Speaker 0 00:00:00 Your website is the front door to your church. Nearly everybody that ever comes to your church will have been on your website before they visit for the first time, and some people that have been on your website won't visit for the first time in this conversation today, we're gonna unpack seven tips to help your church get more visitors and visits from your church website. We hope this conversation helps you reach more people and grow. You're listening to The Reach Right podcast, the show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way. Hosted by me, Thomas Costello, and with me as always, is my co-host, Ian Hyatt. We're here to help your church see more visitors and grow,
Speaker 2 00:00:53 Get ready to get
Speaker 0 00:00:59 Well. Hey guys, welcome to the Reach right podcast. I'm your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my co-host
Speaker 4 00:01:05 Ian Hyatt. What's up, Thomas?
Speaker 0 00:01:07 Hey, not much, man. We got a good topic today, seven church website tips to help you boost the number of visits you see and grow. Uh, so I think it should be a good conversation for our audience. You and I, we eat, breathe, and sleep. This, we've been doing church websites since, uh, gosh, don't wanna date ourselves, but 2006, 2007, we've been helping churches with websites. Yeah. Uh, so nearly so crazy to think
Speaker 4 00:01:32 A lot has changed.
Speaker 0 00:01:33 <laugh>. Yeah. We've been doing it in, in three different decades, let's put it that way. We've been doing, uh, in the s the teens, and then now in the 2020s we've been doing church websites. So yes, a lot has changed. Some things remain the same. I don't know, I think most of the things we're gonna talk about today have been kind of constants, but we've have new emphasis on this kind of stuff, I think. Right. So, uh, but again, the reason for this conversation is that this is the first impression that nearly everybody will have of your church. Yeah. They will be on your website before they walk in the doors for the first time. Mm-hmm. Andy Stanley. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, he has this, uh, this thing that they use at, at their church that they, they talk about the, the foyer, the living room, and then the kitchen.
Speaker 0 00:02:17 Yeah. And like you got get people deeper into your, your house. That's where the closest relationship happens. So when you welcome people in the foyer, it's casual and friendly, and anybody comes there. The living room is kind of closer friends, but people that stand around in your kitchen and talk about life and challenges. Yeah. That's the deepest level. Yeah. I would say that the website is the foyer, the website. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> is now the place where you have those casual relationships. People get to know you a little bit. They listen to you online. So, uh, if you don't have this, you have no front door to your church anymore. Yeah. And so obviously people know this, people know that you have to have a website if you have a church. Yeah. There's still a few stragglers out there that say things. Things, yeah. Like I just have a Facebook page or Yeah, I use Instagram. That's, that's all good, but it doesn't replace a website for your church. Right. So I, I imagine ever, our audience probably knows they need a website already. The question is like, what do I do to make it more effective? And we want to try and tackle seven tips today that would help churches and leaders, uh, that we'd help us to, to make our websites more effective that way. Yeah. So, um, sound good?
Speaker 4 00:03:24 That sounds awesome.
Speaker 0 00:03:25 Awesome. I'll ta I'll kick it off. Is the first step, and this might seem strange to put first, but this is, we've learned this is really important, is you have to optimize your website for speed. Yeah. Um, your website needs to be speed optimized. So, uh, a little kind of how the, how the cheese is made a little insight, uh, into what we're doing here at Reach Right. Is we have invested heavily into optimizing our website to be faster. Uh, and we, that's been like our primary focus of the last three or four months Yeah. Is that we have people that are devoted like 20 hours a week just to speed optimization and, uh, really working hard on getting our website to load faster and mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, there's lots of reasons for that. Um, you know, you could say things like, it's a better experience for users, which is true if it loads.
