Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Elevation church pastored by Steven Furtick is one of the most popular churches in the country and even the world. And one of the reasons for that is that they do such a fantastic job with everything digital, from their app to their website. They are just killing it. And in today's episode, we talk about some of the things that we love about elevation church and their website and their app. We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow. This is the reach right podcast. You're listening to the retried 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 cohost Ian Hyatt. We're here to help your church see more visitors and grow.
Speaker 2 00:00:59 I'm ready to get.
Speaker 0 00:01:04 Hey guys, welcome to the read-write podcast. Episode number 88. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my co-host
Speaker 3 00:01:12 Ian Hyatt. What's up Thomas.
Speaker 0 00:01:15 Hey, not too much, man. Excited to tackle this conversation today. One of the things that we hear all the time is in the web design world, because that's how we got our start and retried. As we were at a web design company, first and foremost, we still do that is people will come to us wanting a new website. And what do they say? And
Speaker 3 00:01:36 Can you guys do a website like elevation? We really love elevation's website. Let me send it to you.
Speaker 0 00:01:43 Yeah, absolutely. Will you, can we get a website like elevation churches website? Uh, it is a, a great website. Uh, we love it. There's a reason why
Speaker 3 00:01:54 You know that even though we chuckle every time, cause we hear it all the time. So to us, it's different. We do
Speaker 0 00:01:58 Well, I think at least a couple of times a week, probably someone will say we want to do elevation church's website. We love what they do there. And we do too. We do too. Now. Um, today's episode, we're going to be talking about what we love about elevation church's website. Um, they, they do a great job. Uh, they're one of the best churches when it comes to their digital approach to ministry. Uh, they are killer at that. Uh, there are many things on there and the website, just so everybody knows is elevation church.org. That's where they are. If you want to check it out while we're, while you're listening to this, uh, feel free to do something like that. Uh, it's really good to be talking to mostly about their website, a little bit about their app, but they are fantastic when it comes to their overall digital approach to ministry.
Speaker 0 00:02:44 Um, they are able to do that because they have a budget that's a little bit bigger than most churches. I would say when it comes to these things, because honestly we have to break people's heart. When they say we want to have exactly elevation churches, websites, we have to tell them, well, you need to hire seven full-time developers to be working on staff. And it's going to cost you about half a million dollars a year to do something like that. So are you guys ready for that kind of investment? The answer is no, except for, you know, maybe four churches in the country are able to do something like that. So, um, so all that to say, we want it today in this episode, be able to pull out some of the things that I think are fantastic, that a lot of churches can do at least some version of it that would actually be useful for them within a normal church's budget.
Speaker 0 00:03:32 That is not hundreds of thousands of dollars every year towards your web development and app budgets and those kinds of things there. So, um, so, uh, it, it is, it is a really a good, a good conversation to have because we do hear this all the time. So I'll go ahead and kick us off though. Uh, the, the first thing that we love about elevation and church's website is just the overall design and functionality of the site. I think the look and feel, uh, this has always been something they've been good at now. They are kind of trailblazers in the way that they design their site with kind of these, um, where everything was going to these wide approaches. And I'm actually personally not a big fan of this. They have more of a narrow approach to their design when you're on a, on a desktop computer.
Speaker 0 00:04:17 So I'm pulling it up as I'm talking to everybody here. So it is a narrow approach. The reason for that is because they recognize that most of their audience is on a phone, right? I think most churches need to know that is that most of your website traffic is going to be on a phone or a mobile device. So be aware of that and what it looks like on a big screen. It doesn't really matter as much as what it looks like on a phone. You should do a mobile first approach to the way you design your website there. Right? I do love the way that they design things in a very, uh, simple, clean, uh, graphic first and video first kind of an approach. And one of the things I've always loved about it is that their color is this. They have this orange logo, it's pretty recognizable.
