Joshua Riggs explains what first-time church visitors need to know before showing up: service times, location, parking, kids' ministry safety, what the service feels like, and whether they'll be asked for money. Put clear answers on your homepage with photos, videos, and a Google Maps link. Avoid insider language and jargon.
Why do people visit your church website? Why do you visit any website? I don't know you, but I can guess that in the last, let's say, 24 hours, you probably have visited these 3 websites: Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Why do I know that? Because a lot of people visit those sites. Why do we go to Google? We visit Google because we want to find out information that we don't know. We visit Amazon because we want to purchase a product to solve a problem for us. We visit Facebook because— who knows why we visit Facebook, but we do. All three of those sites serve us in some way. They help to solve a need or solve a problem. And the same is true for your church website. When people visit your website They're doing so because they have a need or they have a question that they want answered. But churches are unique because we really have to serve two audiences. You have your first-time guests and you have your regular attenders. For this video, we'll call them members. You have your members and your guests. So which audience should you serve? I believe you should make it a priority to serve your first-time guests. Guest, that should be the priority of your church website because they are the ones who don't know anything about your church and they have a lot of questions that need answering. And so as best you can, you want to answer the questions that a first-time guest has. But it is possible to serve both audiences, your first-time guests and your members. In this video, part 1, we're going to look at the questions that guest, first-time guest are asking and how you can best answer them on your church website. The next video, Part 2, will look at questions that your members are asking and how you can serve them. Okay, here we go. Hey everybody, I'm Joshua. I'm the creator of WorshipResources.Church. We help you discover and learn how to use quality resources to make your church better. I hope you'll take a minute to like this video and subscribe to this channel, Worship Resources for Churches. I'd love for you to subscribe. That helps to get the word out and helps more churches find this content. And if you haven't yet, I hope you'll go to worshipresources.church to take a look at all the resources that we direct you to. I'm here to serve you. If I can serve you in any way, please let me know. Let's connect in the comments. And let me know what you think about this video. So what are the questions that a first-time guest is asking? When somebody visits your website for the first time, they're not a part of your church, they don't know anything about your church, what questions do they have? So I made a list of a few questions I think most first-time guests are asking. First of all, what time are your services? You need to answer that question clearly and succinctly on the homepage. What time are your services? Make it clear. Don't make that information hard to find. They also want to know where are you located? What is your address? Make that clear. And then take that address and link it to Google Maps so people can click with one button and get directions to your church. Your service times and your location. That's important information that first-time guests want to know. Another question first-time guests are asking is, "What do you offer for my kids?" Parents and grandparents want to know two things: are my kids gonna be safe, and are they gonna have a good time? You need to answer that question on your website before they even ask. So communicate, "Your kids are going to have an awesome time in our safe and clean environment." And then list why that's going to be true. Talk about how you have background checks for your volunteers. And talk about how you have training for your volunteers. And talk about how you're gonna share a Bible story with your kids and what they're going to learn. Parents and grandparents want to know this information, so tell the first-time guests what you offer for their kids. Another question that first-time guests ask is who is the pastor and who's on staff. That's why it's important for you to have a great staff page. In fact, your staff page is one of the most visited pages on your website. People want to know who's leading this church, who's preaching, who's leading worship. So have great pictures and great bios of everyone on staff so they know exactly who's going to be leading them, who's preaching, who's singing, who's in charge. People want to know that information, so make it clear on your church website. Okay, another question. What will the service be like? Answer this question as clearly as you can. Let them know what the music is like, what style of music you have at your church, uh, what the preaching is like, how long the service is going to be. And the best way to do this is to use pictures and video to let them see what it's going to be like if they attend one of your services. Another question they might ask is, where do I park? Some questions guests might ask might be specific to your location, your geographical location, or just your culture in general. So if you are an urban church or a large church, maybe you wanna answer the question about parking, like, where do you park? Let them know that you have guest parking up front so they don't have to park and then walk so far. There might be other questions that you need to answer, like, "What do I wear?" or "What about weather?" or maybe you are in a building that's not a traditional church building. You need to answer some questions so they know how to get to your building. All of these types of questions might be specific to your church, but you should think through what questions do we need to answer before they even ask and then answer them on the church website. Here's one more question I think first-time guests ask or want to know, and that is, "Will you ask me for money?" They want to know that. Unfortunately, some people think that that's all the church is about, is just trying to get more money out of you. So for us at Bethany, we try to answer that question by saying we don't expect any first-time guests to give. We do give our regular attenders an opportunity to give and support our mission, But if this is your first time, we don't expect you to give in any way. I'm sure there are other questions that you should think through that you need to answer for your first-time guest. This list is just to help you get started. But as best you can, try to look at your church and your church website through the lens of a first-time guest. And then ask the question, what do I not know? Or what do I need to know? And then do your best to answer those questions proactively. The way to answer those questions is to use great photography that helps to answer some of those questions and use clear language. Don't use insider language, don't use acronyms, use clear language that says exactly what you mean. Okay, that's part 1 of this 2-part video. The next video, we're going to look at questions that your members are asking and how you can help to answer those questions on your church website. Hey, if this was helpful, I hope you'll subscribe, like this video, and again, I hope you'll connect with me in the comments or shoot me an email, Joshua@worshipresources.church. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. We'll see you next week.
