3 Things Every Organization Website Strategy Needs

An organization website strategy is more than a beautiful home page. In this article, we’ll explore the three important components that will increase your ability to leverage your ministry, organization, or church’s Internet presence. 

Of course, the goal of your website is to clearly position the organization and provide information on everything a ministry offers. With that in mind, what goes on behind the scenes can make all the difference in achieving your goal. That said, let’s take a look:

3 Things Every Organization Website Strategy Needs

 1. Website Analytics

Web analytics is the most important tool for any website owner to understand. Listed here are the two most common analytics tools that will help you monitor your site traffic:

Google Analytics

This free service can help you understand your website traffic and how people are interacting with it. If the technical aspects of this task intimidate or confuse you, hire someone in UpWork, Shaar.io, or Fiverr to help you out. 

Pro Tip: If you want to learn about Google Analytics, Google Analytics Academy offers a free online course to walk you through the basics for beginners, advanced users, and even power users.

Facebook Pixel

Pixel is a great tool to track your visitors and build custom audiences. Even if you have no plans for future advertising. we still recommend it. For example, the information collected by the Facebook Pixel will give insight into who they are as well as when they visit. 

According to Facebook, there are four specific benefits you will gain by installing the Facebook Pixel on your church site:

1. Measure cross-device conversions: This feature helps you understand how your cross-device ads help influence conversions.
2. Optimize delivery to people likely to take action: Optimizing will ensure your ads are shown to the people most likely to take action.
3. Create custom audiences from website visitors: Dynamic ads help you automatically show website visitors the offerings they viewed on your website, or related ones.
4. Learn about your website traffic: Get rich insights about how people use your website from your Facebook Pixel dashboard.

If you’re new to the Facebook Pixel, level up your strategy by taking advantage of the free online mini-course Facebook offers through their Blueprint learning program.

Elevate user experience: Why UI / UX Matter for Your Church Website and How To Improve Yours

2. Email capture

As part of you church website strategy, you want to find ways to nurture your relationship with your audience. In other words, you need a way to capture email addresses.

Set Up a Landing Page

To acquire contact information, strategically let people opt-in and get updates by being a part of your email list. There’s no one size fits all for this; it can be done with any number of different techniques. For example, provide a downloadable resource of value in exchange for their email address. This is called a landing page.  Steer away from just asking to “sign up for our email list.” Instead, improve your success rate of collecting a visitor’s email address when you set up a landing page and promote it appropriately.

Consider this: the major all-day outage that Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp experienced in 2021 showed us that you cannot put all your eggs in one basket to reach out to audiences. If the world learned anything that day, building an email list is one of the most effective ways to have a direct relationship with your community members.

Building an email list is still one of the most effective ways to have a direct relationship with your followers. Get creative about capturing. Click To Tweet

Focus On Felt Needs

One of the most strategic ways to approach landing pages that drive email opt-ins is to focus on felt needs topics.

For instance, people in your community are searching Google for content on parenting, marriage, finances, grieving, mental health, and other subjects. If you can provide relevant, Biblical content that addresses these felt needs issues, you have a higher chance that the visitor would be willing to “opt-in” and provide their contact information. Essentially, this is done in exchange for sermon messages on the topic, or connection with a counselor or pastor on staff, or other potential offerings that meet them where they are. 

Overall, being able to capture their email allows your team to follow up appropriately and to build a new relationship with the person.

Pre-load emails: Top 5 Email Automation Sequences Your Church Should Set Up

3. Give button

Donating to a ministry or church is an important way to give back. Therefore, there are plenty of reasons why you should accept online donations, including the majority of people who now prefer to give online vs using a check or cash.

The ChurchFuel.com blog shares two best practices for online giving: 

Online donation options should provide flexibility.

To make this possible, it includes connecting a user’s bank account (ACH) or giving via debit and credit cards. To clarify, this includes all types of credit cards, including ones that have slightly higher fees. 

The church should be intentional about the digital giving option.

For example, it would be helpful to publicly thank those who automate their giving because recurring giving provides consistency for the overall budget and financial health of the ministry. Creating intentional communication to donors should show how to use automated solutions. Intentionality can mean placing a special emphasis on talking about it from the stage or pulpit at least once a year. (Think of it like an internal communications campaign, the same way you might recruit volunteers.)

Innovate giving: 3 Creative Approaches To Church Giving Online To Learn From Amazon

There are many helpful platforms and resources available for church, ministry, and organization websites. Essentially, the ministry wants to maximize the opportunity to engage with visitors.  For example, being able to track and measure activity on the site will help guide decisions for better ways to serve the visitors online. Also, finding ways to convert website visits into permission-based messaging for communicating beyond the visit to the page is critical for nurturing the relationship. Finally, offering clear, easy, and fast giving options provides the convenience and reminders for your community to help support the ministry financially and steward their own personal finances well.

What other “must-haves” are there for a church website strategy?