Your Church Website is Vital for New Visitors.

Church Website Guide’s analytics and survey research is published in the August 2009 issue of Christian Computing Magazine!  Your Church Website Is Vital for New Visitors makes the case for the church website as a critical messenger to visitors, impacting whether potential visitors even show up on Sunday morning at your church community.  The article continues below:

Your Church Website is Vital for New Visitors

Before you read this article, open your church’s website and take a few moments to examine it. What are the visual and content elements that jump out? For whom are these elements designed? Is it primarily a resource for people who already attend your church? Are the largest elements the recent sermon series, events or ministries to serve? Is your church website a place to welcome new people, or does it appear to be a site for regular attendees? Your church website sends a critical message to visitors and impacts whether they will ever visit your church community.

“When we moved, a church’s website had to be our first filter to find a church. A lot of churches had crummy websites and regardless of how great a church they may be, we passed them by,” stated Ryan Heinese, as his family searched for a church when they moved to a new city. This is part of a growing trend where people no longer chose a church based on its convenient location; often they began their search online, browsing multiple church websites before picking a place to worship. According to our research, (read last month’s column: The Truth about Church Websites and Social Networking article to learn about this church website market research) 16% of all people surveyed said the church website was the first place they learned about their church prior to attending. In fact, when you filter the results for people who have attended their church for less than three months, over 30% said it was where they first learned about the church. The church website is a strategic part of welcoming new people to your community. Just how important is it? When asked, “How important was the website in a person’s decision to attend the church” 77% of people who have attended the church under three months said it was important. Online visitors visit a church website and what they find there impacts their decision as to whether or not they will attend.

Visitors will be influenced by the look and feel of the website

Doctrinal statements, opportunities to connect and visitor information, people are checking out church websites for more information about the church.  In our Church website analytics research, we categorized the content visited into I’m New Information (e.g. location, directions, service times), Media (further broken down to Sermons, Articles and other content), Groups (e.g. specific church ministries), Events, Evangelism and several other categories. We discovered that the top content category people visited online was I’m New Information (excluding the home page). Yet, many websites do a poor job of connecting to new visitors and presenting the information visitors seek. Here is an example of a church that has a visitor-friendly design:

College Park (http://www.yourchurch.com) designed their website with new visitors in mind. Visitors to the home page immediately are presented with a ‘Welcome to College Park’ and a button to select “I’m New” which takes visitors to a page with common questions and desired information such as maps & directions. Visitors will see that College Park considers new visitors important and has spent time preparing the appropriate information for them. College Park is a good example of how to design for new visitors.

How should you design a church website for new visitors? We suggest churches use a design process to present the churches vision, impact the visitor toward sharing this vision, and encourage behaviors that the church desires. These behaviors could include:

• Low-Value: Subscribe to RSS, podcast or engage the church Twitter account.
• Medium-Value: Sign-up for an email, join a Facebook group or complete a web form.
• High-Value: Show up to a service, home group or other relational meeting.

The church website strategy should move new visitors into relationships and involvement

Visitors will see the way you have designed for them and the ease with which they can access information. In today’s increasingly online world this is a critical part of any church’s plan to attract new visitors. Interestingly enough, these visitors will be Christians who seek a new church or plan to return to attending a church. In a future article we will write about how church websites are not a place non-Christians visit for the purpose of learning about Christianity. What we do know is that websites are effective in helping Christians find a new church. Ultimately your website should be designed for these new visitors as a strategic part of your mission.