Speaker 0 00:04:10 Yeah, yeah. And, and I'm talking about my, what seems like minutiae here, right? Yeah. Like, so it's the difference between something loading in 0.3 seconds and 0.1 second, like, this is the kind of stuff that we're working on. And the reason for this is because Google has told us, and not by us, I mean the world they've told everybody Yeah, yeah, yeah. That they value in their ranking factors, they value speed very highly. Yeah. Uh, and this is especially important for mobile browsing, which is up to about 70% of all browsing is now on mobile devices. So Google says speed is important on mobile devices. 70% of your traffic is from mobile devices. It really makes sense if you want to be found. You want Google to show your content. Yeah. It makes sense that you optimize for speed. Uh, so now here we have an organization where we see, oh, I think my last count, like 60 to 70,000 visits a month. Uh, so we have a lot of traffic on our website here. Uh, so for us, it really makes sense to invest in this. But even for a church, let's say you have a, a couple of thousand people visiting your site every month. Well, if you want your content to be found, speed is of the utmost importance to get that right there. So what do you have to add to that, Ian?
Speaker 4 00:05:25 Not much. I mean, I, I talk to churches of course, day in and day out about how important that is. And I, and I don't think it's something that a lot of pastors and ministry leaders or people are focused on enough. Um, and that's what it, you know, we emphasize with having quality hosting too. I'll just add that in. A lot of that has to do with quality hosting and not playing it too cheap, um, when it comes to that. Um, so it's not just, you know, uh, about, you know, your site being up and running. It needs to be up and running quickly. So, uh,
Speaker 0 00:05:54 Yeah. Let me, let me, yeah, let me chime in. I guess with that, I guess a little thing, you're dead right about quality hosting because not all hosts are the same. No. Um, there are ones that are much, much worse than others. I would recommend. We don't have any sponsorship or anything for Yeah. Any hosts or anything, but I would highly recommend CloudFlare. Um, that's a system you can use to handle, I don't wanna get too technical in this conversation either, but basically, uh, it handles taking someone, putting in your url, so my church.com, it handles how quickly it starts serving up your content. Uh, that's what CloudFlare does. It kind of reduces that. So we use that. Um, we pay a little bit of money for it, but there's all kinds of free ones that will save you buckets of time. Uh, I will say this too, I am seeing, and we have participated in this, a trend away from lots and lots of giant images in some cases when you have good content.
Speaker 0 00:06:46 Yeah. So for us, for instance, we write, uh, blog posts that are 2000 words of really high quality content. We have really great writers on our reach write team here. Uh, and I will say that we actually, um, we have moved away from having lots and lots of, uh, needless images on there. You need some imagery. Imagery is still important, great photography. But I guess what I'm saying is I would rather have one or two highly optimized great images than trying to stuff in nine images on every single page of our site there. So just kind of a trend that we're seeing. And I think you'll see that if you take a look at the landscape of churches and just websites out there in general.
Speaker 4 00:07:25 Yeah. No, that's good. That's good. Well, the next one I'm excited about, I'll cover here, which is clarify your intended audience and purpose. What is the purpose of your website? Will you just hit the nail on the head? Number one, we believe, we believe immensely, it should be focused on helping you convert someone into a first time visitor. So it needs to be focused on who you are trying to reach. Um, and um, it's funny, I, you know, I, I would think so many churches would just know that by now, I just spoke with a very large, uh, successful church today that, uh mm-hmm. <affirmative> that is growing and, and they're doing a great job of ministry. And even now in 2023, their website was just more internal. It was totally focused on, uh, and they said it put it to me plainly, they just said, we have a lot of baby boomers and this is what they want on the website.
Speaker 4 00:08:19 This is, and it is, it is directed towards them. And, uh, we really got to dig in deep and help them kind of see the light that, hey, that needs to, not that we're leaving, uh, boomers in the dust and, and they should be able to utilize the site, but it should be more about who you're trying to reach and not who you have. Um, and, but it also takes some thinking about who are you trying to reach, you know, in your community mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, demographics, where are you located? Um, you know, who, who's missing in your church that you want to go after? So there's a lot of thought that goes into this, but I think that the thing that, uh, we wanna make clear is just that it, number one, needs to be focused on the person who has not yet come to your church. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:09:00 It absolutely does. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a, it's, it is shocking to me to hear that there are still people that don't quite get that. And I, I, I think, here's the way I think about it. Like cuz we do want something that is useful for our members, obviously. Yeah. It's not that we're doing it to the detriment of our members. Right. But I have found that when, when members see a site that is outward focused, that talks about the life change that happens in people when they start coming to this church and, and kind of tells those stories and engages with the unchurched man, I think that that really gets exciting for members. You know, that's something that, again, I'm not saying, you know, delete all your forms to sign up for camp and that kind of stuff. You can still have all those things.
