Are you effectively using your web site? Can you find your church when searching the internet? Are you using the search engines (Google, Yahoo etc) to market your church effectively?
Who is your web site for?
Is your site geared toward your congregation? Or are you effectively using your web site to draw new visitors.
Who can find your church? There are millions of web sites, how can yours be found? Search Google, or Yahoo for churches in your area. Do you see your site?
The Importance of your church being found on line. It is important to effectively use the internet to enhance your ministry. You must market you church on the internet. What is most essential is that people can find your church when they use a search engine such as Google. Make sure your church appears on the page when people search for churches in your area. Your goal should be to make sure people see your church in the search results, click on it, arrive on your site, feel welcome, and highly consider visiting your church because of what they experience on your site. In many cases, the first step to assimilating people in your church is when they visit your web site...if they find it.
It's working for other churches. Surprisingly, there are very few churches that are really using the internet effectively. But the ones that are advertising online are getting results. Use the internet for effective church assimilation.
Here's what one pastor in San Diego said about advertising on the internet:
This last week we received 52 clicks. (There were 8,500 "impressions," which
is the number of times the ad appeared in peoples' searches. Even that,
though you don't pay for that, it's good, because at least the ad is seen by
that many people, so it's free exposure.) We have had the chance to test
this a little, because our ad was down for a few weeks. During that time the
number of people who checked "Internet" on their visitors' cards in response
to "How did you hear about our church?" reduced dramatically.
I'd guess we average about 8 visitors a week. Of those, over half indicate
they found us on the web.