If this is the first time you’ve thought about this and you’ve got no idea how your site is performing head over to a site like Responsinator. Responsinator lets you check out how your site performs on multiple devices ranging from ipads to android phones.

So if you’ve had a look at how your site performs and you’re not particularly impressed its time to consider responsive design!

So what is responsive design?

Responsive websites adapt to size of the device they are being viewed on. The menu will change, boxes will move around the screen to make them fit in more useful spots etc. For an example of a responsive church website check out the Mars Hill Church website, change the size of your browser and you’ll notice how the site changes so it still looks good, nifty eh! Basicly responsive sites work by running a quick test on the size of your browser window and laying the blocks out accordingly.

So how do I get my site responsive?

Luckily for us responsive design is almost the standard now. If you’re from a larger church then simply add it into your specs when you’re negotiating with your web designers and it shouldn’t add more than a few hundred bucks to your budget. If you’re from a small church and you’re budget is next to nothing don’t distress, a responsive site is still within your grasp! You can buy loads of cheap responsive templates for CMS’s like WordPress or Joomla at places like Themeforest. I bought a template from themeforest for my church joomla site for $45 and have been really happy with how it turned out.

Do I really need to bother?

According to some sources mobile internet usage will soon overtake usage on fixed devices like pc’s or laptops. People within your congregation may be forgiving about your site not being up to scratch but what will potential visitors think if they can’t navigate your site on their tablet or mobile?

Are you going to make your site responsive in 2014 or have you seen any awesome responsive church sites?

Rowan

Hi my name is Rowan and I attend a small church in regional Australia. I first got into web stuff a few years ago when I had a crack at redeveloping the church website and haven’t looked back! You can check out my church at www.alburybiblechurch.com.au

www.alburybiblechurch.com.au

The post Going Responsive appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

For the uninitiated

If you’ve not heard of Google Analytics it’s basicly a free service provided by Google that allows you to track how many people come to your website. In doing that it also manages to capture a whole lot of other information such as, has this person been to your site before, how long they spent on the site, and what pages they looked at etc.

So how can churches better use analytic information?

I’ve got 3 top tips for how your church can better use your analytic information.

1. Using the Visitors Flow tool

The Visitors Flow tool isn’t often used because it looks like a whole bunch of spaghetti all muddled up! But amidst all that detail is information on how people navigate your website which is actually really powerful. Using this tool you could identify

• common navigation paths that people follow; this could confirm that your site design in working or that you might need to redesign some elements to make them more prominent
• stumbling blocks where suddenly lots of visitors drop off; for example this could be really important if online giving isn’t taking off like you expected
• you can also compare the flow path of new visitors compared to returning visitors; this could help identify if newcomers to your church are finding the way to the information they need

For more information on the visitor flow tool check out I recommend checking out this post.

2. Assessing your mobile audience

I wasn’t really fussed about making my church website mobile-friendly until I looked at my Google Analytics. When I checked out my analytics I saw that about 20% of my site visits were on mobile devices I was really suprised, given that I come from a small country town I suspect that many city-based churches would have a much higher proportion. So if a fifth of my visitors are visiting my site on mobile devices then I need to make sure it performs well. A site like www.mobilephoneemulator.com can give you a sneek-peak into how your site performs on mobile devices.

3. Tracking Recency

A major part of a church website is serving church members, so how can you work out if your doing that or not? Well one element that gives you a feel is how frequently people come back to your site; they wouldnt keep coming back if your site was rubbish! So using the Frequency & Recency tool you can see the last time someone came to your site, if its only in the last week or two then obviously people are engaging well with your site, but if they only check out your website once every couple of months it doesnt look like your site is really engaging them. This tool doesn’t tell you what the problem is but it can tell you if an issue exists.

Conclusion

Google Analytics is a very powerful beast and there is loads more that we can all be doing with it but I hope these are a few useful pointers to get you going. For more information on analytics I recommend checking out Avinash Kausik’s blog, he is one of the guru’s on analytics and writes some really great articles on how to best use the information.

Rowan

Hi my name is Rowan and I attend a small church in regional Australia. I first got into web stuff a few years ago when I had a crack at redeveloping the church website and haven’t looked back! You can check out my church at www.alburybiblechurch.com.au

www.alburybiblechurch.com.au

The post How to get the most out of Google Analytics appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.