Speaker 0 00:09:38 Yeah. But that can't be your main image on your homepage is, hey, camp, sign up. If it's only targeting, you know, like 3% of your church that are eligible to go to junior high camp, like that's not a good thing to be the main image on your website. Instead, you need something that is much more broad in its appeal Yeah. And is something that really anybody can engage with. So I think you're dead right. To your point about how you do this kind of stuff, I think it is through the photography, the imagery, the videos that you use. Yeah. People will always find an affinity and an attraction towards people that they can relate to or they feel Yep. You know, I could be friends with a person like that, or they seem just like other people that are in my community already. Yeah. So you wanna make sure you're kind of telling those stories with the photography and those things that you choose for the site. Which brings us to our
Speaker 4 00:10:25 Next one. Yes. Yeah, I was gonna say, you're getting onto, it's good, it's
Speaker 0 00:10:28 Good. Number three is make your website visually appealing. So yeah, it kind of runs, you may feel this is in contrast to what I said in number one, which is where I said, you can move away from having nine or 15 images or having sliders of people, that kind of stuff. I, I'm not against that. Certainly on the homepage. I think that's important. Um, you want to have lots of imagery on there. Now we never recommend having a slider of like, events. Right. That's, again, that's another one of those internal external things, right? Yep. Yep. Here's a sad reality is that people that aren't a part of your church don't really care about your church events. Yeah. They, they, they don't really care. I mean, you may want them to come to your church events, but that is not something that they really care about.
Speaker 0 00:11:07 Now, a slider or a video background or those kinds of things of people caught in the act doing the values of your ministry, that is something that people that aren't a part of your church yet really care about. Yeah. They wanna see people that look like them, that they can relate to. So, um, this, this obviously should go without saying, but your website is a reflection of the quality of the ministry that takes place at your church. Yeah. And so you need to make it something that's visually appealing the same way it would be embarrassing to have weeds growing Right. In your entryway and <laugh>, uh, trash all over the place. You ought to pick that up if that's there. Yeah. The same thing goes for your website. If it's ugly and doesn't make a good first impression, people are gonna say, nah, what else is there available for me in my community before they ever show up there? So yeah. Yeah. Obviously make it, it appealing. The way you do that is with graphics and video in most cases. But I will also say that like choosing the right fonts, choosing your color palette wisely, and not just being willy-nilly with those kinds of things, but actually staying on brand. All of those things kind of really build into making it visually appealing. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:12:10 It's funny, uh, you covered a lot. I was about to mention some of the branding and the graphics and you and I, again, we mentioned at the beginning of this, uh, we, uh, dated ourselves a bit. You know, this is hashtag, this is forties. Uh, but basically when we first saw, uh, I, I would say back in 2007, between then and 2010 and a little bit later, websites were like too visually appealing. Meaning it was a, it was flash flash pastors walking out onto the screen and golden pillars and all sorts of intros and all of that. And, and, and there was a time where it was all about the visual appear, uh, appeal and the flash and the wowing of people when they c come to your website. And we've since then, you know, have transitioned to more of a strategic approach, a little more, uh, you know, authentic approach I would say. And so, but because we've seen these shifts and these trends, it's still, it's good to come back. You never want an ugly website. So it's still, you still want it to be visually appealing. It's just a little different now. So I'm glad you mentioned the photos, the videos and all of that, so Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:13:16 Yeah, that's exactly it. So
Speaker 4 00:13:17 Good. Next one is invest in, in church website security. Um, kind of sounds a little, I guess, huh, but it, it, but I think what this boils down to Thomas, and you'll, you'll clarify and correct me if I'm wrong, is just that we mentioned quality hosting at the beginning. We mentioned that, um, you know, we, and of course GI online giving is so prevalent now. Um, I, I know my church no exaggeration, uh, 90% of our giving is online. Uh, so we, wow. Uh, we, we mentioned that on Sundays, cuz it's, that is where we have come to a place, not every church is there. We did see since the pandemic that over half of all giving in, uh, America, uh, through with churches was, uh, online. So over, we've gone to pass the halfway point. So we're not just talking about that, but because there's online giving because of, uh, the need for, uh, SEO and your site to rank well and to beat load fast, like we talk about, you wanna make sure it's secure mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, and there's, and also Google, um, will flag, uh, a church website if they see that it's not su secure or the SSL certificate is, is, uh, is out of date. So there's a lot of things, it's still very important. I think it can be overlooked, right?
