and the church; maybe that's okay for a bookstore, but for a church...? (shiver) And of course there are those that abuse the patience of those of us still stuck with slow dialup.
The good news is that there seems to be a multitude of attractive designs. I think ours is in that category, and slow-dialup-friendly too, though there are some minor improvements I'd like to see. (Primary major improvement: get that blasted picture of me off the site!)
Good points all.
The worst church sites I've seen belong to the post-modern churches which are trying to be 'super cool'. Usually it's dark text on a dark background, heavy graphics, and little useful information. They'll frequently make you sit through a Flash intro before they'll let you get to content.
The site should say who you are, when and where you meet, and a brief summary of what you believe. A brief history of the group is nice, but not necessary, and I've found it useful if they put up something about worship style. A resource link page adds content without cost or much effort.