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Recently I visited a very elaborate website for a church and wanted to find out some information before potentially visiting. As part of a church’s marketing strategy, a website is a useful tool to help attract people to your congregation. While not directly evangelism, it is a tool that can help create evangelism moments by introducing people to your church.
Imagine your church’s website as you go through this. I have left images and names out.
The Home Page:
The home page uses a denominational logo and features (as the central picture in the center of the page) the church’s front doors and facade.
For the visitor, the page has the service times on Sunday morning, along with the address location and telephone number of the church
In the corner, but below the fold (where the user has to scroll down) is the the promotional blurb for the newest sermon series.
A helpful menu bar is on the left hand side.
The Who We Are Page
Looking at this page, I see text only information about the church’s vision and mission. It is full of “we” language and it is somewhat flowery. It is theologically rich and well thought out, but full of Christian-speak.
There is not a single picture of anyone or anybody on this page. So really this is a “What we do page” not a “Who are we page.”
There is a sub-page here about the staff. When I click on that, all I see are staff names, areas of ministries, and a phone number.
There is also a sub-page of “From the Pastor.”
Here is where I find my first picture.
It appears however to be a 40×40 avatar blown up to 120×120, meaning the pixels are all distorted and I can’t recognize the face. I can only see a tie hanging off a blurry head.
For example: Here is my 40×40 avatar magnified to about the same size. This kind of image doesn’t present the pastor/head of staff well.
The Visit Us Page
This page has the general invitation to whomever to come and visit. Here are where the other three photos on the website can be found.
All three are of church entrances (I presume this to be a large campus, based on the scale of the entrances).
The page assures me of available parking, that I will be welcomed, and that if I come during the week, the reception area is staffed to guide me to the right person. I ask myself, where is the reception area and how will I know it when I see it?
Two helpful suggestions
There are other pages on this website about it’s ministries, calendar, and so forth, but this is enough to make the point.
1. People images
In North America, many people will check out a church’s website before visiting a church.
A question that is likely on the minds of people as they look for information such as service times: “Are these people like me? Would I fit in?”
This suggests that instead of featuring your building as your only photos, have pictures of the church’s people.
You don’t need to say “Elder Bob,” or “Mary serving Ice Cream,” but simply pictures of your congregation’s life together.
Photos of buildings are helpful to orient a potential visitor, but people scenes make a difference in the comfort factor.
For example, here is a picture of me in the lobby area of a church talking with people after the Sunday morning service.
What can you tell about this church from this picture? What might a visitor learn about this church?
This church is not entirely Caucasian, so additional pictures might show the racial/ethnic diversity of the congregation.
2. Staff images
A second suggestion would be staff photos, and of a good resolution. A visitor may want to know who is who before walking in the door. Who is the preaching pastor? Who is the worship leader?
A blurry picture of the senior pastor doesn’t communicate well. A list of names and extensions doesn’t communicate well in the age of “Facebook.”
Other tools and comments
www.InternetEvangelismDay.com has a church website assessment tool handy.
My friend Chris Thompson (Church visits Blog) guest posted an article Top 10 Church Website Design Mistakes of 2007 that makes some other helpful website suggestions.
http://healyourchurchwebsite.com/ promises “Teaching, rebuking, correcting & training in righteous web design.”
If you need a church website designer, I’ll recommend my friend Paul Steinbrueck, at http://www.ourchurch.com/. But don’t go for the free one, rather spend some money to make it work and look right. He’s the man behind Cypress Meadows. I met Paul when I was in Tampa and thinks he has a lot to offer churches. He can make your site easily functional by setting it up and showing you how to make it work.
I personally use Wordpress as my CMS, but others have found Joomla to be alright as well. Both are powerful opensource CMS engines to help keep your website looking sharp and updated easily.
Comments (1) Posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
About once a month, I receive the Web Evangelism Bulletin from the UK.
It gives you great points to ponder about Christian websites and features some interesting websites that you might not find otherwise. I’ve been on it for a few years and have found consistently useful information.
It is geared towards how to use the web for evangelism, so often contains samples, ideas, coding tips for bloggers and webmaster, strategy ideas, and lots of information about making a better church website.
http://guide.gospelcom.net/resources/bullfeed.xml
See samples at the link above. Grab it for your newsreader or email. It comes out once a month or so.