Speaker 0 00:14:33 Yeah. Oh, it's overlooked all the time. I see websites all the time, <laugh> that I get onto, um, you know, it's getting to a place where it, any quality host now should offer like, really as part of their package and SSL certificate. And so just to not get too technical on this, yeah. You know how when you get on a website, you'll have like that little lock on the top left? Yep. Um, like in your browser. I'm thinking about it in Chrome. I think it does the same thing in Safari or in Microsoft Edge, but there's like a little lock, uh, picture. That's their way of saying that this is a secure website, that it's proven by, by the browser standards and Google standards that this is secure. Yeah. And that means that if you put your information into a form on this site, you can trust that it's only going to this one place and it doesn't, people can't from the outside take that information and, uh, take it from them or like, it's, it's, it's basically encrypted so they cannot grab that.
Speaker 0 00:15:29 Yeah. So I, I care about that. That's something that I care about. Yeah. I care just as much about the fact that like you were saying, Google says that if you don't do this, we won't show your results anymore. Yeah. We'll basically it's as if you don't exist <laugh>. Yeah. If you don't have a secure website now. So, um, if you see that little red lock and it's looks unlocked, that means that you're not, um, if you see in your address where it says http, it should have http s uh, bef, uh, at the very front of that there. Yeah. So that's basically some of the indicators of that. But, uh, the remedy to this is just you need to go through, there are some steps to make it happen, but any quality website provider, we certainly do, but any quality website of writer out there should be able to help you navigate that and get you a secure website that can handle people registering on forms or giving online mm-hmm. <affirmative>
Speaker 0 00:16:16 Doing those kinds of things. So if that isn't the case for you right now, pay special attention to that. There you go. Good. Okay. Uh, number six is, and this should be, I'm sorry, we're on number five, right? Yep. Yeah, we, we number five. Yeah. Yeah. You got number six. I got five. Yeah, that's right. Number five is focus on cr on search engine optimization. Yeah. Um, this is low hanging fruit for churches, if I'm being really honest. There's lots and lots of opportunity to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you take search engine optimization seriously. Now, I will say this, um, search engine optimization. When people think about what search engine optimization is, people think that it is a hyper-technical coding thing that you need to do on your website that, uh, somehow takes what you've already done and makes it show up to everybody.
Speaker 0 00:17:07 Yeah. And often we think that if I do seo, then my homepage for First Baptist Church of, uh, Waxahachie or something like that, that that would wind up showing up at the top if I just do seo, right. If when someone searches for is Jesus real, then my church website will show up. No, that's not how it works. Yeah. Searches, uh, search web, uh, engine optimization has become so sophisticated now that really what it comes down to is it, you do need to focus on it for your homepage. Yeah. Primarily what you want your homepage to rank for is people putting in the name of your church. So Real Life church Austin or whatever it would be. Yeah. These might be real churches, I'm sure they are, are Yeah. <laugh>. But, uh, there, there's, um, if someone puts that in, you wanna rank when someone searches for that.
