Getting a High New Visitor % to your Church Website (Part 2)

In This Article:

• What Church! at Bethany is doing effectively Directly or Indirectly Online to get a High New Visitor %
• Online Directory Referral Traffic
• Willow Creek Association Membership
• SEO Benefits and Partnering Opportunities

Getting a High New Visitor % Without Heavy Design Influence

In a previous article, we were looking at what a church could do to get a High New Visitors % without having to resort to Design traffic which is not necessarily reliable or targeted to your primary audience.

New Visitors % is how many people are coming to your site each month that have never visited your site before, and growing churches want their number of New Visitors to be continually growing.

As mentioned in a previous article, Design traffic is referrals from websites that are either your website designer, CMS provider, design blogs, or design rating/review sites.  We want to see if it is possible to succeed in the goal of growing  lots of New Visitor traffic without having to rely heavily on design traffic.

Since our last discussion centered primarily around the Twitter activity of Matt Payne, the lead pastor from our example website, Church! at Bethany, today we’ll continue to look at their traffic sources, this time, at their Directory Referral.

Online Directory Referral Traffic

Between 4/20/08-4/20/09 Church! at Bethany averaged 1.85% of their hits per month from directory sources.  The percentage of visitors that was new for that directory traffic was 81.4%, which is part of a study-wide trend indicating that Visitors who come through online directory referrals have a high New Visitor %.

Church websites get more New Visits when the referral source is an online directory.  A future article will discuss the types of directories that are available, the average study-wide percentage of New Visitors  from Directory sources, and which directories may or may not be appropriate for your particular ministry.  But for now, let us take a closer look at Church! at Bethany’s highest Directory Referral Source, Newthing.org.

Newthing.org’s mission in their own words is “…to be a catalyst for a movement of reproducing churches relentlessly dedicated to helping people find their way back to God.”

What they provide is a  church community network that is focused on training, equipping, mentoring, and providing resources to churches that are planting a church, or are thinking about planting satellite churches.

Church! at Bethany is a part of this network, shown twelfth on the left.  This listing alone generates 1.25% of total Visits every month, and  looking further at Church! at Bethany’s top fifteen referral sources, it gets the 2nd highest Pages Per Visit at 4.45 pages visited, and an incredibly low bounce rate of 30.68%.  This affiliate directory is sending high quality visitors that are more engaged.

Willow Creek Association Membership

Church! at Bethany’s website also gets its second highest new visitor referrals through the church’s membership with the Willow Creek Association.

While Willow Creek does “not oversee the ministry expressions of individual churches, WCA Membership is intended solely for churches that hold an orthodox understanding of biblical Christianity.”  Thus, WCA Member Churches affirm central doctrines of the Bible in the WCA Statement of Faith, which mirrors many of the historic creeds of Christianity.  Being a member is a way of saying, you can trust us to believe at least in these basic foundational doctrines.

Though it is unlikely that an unchurched person would find Church at Bethany through a church directory referral, someone who was previously churched and was familiar with and trusted the Willow Creek Church, or the Willow Creek Association Statement of Faith (perhaps a transplant to the state of Oregon) may find Church! at Bethany through the Find a Church tool.

In fact, searching for just the state of Oregon  without putting a church name  gives the following search results below:

Church! at Bethany is fifth in this alphabetical listing. There are other benefits to becoming part of a large church association whose values you believe in.  For Willow Creek Association in particular, messages, training mp3s, live webinars, discounts on events and published resources, a free book, and monthly subscriptions to Christianity Today’s Leadership Journal and Willow Creek’s audio magazine can be had for $249/year.

SEO Benefits and Partnering Opportunities

Granted, the traffic from this online directory is not targeted to non-believers who may be curious or looking for a church, this linking does help with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and also provides access to future ministry opportunities.

If someone wants more information or help in planting a church, or if someone wants to partner with a church like Church! at Bethany in their ministry, this listing helps connect supporters and church leaders alike who are of similar task and vision for planting and reproducing churches.  These visits give Church! at Bethany support, as well as giving them a chance to serve other churches.  We believe that connecting online with other like-minded churches through directories is mutually beneficial for all who are a part of the listing or organization, both from a ministry, as well as from a Search Engine Optimization standpoint.

Next Article: Blogs, Google CPC, Facebook

Our next article will continue to look at Church at Bethany’s High New Visitor % through observing its blog traffic, Google CPC traffic, and Facebook traffic.