Comments (0) Posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
Evangelism Training Podcast:
Overflow Podcast Show
A 5 minute podcast on how you can overflow into your non-Christian friends lives. Overflow is the best ideas from the best books on evangelism. Subscribe through iTunes. From Godsquad.com
Improve Search Ranking for your Church’s Website
I was introduced to a company that helps churches optimize their website and helps them place higher in search engines. As a result of better search rankings (and a newly redesigned website last fall) some churches report seeing more new visitors to our church than ever before. See Optimize Your Church’s Search Rankings Case Study page at Church Marketing Online.
In American culture, many would look online for information before they’d pick up a phone book, before they’d drive to the church on the corner. If somebody was looking for a Presbyterian Church in Richmond — would your church’s website appear in the search Engine? What might a visitor think of your church’s website?
Ministry Marketing Coach series
Chris Forbes of MinistryMarketingCoach.com (who has contributed a guest article here on ministry followup) wrote a great post about the our cooperative role in Evangelism. We participate in the work the God is doing.
Some have made evangelism such a passive sport, thinking it will happen all its own. Chris’ contention is that there is a role that the evangelist plays, like a farmer who has to nurture the soil, SO THAT the plant can grow. Check out: We need people to witness
Baptists fret over Calvinism’s impact on missions and evangelism
Interesting Statistics about Reformed theology causing a problem in Baptist life. Check out Tiptoe thru the TULIP.
Can Calvinist and non-Calvinist Baptists work and worship together?
It depends, some advocates of Reformed theology say, on whether Christians on both sides are willing to tiptoe through the TULIP — the acronym for five doctrinal specifics that mark Calvinism — without stomping on anyone’s flower bed.
PC USA Poised to Grow World Missions
I’m glad to see this article about PC USA Missions.
A proposed 2009-2010 General Assembly Mission Budget – which would increase the number of full-time, financially supported mission workers from the current 196 to 215 in 2009 and 220 in 2010 – was recently approved by the General Assembly Council (GAC).
Comments (0) Posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008
Last month, I posted an entry on Surveying 1st Time Visitors to help improve your church’s welcoming.
I contacted each church mentioned and discovered the effect of such an online survey was a zero.
One was a broken link. The second seemed to have removed their form since I couldn’t find it on the website.
The 3rd hasn’t used or promoted the form for a year or so, leaving only one of the four functioning. In conversations with the webmaster, I learned that not too many people fill it out because there is no effective means of getting visitors to fill it out.
Survey of visitors seems like a good idea, but . . .
The question is:
Why would they come back to fill it out?
The people who wrote
Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests into Fully-Engaged Members of Your Church
have an answer.
They actually use online visitor surveys and have been very successful in getting them completed.
Here is the key:
Visitors who leave an email address on the visitor card get an email on Monday (personalized) from the pastor who taught that week, with a link directly to the visitor website.
This begs the question — how do they get an email address from visitors?
That church uses a response card system, where everyone fills out a response card, not just the visitors. When people enter the sanctuary, they receive a program (bulletin in church speak), a pen, and a response card.
At an appropriate time in the service, everyone, including members and regular attenders are invited to fill it out and place it in the offering basket.
The hospitality team processes the cards and by Monday afternoon around 3, the first time visitors get the email from the pastor who taught that Sunday. In that email is a link to a short survey and they have found a pretty good click thru rate.
Order your copy of Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests into Fully-Engaged Members of Your Church to see their actual response card (I couldn’t find a reproducible one on line).
Let me ask you this:
What do you do to make contact with visitors that come to your church?
Comments (2) Posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
I found this interesting article on line about surveying first time visitors who visit your church for the first time.
The basic premise is put a survey form on your church’s website, ask first time visitors to go there and rate/comment on the service.
The article goes on to comment about such a survey and why it might be a useful addition to your web page.
Questions about a guest’s experience at the church can inform you about your facilities, your staff and members, the efficacy of your ministries, and what worship looks and feels like to new people. Many churches break these questions into categories of hospitality, worship, teaching, music, etc., to better identify what exactly did or did not resonate with guests.
How do they get the information?
What the article doesn’t address is the response rate.
- Do first time visitors fill it out?
- How are visitors invited to fill out the web response form?