Speaker 0 00:17:55 And then also when people, you want your homepage or other pages to rank for people when they, they search for churches in and then your city or churches near me. And so that's more what we would call local seo. Yeah. Uh, so ramp ranking in that map pack when someone first gets onto Google there Yeah. And puts in a search like that, like churches near me or churches in someplace. That's how you would rank in those things there. What it isn't though, is try as you might, it will be basically impossible for you to rank for other spiritual keywords. Like, like, um, is tithing biblical. Right? There's no reason why your homepage should rank for that, because when someone gets onto your homepage, that's not the best answer to that user question there. Yeah. So really search engine optimization is about getting your homepage to rank again for your name or your church and your city when people are looking for churches in your area. And then your content pages. So think like your sermon pages, your blog pages, those are there to rank for some of those more appropriate spiritual question key terms. Yeah. Should I tithe, um, what happens, uh, how often should I pray? Or people that ask these kinds of questions, you can make great content around that that actually gets to rank for those things, but don't ever think that your church will rank for those kinds of terms.
Speaker 4 00:19:16 Yeah. No, that's good. That's good. Well, this next one I'll grab, which I think, you know, we should have mentioned this. Maybe we were just saying before the podcast, man, this one maybe we should have had at the very beginning write up there, uh, that's create engaging content. Um, the saying in the web world that still holds true, that goes way back is that content is king. All right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, and this is, uh, uh, another way to think of this as information on your website, but it is not just text. It is, it is photos, it's video. Um, and, and it is still text. But, uh, when we say engaging content, I think a lot of, you know, folks when they, when they're going into developing a website, uh, there's all the, the, the, the usual stuff that comes to mind first. Of course, you gotta have service times.
Speaker 4 00:20:02 You're gonna have, you know, you're gonna have your mission and vision statement as a church, you're gonna have beliefs and all of that. And, and I think a what a lot of churches and and businesses alike fail to do is, okay, th those are, that is standard content we need, but what's really engaging, what is going to help target, uh, first time visitors at a church or target someone to take that next step with your organization? And that is engaging content. There is content that we know people are looking for on websites, and there's content that we know that they're not looking for. And I think that is something you really want to think through and make sure you carry out.
Speaker 0 00:20:39 Yeah. Uh, I, I wish I could make this, um, like a numbers one through six if I was writing a list of seven tips. Yeah. Like, it should all be one through six should all be create engaging content, right? Like that's, that's really how important this is. Yeah. Um, you know, I like for real, like, so we e every website, you could break it into two parts if you wanted to. So there's like the brochure part, which is homepage about page ministries, page giving page, that kind of stuff that you normally have on a site. And then there are the the fresh content sections. Yeah. The new stuff that you're making, that you're making. So that's usually things like sermons, blog post events. Yeah. Yeah. That's what those things are, right? And so, um, you are already doing, you're certainly already doing sermons, right. If you're right.
Speaker 0 00:21:23 If you're pastoring a church, you, you preach sermons. Yeah. So almost every church I talk to now is recording their sermons. Almost every church is doing it in video format Right. Of differing qualities. But almost everybody's doing that already. Yep. So the, the real, the real secret sauce here, like the way I think that you can reach more people is by really focusing and investing in making this content. And really a lot of times it's repurposing content that you're already making. Yeah. Like you're already preaching a sermon. You might, why not record it? Why not take that recording and also break it into some bite size chunks, maybe a few parts that will be good on YouTube shorts or on TikTok Yeah. That are 90 or Yeah. That are 38 seconds and why not do nine minute ones that will be good on YouTube and Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:22:10 Do some of those kinds of things. So, um, I I have been floored what I've been learning, and I know this for our organization at Reach right here, we have four people on our staff that are dedicated to just content creation. Right. Like, so that's what, and even like when I talk to some of the megachurches and really large churches out there, their content teams, when you include people that are like doing, doing the filming and writing social media posts and writing content and updating websites. Yeah. Like even for like mid-size, like, like a church of 2000, I would expect now for them to have two or three people Yeah. That work full-time in just creating content. I talked to a church this last week of 7,000 people. They have 19 people that are on their content team. 19 people Yeah. That full-time work on making content.