Speaker 0 00:05:01 I know it when I see it, it's that bright orange, it's got a little kind of triangle pointing opera Chevron, I guess you'd say. And they find ways to sneak in that orange all over on the site. So I don't know if it's just people caught wearing a, uh, an elevation t-shirt or they have a little orange pan or something that they clue in on, but almost every image on the side, if you go through it, they have some little orange accent that reinforces the look, all the pictures have kind of this orange friendly filter put on to them that really makes that stuff pop. So design wise, they do a great job. And I think a lot of churches could learn and do something like that. Um, so I, I think they do good with that.
Speaker 3 00:05:41 Yeah, no, I agree. And, and it's, it's, it's pretty neat. Like you said, they trailblaze with this and they've, they kind of, they did their own thing. They went against the grain and, um, and, and so funny with that, we, we actually came up with a theme. Uh, that's somewhat similar to it. It's not, you know, we, we would never copy any site or anything like that, but just based upon the amount of requests, we have somewhat of a similar layout that we've used, but it is totally different than any other type of layout that we use.
Speaker 0 00:06:11 So what's the name of the theme? Which one is that? It's the,
Speaker 3 00:06:14 Hayford
Speaker 0 00:06:15 The hay for it. Okay. So we try to, we, we, with all of our website themes that we've made over the years here, we try, we give them names of, uh, great theologians or church leaders. Most of them deceased or passed away. Um, Steven Furtick is a little bit too young in the game. I think you get his own theme named after himself would have been the verdict theme of,
Speaker 3 00:06:35 I think the youngest was Billy Graham. Right. Almost. Uh, so, but
Speaker 0 00:06:43 The only one I think that's
Speaker 3 00:06:45 Right. Yeah. That's right. So that's good, but no, uh, definitely it, it is. I think even though we were jokingly saying, we hear about this site and we're calling, okay, again, you want something like elevation, but there's a reason why we're hearing that. And I think it, that, you know, we definitely have gleamed from it and there's a lot that we've taken away from it, uh, doing web design. And so I think everyone can, um, it's, it's, it's even if you don't do anything like it, there's a lot of, and we're going to keep going with that. As a matter of fact, I'll go ahead and cover the next one. One of the other cool things about the site is it has a very clear navigation, and this is something that is very vital. And as you mentioned, they went with a very mobile first approach.
Speaker 3 00:07:26 They know most people are browsing by way of smartphones and iPhones and, and so, you know, you need to have, and you even on a desktop, you need to have clear and simple navigation. Um, we've been seeing it for years. It's still prevalent out there, uh, with websites that not even just necessarily churches, the size of elevation, much smaller, just tend to have a really busy navigation, uh, with the, even the term, the way that each page in the navigation is termed. Um, and to be clear what we mean by navigation for people listening. This is, these are the links that people click on that usually are, uh, across the top of the website. Sometimes they can be on different areas of the website too, but usually they're. Um, but we've, we've seen that just churches and churches mean well with this. They want to communicate a lot of information about ministries and those things, but they've, you know, have all of these busy dropdown menus and for a large church, you know, one of the largest churches in the world, uh, they have done a very good job of making the navigation clear and simple.
Speaker 0 00:08:32 Yeah. We've been, uh, teaching churches for years and years now, since our founding, as a company, that if you want to have a mobile first approach, you need to move away from the dropdown menus and very few churches, the sites that we kind of, the ones we put out, we don't use dropdown menus unless the church really insists on it for some reason, but we do everything in our power to talk them out of that. Yeah. And, um, but most churches that come to us are using some kind of dropdown menu. Here's the deal elevation church is, has more ministries happening than your church does unless you're like one of three pastors in the country, they have more happening, uh, than, than yours does. If they can not use dropdown menus and get it all into their navigation, then you probably can too. Uh, so, um, there's a so simple it's here.
