There are two big critical things every church communications manager needs to be concerned with regarding the church website.
The first is being mobile-friendly, and the second is even more important: defining the conversion event(s) you are driving towards on your site.
Have you strategically planned what the conversion event is for your site? For your home page? For interior pages? For blog posts?
Without doing that first, you are wasting your time and energy to simply becoming the background noise in the daily life of the typical visitor.
What types of conversions should you be planning?
What about sign ups for a 7-day devotional on any of a variety of topics that would resonate with someone searching for a new church experience? What if you offered a list of top 10 Life Verses and a brief exposition of each as a simple PDF download? How about a tour of the top 10 most popular sermons in your message archive?
Are you monitoring your bounce rates? Are you keeping tabs on your average traffic conversion rate?
WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DON’T PLAN
Without setting up an interim finish line(s) which people can cross (sign up for), your site copy and content flow won’t have an effective funnel effect.
If you don’t drive toward conversions, you’re effectively letting the majority of visitors who do visit your site to simply drive by and disappear.
You don’t know who they are.
You have no way of following-up.
You can’t nurture any potential church visitor with conversation.
All that you have worked hard for simply walks away.
WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DO PLAN
When you start with planning out a conversation tactic or content lead magnet, you’re able to be more focused with your on-page content.
You’ll end up giving visitors a more intuitive flow and sequence of messaging.
You’ll capture more leads and be able to nurture them to the point of them making plans to visit your church or signing up for a program, activity or event.
Today I’ve pointed out the most important content marketing objective you need to plan for regarding your church website. Do you have any strategic content lead magnets already in place? What are they?
I would love to see examples of what you are doing on your website. Share them with me on Twitter or in a comment below so others can learn.
