Sometimes we fear the outcomes of the checkups and tests, but they are necessary. While virtually every church wants to grow, many still don’t realize how important it is to evaluate their online presence continually. With the availability of countless ways to gather data online, you’ll discover what strategies are working, which ones aren’t, and even learn what your major problem areas are.
The truth is that all of the data is quite easy to collect if you sit down to analyze the evident results. You can make use of data gotten from evaluation to discover trends, learn more about what your members want, and how to grow your church faster.
As a pastor or church leader, you should be deliberate about knowing the state of your online church at every point in time to improve performance and help you achieve set goals.
Remember that when the loopholes are left to linger for so long, it gets more challenging to fill. Thus, it is just so important to keep tabs on your online church visibility and other activities at regular intervals. It is also imperative that you take action afterward, following through with the plan. But then, it all starts with asking the right questions.
It is why we have decided to share with you these five questions to help you evaluate your online church presence effectively.
How is your online church attendance like?
Your online church attendance is one of the most vivid ways to evaluate how good your online presence is. All you need to do is to get an accurate number of people who participate in your online meetings each week. How well are you putting your church service schedule out? Do people know the times of your services?
The key is to study the attendance data over a long while; you’re sure to get a more valid and trusted result when the data is large enough.
If your church offers live-streaming during services, you need to measure the views and engagement for a while. It applies whether you’re using your website, social media or a third-party platform like ChurchPad.
Churchpad is a management software designed for churches that provides unique tools you can take advantage of to grow your online church presence. It offers multiple features that ease your workload as a church leader. With Churchpad, you can develop the needed visibility online, maintain engagement with your online audience, which also contributes to building a better community.
To improve on your live stream, you should first focus on getting the right answers on these questions; How many people join your live streams? How long does each viewer stay connected? Why do you think they leave?
Concerning engagement, how many comments and reactions does your live-stream receive? Although this is only applicable if you have a way for viewers to reach out in real-time.
And if you offer later viewing, you need to measure how many people see the stream after it’s over. A critical analysis of these data would help you make the required adjustment to improve the stream experience for viewers.
How good is engagement on your social media channels?
All social media network offers analytics tools to help you collect data about your social media engagement. Check your analytics data on the social media platform to see which posts perform better. What type of posts do your users interact with most?
With a careful study of your analytics board, you can learn what types of posts are shared most often, which posts get the most comments and even see which posts have contributed to your social media following.
Get hold of social media analytics tools to help you monitor and track engagement as well as other relevant information on your social media pages.
How well do people engage with your blog?
Your church website blog is an invaluable tool for connecting to your members. However, you need to know if your blog posts are connecting with your audience. You need to measure the overall engagement with your posts and categorize each post by content type to see which types perform better. Also, you should gather data on where blog post visits originated, such as from search engines, email links, or social media posts.
Utilize this data to focus your efforts on creating better blog posts. Google Analytics is a popular option for measuring everything related to your blog and site. There are also many other blogging platforms and website tools to help you measure how your blog posts are performing.
How well do people visit your church website?
Your online church site is as important as your blog. Some new visitors, most often than not, research churches online. You want them to be able to easily find details about service times, church location, and more.
To make a proper evaluation and decide on where and how your site can improve, you want to measure your church’s website visits, along with other critical data such as direct traffic and bounce rate. Asides its use for your blog, Google Analytics can also be used to measure your church website performance. Try not to get so overwhelmed by the analytics data available.
In conclusion, remember that understanding why things are in their current state with your online church requires a critical analysis of some of the factors mentioned above.