Speaker 0 00:09:23 I'll kind of just give our audience an idea of what it says. It's sermons locations about get involved store online, the online store, and then giving most of our, uh, most of our audience doesn't need to have a store page unless people really want to buy your swag, which almost certainly isn't the case. So really it's like, it's five items that they have it down to that you would need to have. Now there's, there's holes in that, that, you know, we, we usually have five or six. That's kind of the, the number we try to stay within sometimes seven, if we need to, but a super simple navigation. Now, one of the tools they use is on the very right hand side of their navigation, they have, what's called a hamburger navigation that highlights those few things again. So, uh, the store get involved, sermons, all those things.
Speaker 0 00:10:08 And then they go in a little bit deeper and have, uh, you know, some information on kids in groups and kind of serves almost like a footer does a place where you put some of that, but it is out of the way. And unless you really wanted to dig in and know more, you wouldn't get into that hamburger nav, which is those three lines that people see on the right-hand side there. So anyway, I'd love that. I think that this is something that they do really well. That's not an inexpensive thing. It's just that design decision that I think every church should be making. If you like elevation site, one of the things you almost certainly like about it is the fact that it is very clear and simple and it's navigation and you should be doing that too. Yep. Good, awesome. Next one up is that we really love their customized experience.
Speaker 0 00:10:52 Uh, and they do probably the best customized experience that I have ever seen on a church website before. So the first time you're on the site, I'm not going to see this on, on here, because I've clicked around their site a lot and I've made this decision, but the first time you're on the elevation church website, it asks you a question. It says, are you new here? Are you part of our EFM, which is their term for someone who is an online only member, or are you part of a church campus? Uh, one of other 24 actual campuses that are there and you choose which one of those three best describes you. And then the site totally gives them a different experience based on what that choice was. So, um, they understand that if somebody lives where I live in Honolulu, they're not going to be able to come out this Sunday at nine 30, uh, and come to a service, but they can be a part of their EFAB and they're trying to direct them that way. So they, they just give you a tailored and different experience. So I think this is something that is really brilliant. If you haven't had time, get in there and click around there, their, their map to look at their fam. This is just an incredible piece of programming that would cost no joke. This would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 3 00:12:04 Is this affordable
Speaker 0 00:12:05 Thomas? No, this particular part is a bit the map that they have on there. They have this map built where you can, um, identify anybody that is part of their . So the thousands of people all over the country that are online only members. I go to my island here on a wahoo in Hawaii, and I see dozens and dozens of people. And as I get onto this map and it says their first name and their last initial, and then a thing, and through the website, I can send them a message and say, Hey, I see your, one of your in my, my EFM here. It really is an amazing piece of programming. Now, most churches are gonna not gonna be able to do something like this, but I think they can give people a customized experience, especially on the new here versus current members approach to your site. Uh, we have been doing this for awhile, you know, Ian, that giving people a first time visitor page or a new here page that people can get onto and answer all of those questions that people have your visit for their first visit plan, your visit. Exactly. That kind of stuff. That's, that's the version that most churches could probably do have something like this. So I don't know. What do you think? Good idea to do that.
Speaker 3 00:13:15 Very good idea to do that for sure. Yeah. Make it as customized as possible. The next thing I would say is make it as personalized as possible. That's another thing that they do well, and these two things are a little bit differently. We've seen, you know, despite a lot of churches, best efforts for years, they end up making a website that is, it's more internal, uh, than it is external focused on the visitor. That's that that's there. And I don't think church has set out to do that. They're not going to say, well, some do, uh, I've come across some that may want to make it all about their members, but I think most go into it saying, yeah, we really want to, we want this website to, uh, reach new visitors. Uh, and, uh, and then unfortunately I think just sometimes churches have a hard time kind of putting themselves in the place of that person that knows nothing about their programs or knows nothing about their events, because we can't assume that people are going to be interested in, uh, our ministries at a church or our events when they don't even know who we are yet.
