When I Became A Church Secret Shopper

Recently, I moved across the country to live in a new city. For the first time in a long time, I needed to search for a new church to belong to. Here’s my experience…

Clearly, my hunt for a new church began with a simple Google search - “churches in *city*” - followed by a click through of all the top links shown in the results.

I found that as I viewed the homepage of dozens of churches, I formed almost an instant opinion on whether I wanted to visit that church or at least look further through their website. It was almost a gut reaction to their website presentation that determined the answer to the question, “could this be the church for me?”

Sadly, no matter how ‘good’ the church might have been - super music, great preaches, welcoming atmosphere, appropriate demographics for my family, strong missional focus - I might have missed it all, for the sake of a poor website. Some research has found that it takes about 50 milliseconds (ms) (that's 0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they'll stay or leave.

If the purpose of your church is to reach new people and be impactful with your mission and message, how many hundreds or thousands are you missing if your website has poor design, out of date information or as I have found for many churches, is non-existent completely?

Having a great website shouldn’t be a choice - it is critically essential as a primary tool in reaching those who don’t yet belong to your church, and the first place a visitor will go to check you out before coming through your door.

I advise all churches to invest well in your online presence - if you are committed to your mission and calling, you can’t afford not to.

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