Good point Mark. It's always important to know your audience.
By the way, you're website looks good! Nice work.
Church Website Statistics
I just spent last week at the Echo Conference in Dallas, TX. If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s a great place to meet folks working in the creative aspects of church as well as learn some great, practical things to help do ministry better.
Justin Wise presented some new research that Monk Development, a website design agency, did on the importance of church websites. I want to share some of those stats and give a few thoughts about them, too.
- The percentage of church attenders who said a church’s website was important in picking a church to visit:
- 2009: 34%
- 2012: 46%
- In 2012, 33% say the internet was the first place where they learned about their church.
Thoughts: The web is your church’s new front door. It’s something Justin and myself have both said before. Your church website is your first impression. It needs to represent who you are as a church. Think of it like the upkeep of your building. You wouldn’t let your facilities fall apart, so why would you let your website look bad?
- How did people find out about their church’s website?
- Church bulletin:
- 2009: 42%
- 2012: 26%
- Search engine
- 2009: 12%
- 2012: 23%
- Church bulletin:
Thoughts: People are going online to look for information about their church instead of waiting for their church to tell them where to go. Justin believes if a church can’t be Googled, it doesn’t exist.
- 64% of church goers say the church website is important in facilitating participation in church.
- What features do people say they use most (in order):
- Listen and download sermons.
- Serving opportunities at the church.
- Finding service information.
- Forward content to others.
- Read visitor's information.
Thoughts: Church goers are now turning to a church’s website to become better connected with the church. So we have an obligation to help them. Justin says websites are becoming more about awareness (letting people know you exist),
connection to community (things to do in the church community like small groups) and engagement (increasing the interaction of people with the church).
When you look at these stats, does anything jump out to you?
Good article. It provides a great reminder for churches to be excellent in how we present ourselves.
One caveat that is missing from the article is that context makes a huge difference for the importance of a church's website. I pastor a rural congregation where the vast majority (I would estimate 75%) of people don't use email or the internet in general. These aren't just older people who never wanted to learn about computers, these are people who work in fields, barns, warehouses and shops during the day and don't see a need for the internet. So, consequently, the website isn't that valuable to them.
This doesn't excuse churches like ours from having outdated websites, but it does mean that the amount of time I spend working on the website should be relatively small.
(If you'd like to check out our site it's http://sumascrc.com)