How your website can assist your team with your return to church
We’re beginning to hear from many churches we work with who are considering and planning how they are going to open their doors again. There are a lot of tools that are available for your church to use to make this process as smooth as possible. We’ve put together some information about how your website can help.
Use online forms
Gather feedback and insight from your congregation and new visitors about who would come to an in-person service. By setting up a form on your website you can begin to gather information you would need in order to make your space safe for the amount of people who are interested in attending. If you are thinking about returning to church through the use of small groups, you could create a form to allow people to sign up to a new group. Read more about creating forms in our recent article here.
Keep a digital presence
Keep your online presence! While many people are excited to return to church, (and rightly so, nothing beats the sense of community when gathering together with your congregation) there are many people who are not yet ready to return. It is important that you keep the online presence established during Covid 19 lockdown period for these people to still feel included in what is happening at your church.
This means, if you were posting a live service online every week, you might want to keep streaming your in person service. Are there ways you can incorporate the online communications you developed, into your long term plan for communications?
Gather Data
If you have Google Analytics hooked up to your Church Website you can gather quick insights into who is viewing your website and where they are from. During lockdown, many churches have seen an influx in visitors to their online services. Google analytics will tell you what percentage of your viewers come from your local area, and who might come from further afield, even abroad. If you are able to look at this information, it could help you make decisions about how quickly you need to prioritise your return to church, and how you could continue to reach the new visitors you have received.
Keep your site up to date!
Critically, you should always keep your website up to date with your latest information about returning to church, continued online services and future plans. Don’t rely solely on word of mouth, or an email to your church body, always make sure the latest information is clearly available for any visitor to your website.
iKnow Church
For resourcing the church during this time, we also offer iKnow Church, our Church Management System. iKnow is a tool that has been an invaluable resource for churches during COVID 19 and now, as we begin to look at re-gathering. If you would like more information about iKnow Church and how it can help during your re-gathering please take a look here.
There are upcoming iKnow Church webinars to go over all of the tools available for your church as you re-gather. Please join us at our next webinar by registering here.