Ideas for improving digital ministry experiences
The church website is the bedrock of any digital ministry. It is the hub nearly all digital ministry actions flow through. They may start on social media or an email list, but quickly move to your website for further action. These articles deal with optimizing, tweaking, and fully revamping your website.
Are you updating your church website? Most likely unless you just completed a major release, you are probably in the middle of some sort of update. The more important question is has your release date slowly crept backward as you find more things to change? Scope creep is dangerous as hard work you already accomplished is sitting idle. In this article I will explore when it is acceptable to launch website updates.
Continue reading “When To Launch Your Church Website Update”
This article finishes up a four part series about online donations. I hope that after reading parts one, two, and three you realize that it is not acceptable to just put a donate button and call it quits. There are many factors you need to consider, and here I will tie it all together along with some services that were mentioned by peers in a LinkedIn group.
Continue reading “Donations on your Church Website (Part 4): Tools and Services”
When you ask for donations on your church website, it matters as to how much you ask for. By pairing a suggested donation amount with a type of donation, you not only influence how many people give, but how much they finally give. I will explore methods and explain how they can be best utilized.
Continue reading “Donations on your Church Website (Part 3): Influencing The Outcome”
Churches need financial resources to operate. One way to solicit those resources is via your church website. To craft an enjoyable giving experience, you need to account for all of the types of giving, as well as what motivated people to give.
Continue reading “Donations on your Church Website (Part 2): Types of Donations”
Your church website can serve many purposes, from recruiting new members to serving your local community. One purpose that is met with some apprehension is soliciting donations. In this article I will discuss some approaches to creating compelling content that will alleviate concerns and encourage joyful giving.
Continue reading “Donations on your Church Website (Part 1): Approach and Content”
Churches often help their local community, but their websites often just display evidence of that help. Why not help the community right on your website? Yes you should focus on recruiting new members, but we should also strive to love our neighbors. This is content that will not only let visitors know that your church cares about the community; but it should rank well in search engines.
How you deliver content dictates how your visitors can consume it, as well as what they can do with it. The easy route is often to simply a link to a file, but why restrict your audience. Give them content the way they want it, and with the ability to share it with their friends and family. The first part in this series will deal with the common approach to posting weekly bulletins; the PDF.
Continue reading “Content Delivery Strategy: Say No to PDFs”
In a previous article I talked about landing pages and how your church can use them. Some projects and campaigns require more breathing room, so perhaps a microsite is the solution. Here you can create a unique user experience, strengthen your church’s branding, and even drive traffic to your primary website… and of course fill seats in your church.
If you are trying to promote an event at your church, one great tool for this is a landing page. If done correctly, they focus visitors on a much narrower scope and nudge them toward a single decision more quickly. But what exactly is a landing page, and how can my church use them? Read on my loyal reader while I hopefully answers all these questions and more!
Continue reading “Landing Pages and Your Church”
Many churches, record their sermons to post online; both in video and audio formats. Yet I have found few churches that try to integrate their worship into their websites. Worship is an important part of your typical Sunday service, so here are 4 steps to integrate it into your church’s online experience.
Continue reading “4 Steps to Integrate Worship on your Church Website”
If you already have a church website, please do not read my posts and decide to completely re-make your site. There are few good reasons to create a completely new website. Instead, make incremental changes that will add value as you go along. Regardless of your stance on the subject of human evolution, you definitely want to believe in website evolution!
In recent months I have had the unfortunate opportunity to speak with churches that are between pastors. It is tough to watch them advance the Kingdom so slowly and cautiously. Many of their ministries freeze, including anything dealing with the web. If you are a church elder, or committee leader in your church; fret not. I will give you a few tips to keep advancing your online presence and continue to get people from clicking on your site to sitting in your seats.