Speaker 3 00:14:17 Uh, and so, but we've seen that on at so many it's it's come to us, our programs attend an event. Um, instead what elevation does a really good job on, on their side is no matter kind of who you are, what you're going through in life. We have something that can, can help you. Uh, and, and, and it really, and I think a lot of that is just content. You don't have to have all of the bells and whistles. You don't have to have all of the bells and whistles on, like you said, five developers, uh, in a $500,000 budget, uh, for it. Um, but basically just making the, the information and the content visitor focused, trying to get into mind. And this is stuff we love. I would say, this is probably what we love, helping churches do the most, where me personally is getting in the mind of that visitor, that person that's maybe unsure about coming to a church at all, or connecting with the church or staying engaged online with the church at all, just getting in their mind and answering questions, reducing their apprehension and did their website elevation's website does a great job of that.
Speaker 0 00:15:21 Yeah. I think we talked about this a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, but just that if we've been pastoring a church for a long time, you kind of miss those fresh eyes that you need to really understand what a visitor's experience is like, and the same goes for your website. It really, you have to look at it, not through someone who's been who founded this church and has been at it for 15 years. Um, this is what my website should say. It needs to be like, what is my community? What is a person who's totally green and never been to our church before? What are they looking for on this website and try to personalize it for them. It's one of the biggest mistakes we see churches making though is building insider focused websites instead of outwardly focused websites, because the truth is there's really only two real things that members are coming onto your site for they're coming there for events and for sermons they're regularly that maybe they get on there to give, but in most cases, that's through some kind of a online giving app or something like that nowadays.
Speaker 0 00:16:19 So they could possibly give that way too. So for a visitor, all that's who all the other pages are for your about page and what you believe and introducing your staff and all of your ministry pages, as much as we like we wished they would, the youth of your church, aren't getting onto the youth ministry section three times a week, just to see if there's any updates on that section there, because there never are. And there's nothing really new to be putting on there, right? It is for people that are new to your church and it's fresh that way. So yeah, that's, uh, that's really important. And actually that leads me to the next one. Well, good. Uh, is that it's, they, we love the elevation church website and the way that they do fresh quality content all the time. It is a big undertaking, but it, anytime you get on and they're like, when this podcast goes live, we'll recording it on a Thursday.
Speaker 0 00:17:07 Yeah. It goes live usually on Tuesday mornings. Uh, it'll be different. So I can't tell you what's going to be on there, but when you get onto the homepage, there's going to be a video of the, the sermon. And usually it's the most animated moments of the sermon. So it's pastor Steven kind of doing this and getting everybody riled up and things in the service there. So that, that is what, um, that is what they have on the homepage every single week. And it's something that is engaging if you haven't been on the website before, or if you have, you were on there last week, it could be like a totally new experience. And what it does though, is it draws you in to say, you know what? I probably gotta listen to that, but that seems like that must've been exciting, whatever he was talking about there.
Speaker 0 00:17:48 Um, I want to take a look at that and see what that's about there. So they are constantly doing fresh quality content. We say it over and over again, but the content is king. You know, your website, you need to be making fresh, good, and new content for it all the time. And the great thing is that again, this is something that churches can do because you produce a well structured, well thought out, you invested a lot of time and a piece of content every single week in your sermon. That's something that all churches are doing. And so finding ways to repurpose that, to use it online, to use it for video content, I think is just really powerful. So yeah,
Speaker 3 00:18:28 I'm glad you didn't fall down when you jumped up like that. It fell down during the podcast, but, and not every pastor and you, weren't sick. You weren't saying this, you don't need to be as animated as Steven verdict or anything like that going to be no problem. They're not going to be right. And, uh, but at the same time, and, and you don't, again, have to have a crazy budget for this. And this could be as simple as let's make sure your, your sermon graphics, your sermon series graphics are, are up to date. You know, um, we've seen some really cool stuff, just a quick, you know, five minute word for the day, you know, devotional type thing, that video that is very easy to pull off, uh, for a pastor and, you know, make sure your welcome videos fresh. You know, if you have a welcome video, that's been there for, you know, five years.
