This series is an important one. It’s a very popular topic and question for churches new and old. We hope to provide tangible and specific help in a manageable way where improvements can made without overhauling your website.
You will get the most out of this series if you do the ‘exercises’ and answer the questions. Just reading through every post you will learn things and can improve your website. But taking a few minutes here and there to work some things out on your own will teach you how to do it and think correctly about your site in the future.
So, let’s get started…
Who is your church website for?
Don’t open your website yet. Just think about the question, conceptually. Who do you think your website should be for?
Before you move on, take a couple of minutes. Think about it. Write it down. Is it clear to you? Is there one main group of people? Multiple audiences?
This seems so simple, but it is a key question.
Ok, do you have your thoughts and notes? We are about to move on…
In most cases, you probably came up with more than one audience for your website.
Did you think members and regular attenders? Did you think members and outsiders? Reformed folks moving into the area and evangelicals becoming Reformed?
For this series, let’s define 4 possible audiences for your website:
1) Members & Regular attenders of your church
2)Reformed folks looking for a church (moving in, dissatisfied, etc)
3)Evangelicals who aren’t Reformed & church-goers who are under-churched (may or may not know the gospel)
4)Unbelievers, the lost in your town or city (not church-going at all)
Exercise: Get a piece of paper and write down these 4 categories.
Go to your website, and focus on the main, front page. Look at every section of the page and every piece of information.
Put a hash mark under the right category every time you see something that is PRIMARILY for that group of people.
Once completed, take a look at the results. Write down some notes on your thoughts on the hash marks and some thoughts on anything that struck you on your website and doing this exercise.
For accountability and to help with this series, send your hashmarks and any notes to us (a photo is fine). We will keep them to ourselves. If we share data it will be generic and not tied to any church. Many will move past this suggestion, but it will help you and help us in this series if you choose to do it.
You can email us at: mailto:opchomemissions@gmail.com or reply to the weekly email that got you to this post.
We hope this post and exercise get your brain churning for this series. We will let it churn for a couple of weeks and then dig into who our websites should be for and how to do that.