I just read Seth Godin's new e-book Knock Knock. Thanks to Terry Storch for the heads up. I read everything Seth Godin writes. I actually used Purple Cow as a textbook for the class I taught at Regent University.
I'm working on an article for Relevant Leader on redeeming technology--everything from blogging to podcasting to websites. Here are a few thoughts from Godin's e-book and a few thoughts of my own.
First things first. You need to think of your website as the front door of your church. Our website, www.theaterchurch.com, had 150,000 hits in August. Of that total, 23,683 were unique visitors! When was the last time your church had that many visitors in a month? Our goal in marketing isn't to get people to visit one of our weekend gatherings. Our goal is to get them to click on www.theaterchurch.com. Why? Because that's how we start a conversation with them. Our demographic is unique, 80% single and 80% twenty-something, but I think more and more people visit a website before they visit a church. And the website is your first impression. If it's not up to the internal quality standard of whoever is surfing your site forget it. You've lost a potential visitor.
For what it's worth, I actually read books on color therapy and color theory before we designed our site because I know that colors communicate something. Call me crazy :)
Here are ten keys to a great church website:
1) Pictures, Pictures, Pictures--a picture is worth a thousand words. That's why we post pictures in our intro flash and we also have videos. We call it eye candy.
2) Stories, Stories, Stories--we just add a feature to our home page. It is personal testimonials about the difference NCC has made in people's lives. For what it's worth, our story is the most clicked link our our site. Why? People want to know the backstory!
3) Less is more. Keep it simple.
4) Keep redesigning. We redesigned our website (www.theaterchurch.com) a year ago and we're redesigning it again. I think the process of redesign never ends!
5) Sign-Up. One key to a good website is building a network or e-list. You want to provide some service. In our case, we offer a free subscription to my weekly evotional--an email version of my weekend message. Visitors call also sign-up for our podcast.
6) Personality. Make sure your web page matches your personality. The website has to be authentic to who you are! In one sense, all websites are created equal: 72 dots per inch. But it's how you "connect the dots" that will get people from your website to your physical gathering.
7) To borrow lyrics from the old song: "let's give them something to talk about." Add a blog to your website! It'll make it dynamic and interactive! We link to my blog on the homepage.
8) Buzz. Send out evites or have an evite library that attenders can use to evite someone to church. It's word of mouse.
9) Add ear candy. You need to do something to differentiate your site. A little "surfing music" is one way of enhancing the experience. Use your worship band or the beach boys :)
10)
I'm leaning #10 empty because I don't have a corner on this market :)
I've "designed" and provided "content" for a couple sites. In fact, I'm designing a site right now. Not the HTML code, but the look and content. But I'm no expert. I do, however, realize the potential of the world wide web to fulfill the Great Commission. I believe that when Jesus told us to go into the "highways" and "byways" in Luke 14 that includes the "information super highway."
Feel free to post "website ideas" or just digest what I've blogged.
Surf's Up.
I'm working on an article for Relevant Leader on redeeming technology--everything from blogging to podcasting to websites. Here are a few thoughts from Godin's e-book and a few thoughts of my own.
First things first. You need to think of your website as the front door of your church. Our website, www.theaterchurch.com, had 150,000 hits in August. Of that total, 23,683 were unique visitors! When was the last time your church had that many visitors in a month? Our goal in marketing isn't to get people to visit one of our weekend gatherings. Our goal is to get them to click on www.theaterchurch.com. Why? Because that's how we start a conversation with them. Our demographic is unique, 80% single and 80% twenty-something, but I think more and more people visit a website before they visit a church. And the website is your first impression. If it's not up to the internal quality standard of whoever is surfing your site forget it. You've lost a potential visitor.
For what it's worth, I actually read books on color therapy and color theory before we designed our site because I know that colors communicate something. Call me crazy :)
Here are ten keys to a great church website:
1) Pictures, Pictures, Pictures--a picture is worth a thousand words. That's why we post pictures in our intro flash and we also have videos. We call it eye candy.
2) Stories, Stories, Stories--we just add a feature to our home page. It is personal testimonials about the difference NCC has made in people's lives. For what it's worth, our story is the most clicked link our our site. Why? People want to know the backstory!
3) Less is more. Keep it simple.
4) Keep redesigning. We redesigned our website (www.theaterchurch.com) a year ago and we're redesigning it again. I think the process of redesign never ends!
5) Sign-Up. One key to a good website is building a network or e-list. You want to provide some service. In our case, we offer a free subscription to my weekly evotional--an email version of my weekend message. Visitors call also sign-up for our podcast.
6) Personality. Make sure your web page matches your personality. The website has to be authentic to who you are! In one sense, all websites are created equal: 72 dots per inch. But it's how you "connect the dots" that will get people from your website to your physical gathering.
7) To borrow lyrics from the old song: "let's give them something to talk about." Add a blog to your website! It'll make it dynamic and interactive! We link to my blog on the homepage.
8) Buzz. Send out evites or have an evite library that attenders can use to evite someone to church. It's word of mouse.
9) Add ear candy. You need to do something to differentiate your site. A little "surfing music" is one way of enhancing the experience. Use your worship band or the beach boys :)
10)
I'm leaning #10 empty because I don't have a corner on this market :)
I've "designed" and provided "content" for a couple sites. In fact, I'm designing a site right now. Not the HTML code, but the look and content. But I'm no expert. I do, however, realize the potential of the world wide web to fulfill the Great Commission. I believe that when Jesus told us to go into the "highways" and "byways" in Luke 14 that includes the "information super highway."
Feel free to post "website ideas" or just digest what I've blogged.
Surf's Up.
4 Comments:
Mark,
Do know if you saw it yet, but Seth has the follow up ebook "Who's There?" and it's about blogging.
Get it here.
Can't keep up with you Scott :)
Mark
One more thing...
Here's a #10 for everybody:
10. Make sure people can find your website. If a site is cool but no one's knows it exists, then it won't be any better than a great church that people can't find. "If your build it they will come..." doesn't naturally happen online! :)
Here's some quick/easy ideas for helping people find your site.
1. Links - Get people to link to your site. Go to church directory sites online and get your site listed. Get friends from other churches outside of the to link to you. Search engines will list your site higher if you have a lot of sites pointing to you. Use this site to see who's linking to you.
2. Keyword density - Have your church name, city and state in your "title" tag (blue bar at top of browser). Have any words you want your site listed under (i.e. "church in ____" mentioned throughout your site. Use this to check your keyword density. Click here
3. Blogging will help your listing in the search engines. Search engines love the fresh content.
These are just a few tips. Hope they help!
I totally forgot an obvious one.
The name of your website :)
Don't underestimate the importance of branding your site. For example, churchmarketingsucks.com or ilovethischurch.com are very memorable names.
I think theaterchurch.com is a great name in print, but it's tough vocally because people spell theater different ways :) By the way, we did buy the "theatre" spelling too :)
A great URL is huge!
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