How Do Goals For The Church Relate To The Church Website?

January is Goals Month at OurChurch.Com.  During this month we are discussing all things goal related.

Today, we are going to discuss goals to consider for your church website design.  But before setting goals, it is important to make sure that your website design goals align with the objectives for you church website.

Most churches have two primary objectives for their website:

1. Reach their community.
2. Better communicate with members and those who already attend the church.

Looking at these two objectives, there should projects and processes created to help attain those objectives:

1. Reach the community (objective)
   1. Add new service times to homepage of website (project)
   2. Add map to church on website homepage (project)
   3. Reach out to other local ministries to set up quarterly outreach events (project)
2. Better Communicate with members and regular attenders (objective)
   1. Add sermons and sermon notes each week.  Make weekly announcements that people can download the notes and use them for their personal Bible study (process)
   2. Stop printing the weekly bulletin and make weekly announcements that the bulletin is available on the website (process)
   3. Launch online giving on the website (project)
   4. Add a sign up form to the website that allows people to subscribe to the electronic newsletter  (project)
   5. When announcing the weekly bulletin is available on the website, include information that members can go to the website and sign up for the electronic newsletter.  If they do, the weekly bulletin will be emailed directly to them (process)

Now that you have projects in place to help attain your objectives, it is time schedule the projects and assign them to the people in charge of completing the project.

Since most of the projects in this example are related to the website, the leader of the church web team (let’s call her Jane) will be assigned those projects.  The other projects be assigned to other staff (Pastor Bill and Lisa).  Note:  We have found that sometimes it is best to schedule for only the first 6 months of the year and reassess in the middle of the year to plan for the 2nd half of the year.

Below is an example of how the schedule may look like for the above projects:

1. 1/13 – 1/17 Add new service times to homepage of website (Jane)
2. 1/13 – 1/17 Add map to church on website homepage (Jane)
3. 1/13 – 2/14 Reach out to other local ministries to set up quarterly outreach events (Lisa)
4. Start 1/20 but do weekly Add sermons and sermon notes each week.  Make weekly announcements that people can download the notes and use them for their personal Bible study (Jane and Pastor Bill)
5. 2/10 – 2/14 Stop printing the weekly bulletin and make weekly announcements that the bulletin is available on the website (Jane and Pastor Bill)
6. 2/17 – 3/6 Launch online giving on the website (Jane)
7. 3/16 – 3/27 Add a sign up form to the website that allows people to subscribe to the electronic newsletter  (Jane)
8. 3/29 – 4/26 When announcing the weekly bulletin is available on the website, include information that members can go to the website and sign up for the electronic newsletter.  If they do, the weekly bulletin will be emailed directly to them (Pastor Bill and Jane)

Now that the projects have been scheduled, it is time to set numerical goals.  Goals should be measurable and attainable.  Examples of numerical goals for each objective might be:

1. Reach the community (objective)
   1. Increase the number of new visitors by 25% (numerical goal)
2. Better Communicate with members and regular attenders (objective)
   1. Increase traffic to your “member targeted web pages” by 30% (numerical goal)
   2. Launch a electronic newsletter through your website and get 1/3 of the the members on the list by the end of the year (numerical goal)

Once you have done all of this, it is important that you have processes in place to track the metrics of each goal.  Some of the goals (perform quarterly outreach will be pretty simple (did you perform an outreach each quarter?), while others may require you to set up processes (track new visitors to the services, track visitors to the website, track those who sign up for the eNewsletter).

 The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score. —Bill Copeland

What kind of goals has your church set for 2020?  Do you have projects in place to help you reach these goals?  If not, don’t wait until the middle of the year to do so.  Post your comments and questions below.

If you are interested in discussing how OurChurch.Com can help you reach your goals through a new website or better search engine rankings, please click here!