- Is there a notice in the bulletin?
- Some kind of response card they go home with?
- Maybe an email from the pastor if they left an email address on the visitor card?
I’ve sent an email to each of the churches to ask these questions.
There are samples from four church web sites:
A review of first time visitor surveys
Kailua Baptist is short. It uses both check boxes for yes/no questions, and a comment field for any extended comments. Simple. Easy to complete.
New Life Fellowship has a simple one that is little harder to read (the colors don’t work for me — I find that I have to squint to read the print. The Red asterisks on a green background is awful for a color challenged person like me.) While it has 11 numbered questions, some of them have additional parts.
Valley Family Church has a more lengthy survey (several wheel scrolls of the mouse to reach the bottom. It is a more readable form in terms of its color scheme. But the 0/14 status indicator suggest 14 long pages if information might be requested of me.
The last one had a broken link, so I can’t visit, but the color combinations on their website made for difficult reading and unsettling color contrasts.
(Image Source: Jnuemaker)
Let me ask you this?
Beyond the information on a visitor card, what does your church do to collect "experience" data from your visitors, particularly those who may not return?
Feel free to share your comments below.
Comments (0) Posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008
For the past few years, there has been a day set aside to focus on using the Internet for evangelism — sharing your faith online.
Tony Whitaker edits a newsletter called Web Evangelism Bulletin that I have subscribed to for many years, and it is full of thoughts, strategies, examples, and practical web how-tos on sharing your faith on line. Below is a press release about Internet Evangelism Day.
Churches to Hold Web Focus Day April 27
"How can we use this new-fangled Internet thing to share the gospel?" Christians are asking. A worldwide "web evangelism focus day" is helping to provide answers. Sunday, April 27, has been designated as Internet Evangelism Day. Churches can download free materials from the Internet Evangelism Day website. These materials make it easy for churches to create a short presentation about online outreach on or near that Sunday. A PowerPoint, video clip testimonies, drama scripts, music and handouts can be used to create their own customized program lasting from one minute to 50.
Church leaders who have already used these materials are excited. "This is a huge help for small churches such as ours," writes a church leader from California.
The Internet Evangelism Day team emphasizes that web evangelism is for anyone, not just the technically gifted. "There are many ways to share your faith online, without any technical background at all," says IE Day Coordinator Tony Whittaker.
Christian leaders are also enthusiastic: "I am glad to commend Internet Evangelism Day," says Dr. John Stott.
Churches can start planning their focus day now. More information is available at www.InternetEvangelismDay.com
Free Church Website Tool Released
The people behind Internet Evangelism Day also provide year-round resources about online outreach. The ministry explains many ways that Christians can share the good news, including through church websites. Churches often find it difficult to create a site that will engage with outsiders in their area, and find themselves asking, ""How can our church website help us reach out into our community?"
A new online tool released by IE Day provides churches with a free 15-page evaluation report. Users assess their own website by answering 55 simple questions. Their customized report is immediately displayed online, ready to print or save. The report’s recommendations are tailored with specific practical suggestions, based on the questions that were ticked. View the evaluation tool here: www.InternetEvangelismDay.com/design
A church site which has been prioritized for non-Christian visitors can be remarkably effective in reaching the community. "Week in, week out, more visitors turn up at our church on a Sunday because of the website, than anything else," writes one growing church in London.
The tool also provides the parable ‘A Tale of Two Golf Clubs’ (which is available to republish) to illustrate the principles of effective church websites: www.InternetEvangelismday.com/golf
Church leaders have welcomed this new resource. "This competent evaluation tool provides a valuable service to churches that will help them strengthen their effectiveness in outreach through the Internet," says Dr. Sterling Huston, director of North American Ministries for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Gary McClure of LifeWay Ministries agrees, saying, "This checklist is an invaluable tool to identify critical areas for improvement. Every church should study this regularly and act on it!"
For more information, visit www.InternetEvangelismDay.com
Contact: Tony Whittaker, Coordinator, Internet Evangelism Day
Tel: +44-1283-702334 (GMT office hours)
office@InternetEvangelismDay.com
IE Day is an initiative of the Internet Evangelism Coalition, a group of online ministries, at Billy Graham Center, Wheaton. It is completely free with NO fund-raising component.
Comments (1) Posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008