Speaker 0 00:23:02 I think that like if you're coming from the old way of doing church, like the way that we did church when I was in bible college, when I started in ministry, yeah. This is like mind blowing that you'd have this many people focused on what online ministry looks like, but I wanna just get this out here, is that content is king, your website rises and falls on content, but really everything online is that way. And so much interaction takes place online right now. You need to be investing in content creation. Uh, and I maybe that's a, a word that really just doesn't resonate, but having people take the things you're already doing and delivering it out there to other platforms, whether it be social media or your website or YouTube or whatever it is. But that is something that's worth investment now. So I know I'm long-winded with that, but it's,
Speaker 4 00:23:49 It is, it really, it should
Speaker 0 00:23:51 Be one through six. This is so important.
Speaker 4 00:23:52 We'll have a whole, uh, podcast dedicated to that very, uh, <laugh> item there next time. Right. Or sometime down the road. But, uh, uh, absolutely Thomas, well last but not least keep your website up to date, right? Is that you have that one I stole it from I
Speaker 0 00:24:06 Do. But you you said it. That's fine. Maintain your website, keep it up to date. Yeah. Uh, this one, it kind of goes along with content, right? So it's, uh, if your website is not getting fresh content, uh, it's uh, you know, old events are the only things that are on your calendar. Yeah. You don't put new sermons on there. This is all back to content. Again, this is what this is, but it is kind of about that bitter taste of the leave in people's mouth. Again, this is a another, um, another example of kind of the, the weeds growing in the front of your church there and Yeah. Uh, trash in front of your doorstep if you, if you just kinda let things go and don't pay attention to it, you know, you're gonna have a website that's not really helpful and actually winds up turning people away from your church Yep. As opposed to turning them onto your church there. So Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't that that's exactly right. You need to make sure you keep your website up to date.
Speaker 4 00:24:52 Yeah. And we get it. You know, we know that, uh, if you're not a a, a large church paying someone on staff to, and this is a part of their role, you know, we know volunteers come and go and sometimes someone could be faithful at updating your sermons and your events and then they leave and all of that. But it is worth making sure you stay on top of that. And it's worth finding that at least one person that, that can champion that and be faithful. So I still come across so many church websites that are, that are out of date and, um, you know, I'm still seeing some with, here we are, uh, January of 2023 when we're recording this. Still a lot of Christmas events on homepages that I'm seeing. So it's time to get that off <laugh>. It is. Take your, the lights down and then take your Christmas events off, uh, the homepage. That's good. So yeah.
Speaker 0 00:25:39 Good, good. Well, I hope this has been helpful. Again, this is the front door to your church. There's no other way to put it. This is something that almost everybody's gonna see before they walk in the doors for the first time and they will decide whether they will walk in your doors for the first time or not based on what they see here. Yep. That being said, like it's even bigger than that. Now. This is the place where a lot of people will encounter Jesus. They'll be watching you online and, uh, we hear testimonies of people giving their lives to the Lord in an online setting now. And so I, well, I know that's not something as the primary focus for every church, right? This needs to be something that you invest in and put attention to because your website is your front door. So if this has been helpful to you, it would mean a lot to us. If you would rate, review, subscribe, do all those things for us. Uh, if you have any other tips or have any questions about how to make your website more effective, let us know in the comments down below. We try to answer every single comment that comes in. So drop us a line on that. We'll be sure to give back to you. And, uh, thanks for being a part of the Reach right family, and we hope to catch you next week.
Speaker 4 00:26:37 See ya.
Speaker 0 00:26:40 Thanks for listening to the Reach Right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way. Looking for more resources for your church, check us out
[email protected]. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us if you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week
Speaker 2 00:27:09 To.
