This seems like a silly thought to have now that it is 2015, but I will say it so no assumptions have to be made. A digital ministry’s home base and main platform should always be their church website. Social networking platforms are absolutely important for reaching out to congregation members and communities that churches are in, but you should have limited expectations of what can be done on these platforms.
- If Facebook wants you to remove cover photos, you have to play along.
- If Instagram decided to eliminate hashtags, your strategy will need to shift.
- If Twitter wanted to eliminate all external video and image links, mountains of work would be ahead of you.
But your church website would only change if you wanted it to do so. You have the flexibility to do great things, which means you will have the responsibility to accomplish much on your homebase platform. You could share whatever you wished.
While some data exists on what should be put on your church website, most of it is at least five years old and outdated. So I set out to find what churches are posting on their website. The initial data is foundational as the scope of the project links websites and social media, but we found rich results. The sample came from the top 100 largest churches in America in 2014 where we looked to see if churches had an about us page, contact us page, physical address and phone number, do they have ministry pages, and are they using outdated social media icons.
Here is what we have found:
- 98% of the churches had a website that was able to load for us during our time frame.
- 100% of churches with a website posted their physical address on their website, while 99% of them post their phone number.
- 69% of churches have a page on their website titled “About Us” or “About.”
- 76% of churches have a page on their website titled “Contact Us” or “Contact.”
- 97% of churches have a ministry page or section on their website.
As a parent of an infant, I need to know two different things before I am even willing to entertain the idea of going to your church, let alone if I plan to join you as a member.
First of all, do you have events and activities for my children that are age appropriate? Secondly, how are you going to keep them safe and me in on the loop? While I did not get into the nitty gritty of what type of content was being displayed (more data to gather in the future), it was very encouraging to see that at least some content was being delivered about youth, children, and adult ministries. Some of the best had very detailed high level navigation that made searching very simple to do. Yet more could have been and needs to be supplied for new visitors to your site and your church.
Now this may feel like really specific information to have on a website, but if it is Saturday and I have to know this information but no one is in the office to talk to, I will not be spending 1-2 hours getting my children ready, only to realize there is no cry room or check-in service at your childcare room and we get back in the car to go home. Details such as this are vital to new visitors and are so easy to supply, if you can simply get it posted on your church website. Less critical details such as youth group announcements, sign up forms for camping events, or volunteer openings could also be supplied here, but are certainly not mission-critical.
If you would like to see an even further breakdown of the research data, you can actually purchase the By The Numbers eBook at ChurchmagPress.com.
[Corded image via Keoni Cabral via Compfight cc]
Eric Dye says
I like the Saturday concept.