Speaker 3 00:19:10 I know I have more gray now than I did five years ago. So, you know, you, you want to keep, uh, you want to keep things fresh. So now it doesn't have to be all that crazy dynamic content. Um, great. If you can pull that off, but just keeping your content fresh and that gives people a reason to come back to your web presence too. So in use it. Yup. Yup, absolutely. That's good. So, uh, next one would be, uh, accessible social media platforms and, and I liked that we use that key word accessible. Um, you know, that is we, we want to make sure that it is very whatever social media is right for you. And we've said this over and over again on our episodes that not, you don't have to do everything out there. It could be just two things. Well, Facebook and YouTube or something like that, or an Instagram, if we were to recommend three, we'd recommend those three to start with for most churches, but it could be different, but making that really accessible and making sure that, you know, you're doing a good job with content, they're keeping content fresh there, just like you would on your website.
Speaker 3 00:20:12 So do they do a great job of that too?
Speaker 0 00:20:16 They do. I think this is the one that'll be one of the most out of reach, surprisingly for most churches that are not pastored by Steven Furtick. Yeah. I think that they are really fantastic on social platforms. They are, uh, probably the most widely shared ministry on Instagram and some of these channels because they're so good at such an animated pastor. They do such good quality video. He, uh, he is the perfect, if this is your style of preaching that you love, but as far as like the preaching quote or, you know, nailing that little clip, he is one of the best ever at communicating in that fashion there. So I think this is going to be hard. So I don't know that. So I kind of my backdrop on this is that as a general rule, we don't want to push people off of your website and onto social platforms away from where you have control.
Speaker 0 00:21:12 It is better to pull people from social platforms onto your site, right? These guys are in a different class because they have such a huge following on all these social platforms and getting them to like, and subscribe on Instagram, on Facebook, on YouTube. They know that that is a really important metric for them. And it's pulling more people in the future back to their content again. So I think for them, it makes a lot of sense. I think that for most churches that should be clear links to your social platforms, a clear invitation to like, and subscribe, but never, um, Hey, leave the site now and spend most of your time on, on Instagram following us. Right. Cause we want them on our platform. This is where we have the most control and we've done other episodes kind of highlighting some of those differences there. So yeah, I think that the way that they do that for them, it really fantastic at it. Yeah. It's good. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:22:05 That's good. Here's there. So can we get the order wrong? So I think so. I don't know.
Speaker 0 00:22:13 I'll do a, I'll go ahead and do the next one. It's, uh, it's community. Uh, they do a really good job of building community on this site. And we talked a little bit about this, about, uh, it, it is so forward thinking, and again, I'm not here to make a theological judgment on this or not whether this is the right approach. Um, I am thrilled with the fact that, uh, people all over the world are hearing the gospel through this ministry that that does, uh, make me very happy. Uh, I have reservations on whether or not that fulfills our requirement of not neglecting our assembly together. I think that Christians need to have personal interaction. I think in the flesh is still really valuable. So again, this is not passing any kind of judgment, but I will say that I am amazed at the amount of community and connection that people feel that if I sign up to join the fam, I can get put onto that map and have conversations with people that are near me and what an amazing thing being like 5,000 miles away from this church and their headquarters that here in, in my island state of, uh, of an auto Oahu here that I can find community with people that are part of the same thing.
Speaker 0 00:23:26 If I was so inclined to do that, it is an amazing feat of technology. Uh, I don't know that again, this is one of those things. It's going to be hard for a lot of, um, more modestly budgeted to churches to pull off, but I do love the way that they make that happen on the site here. It really is cool. Yeah. You
Speaker 3 00:23:43 Showed me, there was a middle school, a party that my daughter could attend if she wanted to here in my neck of the woods, we looked at that, uh, on their website there. So that's, uh, it's just that we've never seen stuff like that before. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:23:56 Yeah. It's, it's, they're really running with the, kind of this idea of doing online. What online ministry looks like in there. I am thankful for them. They're kind of like the poison testers. They're kind of going out and in front of us and they're, they're seeing what's going to work. And my guess is that most of this, probably a lot of it won't work. Great. I imagine that what, this'll be a very outdated podcast episode in a few years because some of these things might be proven to not work well, but I have to admire the way that they're trying and giving an effort to some of this kind of stuff. So it really is cool. So on that map, like to build community talking about that. So they have individuals that are part of their family of people that are hosting watch parties. So people that get together and watch pastor Steven, or whoever's preaching that message on Sundays or some other time. And they have hundreds of those all over the country of people gathering to watch services together. And they have small groups that are happening all over the country. So it really is pretty amazing the way they've facilitated this online community. It's actually happening there.
