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Alan | Feb 25, 2010 | Comments 6
Why Have a Church Website?
Here are my notes from the Technology and Social Networking track at the January GCA Church Planting Conference in Orlando. The presenters were: Tim Brister and Drew Goodmanson. Tim is a pastor who has developed an integrated web and social networking strategy. Drew is a pastor and also CEO of Monk Development, an internet strategy and development company.
A first question to ask: Are church websites effective tools for evangelism?
Unfortunately, a 2009 study on ‘The State of the Church Online: Websites & Mission’ involving numerous church websites & strategies, the answer is – At the present time, church websites are not an effective tool of evangelism. This is based on the study of collective analytics of church websites, online surveys, and offline interviews.
Less than 1% (0.17%) of non-Christians were influenced to attend church because of a church website. Only 6% of churches have a gospel presentation on their website. For the churches that have a gospel presentation on their website, those presentations receive only a tiny fraction of the total hits on the site.
If you are trying to reach non-Christians with the gospel, you may be better off creating a separate website or blog for the community other than the church website. For example, a church in British Columbia, Canada, developed a website to link together people in the community interested in hiking. The hiking website was the bridge to non-Christians in the community. Other churches developed blogs to target topics for which non-Christians are searching for help on the internet, such as: serious illness, death, depression, loneliness, marital issues, transitions, etc.
So that leads to the question: Why have a church website?
Church websites are effective at helping Christians find churches, and then helping new people in the church connect with the church.
Church websites have attracted 17% of Christians to their present church.
The people visiting church websites the most are new visitors to the church. Of the new visitors to the churches, 30% found the church through the web. A total of 77% said that the church’s website was at least somewhat important in their decision to actually attend the church. One interviewee said, “A church’s website has to be our first filter to find a church.”
What are new visitors (less than 3 months) seeking on the church website:
- Learning about the church
- Reading about beliefs
- Listening to sermons
- Trying to connect with the church
- Finding events/times
- Finding ways to serve.
For 82%, the church website was at least somewhat important in facilitating participation in the church community. For 45%, the church website was at least somewhat important for their ongoing discipleship and spiritual growth.
For beginners in the church (3 – 6 months) 100% had visited the church website. What are beginners seeking on the church website:
- Learning more about the church
- Listening to sermons
- Reading pastor’s or church’s blog
- Trying to connect deeper in the church
- Finding events/times
- Looking up or contacting church staff.
A question I have to ask: Is there any good news regarding how a church website can help in evangelism?
The answer is “yes.” Beginners in the church tend to use the church website in telling their friends, business colleagues, and others about the church. Therefore, 73% said that the church website was at least somewhat important in sharing their faith with others.
The final question: what is the take away from this information?
You need to identify your audience and what you are trying to provide them as you are designing the website. There are four possible audiences – how do you address them?
Filed Under: Director's Blog
I will affirm that we have had a number of families join our church because of their having first visited our website (http://www.huntersvillearp.org)
Things that had influenced their decision to visit after seeing our website included our Wednesday night programs (i.e. Creation v. Evolution), listening to gospel-driven sermons (as many churches in our area are heavy on ‘milk’ and light on ‘meat’) and seeing how they can ‘plug in’ to the various internal and external ministries we support.
Hopefully our other ARP churches can take advantage of this medium – the biggest obstacle in my experience is ownership – someone who will keep the site up to date, especially in the realm of social media, so visitors (and members!) can be aware of what’s happening in and around the church on a regular basis.
Thanks Alan – a very informative and helpful article.
Hi Alan,
Extremely helpful article, as we are in the process as we speak of discussing how to make our website more useful.
Thank you for this information!
Mark Tankersley
Another idea you all may find helpful is getting people TO your website! We have the website incorporated into our church logo. Advertising on Facebook has brought dozens if not hundreds of people to our website, as well as several of our attenders. Of course the website is on all our biz cards and all other advertising as well. Also we have taken advantage of free advertising in the local paper under “events” and on the local Xn radio station’s website under “events” (such as our Truth Project Series) – all incorporating the website address, even if not a phone number. They are a lot more likely to go to your website than they are to call you. Make sure your time and place is crystal clear on the front page of your website as well – that’s the complaint I’ve have gotten the most.
Alan,
Thanks for this post. I thought I’d mention a great tool we’ve just started using with our site called google analytics (unpaid endorsement). It’s free and measures traffic flow, reports the average amount of time spent on our site, the most visited pages, and much more. It even tells us what state or country people are visiting our site from. Great feedback for a church plant in a military community like Prattville. Maxwell AFB is about 9 miles down the road. We’re getting several hits from Facebook and recently a small AD that we’ve place at an elementary school website that’s smack dab in the middle of our target area http://www.dpeseagles.com
We’re also in the process of updating riversidearp.org and will be incorporating a lot of the things you’ve mentioned above. By the way, if anyone reading this post visits http://www.riversidearp.org, WE’LL KNOW : )
not at this point