We often think of our church website with only one goal in mind: Communicating Information. The thing is, your church website is so much more than that. Your church website is your audience’s front door to your church, their first impression of you before they consider visiting you in-person, and your first attempt to woo them. If the world lives and dies online by Google, and Google states that more than 83% of your audience will search you out online before visiting in person, then getting found first, fast, and properly is paramount to our online and in-person success.
Think about the approach to your church website like you would a first date.
- We want to make a good first impression.
- Say the things we want to say.
- Present the best us possible.
We’re not trying to woo them with a flashy meal or this deep knowledge about something completely unrelatable. What we are trying to do is be the real us in every way. But you know what else we’re trying to do? We’re trying to listen to the person sitting across the table from us. We want to get to know their needs and desires, hopes and dreams, and see if there is chemistry between us.
If there’s a spark, a point of connection, well, then there’s hope for a second date.
That’s what we’re looking for in a church website, not just what brought you to the website for the first time, but what motivated you to come back. It’s this motivation that we want to focus on and see how we can best approach your church website in a new year. To make this simple and easy to remember, I want to break down the motivations found in three approaches: Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary. These three approaches will help us engage our audience throughout our websites and make a real connection with them along the way.
Your Primary Approach
How you communicate your time and location, and what to expect from each service and venue is your church’s primary approach online. In the primary approach, there is a lot of information communication, but not a lot for people to latch onto. A person’s motivation in this approach is pretty simple: they are just looking for a place to be safe. That’s it. Somewhere where they can show up, be present, listen, learn, and if we’re lucky, engage with others.
Your Secondary Approach
How you communicate your values, ministries, beliefs, mission, and vision are all a part of your secondary approach online. A person’s motivation in this approach is deeper than the primary approach, where instead of just wanting to be safe, they want to be safe and seen. This person is looking for people and ministries that they could latch onto, and someone that looks like them in the audience. You can think about this in terms of the ministries you present online and platform on a weekend service.
Your Tertiary Approach
How you communicate the things that set you apart, your unique framework, the “real you” as some would say; that’s the tertiary approach. In this third approach, what we’re really looking at are our affinities: the things that we can offer that no one else can touch. While these things may look like the same things on the surface as other churches, they are unique to only you, and people are adept to pick up on the authentic. A person’s motivation in this approach is to be safe, seen, and have a space to belong. We’re all looking for a place to belong, and in this approach, we are providing unique offerings that only we can provide, for those who are looking for them according to their motivations and own unique identity.
You have two jobs: provide and pray.
Think about it this way: every church is a single meal at God’s grand buffet. It’s our job to provide a meal, but it’s the person’s job to eat. We’ve just got to focus on the food and make it the best way we know how, and then step back and let them enjoy it. The hard part here is that we want to make sure we hold someone’s hand along the way until they make a decision. But we’ve all been out to eat and had a bad experience. We don’t really want to share that or broadcast it wide and far. We just want to finish the bite and move on. We need to do two things here: let them eat, and let them choose. If they want what we’re serving, then great. If not, then it’s a good thing there are a lot of other meals at the table for them to choose from.
As you’re evaluating your web presence this new year, take into account these three approaches, your two jobs, and then do your best to create the best possible meal for your online audience to enjoy. When you’ve done that, you’ve only got one more thing to do: pray. Pray they find safety in a church that they can one day call home. Pray they are seen in a church that knows their name. And pray they find a space to belong, so they can help others feel safe and seen too.
By Russ Cantu | Published January 4, 2024