Speaker 3 00:24:57 Yeah. Next one here I'll, I'll, I'll run with this one pastoral presence. Um, now again, not everyone's going to be a big personality type Steven Furtick type now, you know, and we get that. And we also know that, of course, in every church, it's not all about the pastor, but let's just face it there's been studies for years that, you know, I think it was about 88% of, uh, the reason that someone would come back to a church was the connection or end to end up joining the church is the connection they felt with the pastor. That was like an, uh, an old Lifeway study done years ago still holds true. Um, so definitely as the senior leader, they are going to hear from you more than anyone else. Um, they will, you're going to want that they're going to have to enjoy your preaching to, to stick around probably.
Speaker 3 00:25:45 Um, but, uh, so definitely make the, you know, the past I've, we've seen a lot of stuff. I've seen a lot of church websites and it was, um, kind of an act of, I mean, the intent was to be humble about it, but it ended up kind of being detrimental where the senior pastor puts themself at the very bottom of the staff page. Uh, and they, they start with the janitor and then they, they kind of, they, they go backwards and, and again, it's, uh, but at the same time, what, and again, probably from possibly having some humility, there was the goal, uh, a humble approach, but they forget that, you know, when churches do that, people want to, one of the most sought after areas on a church website we've seen is the staff area that, or a team, whatever you call it leadership, um, they do want to see the senior pastor and they want to know who they're going to be hearing from and connecting
Speaker 0 00:26:36 With. Yup. That's exactly right. And they do a good job of it. I mean, it's, I think they ride the line really well. Like, so it's not just big pictures of pastor Steven's mug all over the homepage, right. It's like, you'll get the ones of him. And again, he's very dynamic. So you see him kind of in his most animated moments of him preaching or whoever did the sermon right now, it's Richard Wilkerson who is on there. Cause I think he preached this last Sunday. So, uh, but it's not, I don't walk away feeling it's all about, this is like the pastor Steve and show and it's all about him. Um, at the same time, I definitely know who's leading the church and who's preaching most of the time. If you get in here, you'll see him a lot. Um, and so I think they do a good job of trying to find that right balance. So I think, I think that most churches can learn from this. That's not something that costs extra or they have to invest a lot in, but I think having ways that you can connect with people and introduce yourself and anything we can do to facilitate them making connection with you as a person, I think that goes a long way to their stickiness and their odds of coming and coming back again, this wasn't feeling some kind of connection with the pastor, so, yeah. That's good.
Speaker 0 00:27:51 Awesome. Did you have anything else? Awesome. Yeah, we'll go. I think we covered a good, so yeah, we'll wrap up with that then, if this has been helpful to you guys, uh, we hope it has. We hope you guys also are impressed by elevation church's website. If it has been helpful to you, we would love it. If you would rate, review, subscribe, uh, and become, uh, become a part of our reach, right. Family, do some of that interaction that we were talking about earlier, leave us a comment below. Uh, we're always looking for new ideas for shows. Um, and we get a lot of these sourced from our community here. So if you have an idea or a comment, drop it in there, if something you've always wondered about, uh, how to reach people, digital marketing, anything like that related to churches. We'd love to hear some of that. So, uh, leave that in the comments. Thanks so much for being a part of our retried family and we'll catch you next week. See ya. 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 online and reach right studios.com. 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.
