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    Church Website Best Practices - Entries from March 2010

    Home - Blog - Church Website Best Practices - Entries from March 2010
    TueTuesdayMarMarch30th2010 Harvest Bible Chapel - Tampa
    Posted Tuesday, March 30 2010 @ 9 AM byTravis Hickox Tagged Harvest Bible Chapel Harvest Skin Quote Semi-Custom 0 comments Add comment
    We started the project for Harvest Bible Chapel Tampa's website on March 15. We had the website populated and launched by March 25.

    Utilizing the Harvest skin and customizing it to Senior Pastor Rich Culp's specifications (Culp went with the pewter and red accent colors of Tampa's NFL franchise, the Buccaneers), and our comprehensive Harvest Church Plant Package, site setup was a snap.



    Not only is the website beautiful, functional, and versatile, [but] you and the folks at iMinistries are incredibly patient and helpful. As a preacher, I would rather stand up in front of 3,000 people than touch a single widget of a website. Before going into this process, I did not even know what a URL was or for that matter what three words begin with U...R…L unless they meant “U R a Loser Rich” when it comes to websites.

    Now I am conquering website administration…I even know how to set up a Rotator...

    You guys have been more than long-suffering to work with me over the phone because I could not even find the HELP button much less understand the lingo in the support desk. All that to say, iMinistries well reflects the servant-heart nature of our Lord. He said that the greatest in the Kingdom is the one who serves. Thanks for serving the Kingdom with great websites.

    For His Glory
    By His Grace
    Rich Culp
    MonMondayMarMarch29th2010 Google Analytics: Viewing Traffic Reports
    Posted Monday, March 29 2010 @ 9 AM byBryan Young Tagged Best Practices for Church Websites Google Analytics 0 comments Add comment

    Analyize tons of data about your ministry website visitors

    After you add your Google Analytics account number to your iMinistries website, you'll need to wait 24 hours for data to accumulate on your GA profile. When your data is complied, you can view any of the dozens of Google Analytics reports by clicking the View Reports link at the top of your Analytics screen.

    Types of Reports

    Important reports in the Content section:

    Overview: lists pageview volume and lists the pages (Top Content) that were most responsible for driving pageviews.

    Top Content: Which are the most commonly viewed pages on your site, and how are they used? The table lists all of the pages which were viewed on your site. A high "Time on Page" may indicate content that is particularly interesting to visitors.

    Top Exit Pages: From which pages do people exit your site? It may be common for visitors to exit your site from a receipt or "thank you" page because they have completed a conversion activity. But a large number of exits from a news item, blog, or event pagemay indicate that the page is confusing or uninteresting.

    Important reports in the Traffic Sources section:

    Overview: Shows the different kinds of sources that send traffic to your site. The graph shows traffic trends. The pie-chart and tables show what is driving the trends. How did your website visitors get to your site: Direct Traffic, Referring Sites, or Search Engines?

    Direct Traffic: How do the people who clicked a bookmark or typed your site URL into their browser to visit your website compare to the "average" visitor to your site?

    Referring Sites: How do the people referred from other sites compare to the "average" visitor to your site? The graph shows the overall trends in traffic volume from referrals while the table lists the sites driving the trends.

    Search Engines: How does search engine traffic compare to traffic as a whole to your site? The graph shows overall trends while the table lists the search engines driving the trends. (Read our blog entries on how to improve your Google search results.)

    Keywords: How does traffic from search keywords compare to traffic as a whole to your site? The graph shows overall trends while the table shows the keywords driving the trends.

    Important reports in the Visitors section:

    Visitors Overview: How many new and returning visitors came to your site and how extensively did they interact with your content? This traffic overview allows you to drill down into aspects of visit quality (i.e. average pageviews, time on site, bounce rate) and visit characteristics (i.e. first time visitors, returning visits).

    Visits: The number of visits your site receives is the most basic measure of how effectively you promote your site.

    Pageviews: Pageviews is the total number of pages viewed on your site and is a general measure of how much your site is used.

    Average Pageviews: Average pageviews is one way of measuring visit quality. A high Average Pageviews number suggests that visitors interact extensively with your site. A high Average Pageviews results from one or both of:
    1. Appropriately targeted traffic (i.e. visitors who are interested in what your site offers)
    2. High quality content effectively presented on the site.
    Conversely, a low average pageviews indicates that the traffic coming to the site has not been appropriately targeted to what the site offers or that the site does not deliver what was promised to the visitor.

    Time on Site: If visitors spend a long time visiting your site, they may be interacting extensively with it. This can sometimes be misleading because visitors often leave browser windows open when they are not actually viewing or using your site.

    Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce rate is a measure of visit quality and a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren't relevant to your visitors.

    New vs. Returning: A high number of new visitors suggests that you are successful at driving traffic to your site while a high number of return visitors suggests that the site content is engaging enough to keep visitors coming back. You can see how frequently visitors return and how many times they return in "Recency" report and the "Loyalty report," both under "New vs. Returning" in the Visitors section.

    Map Overlay: Use this map to visualize visits by geographic region, country, and city.

    Length of Visit (Visitor Behavior):     Length of visit is a measure of visit quality. A large number of lengthy visits suggests that visitors interact more extensively with your site. The graph allows you to visualize the entire distribution of visits instead of simply the ‘Average Time on Site’ across all visits.

    Depth of Visit (Visitor Behavior): Depth of visit is a measure of visit quality. A large number of high pageviews per visit suggests that visitors interact extensively with your site. The graph allows you to visualize the entire distribution of visits instead of simply the average pageviews per visit.

    Free Trial

    We believe the best way to describe our tools is for you to try them out yourself. We offer a 15-day free trial account which will give you a few days to use all of the features available to our paying clients. There's no risk and no obligation. Who knows, you might even enjoy the new control you have over your very own website.

    Create Your Free Trial Account

    Terms Used By Google Analytics

    Visits vs. Visitors

    Analytics measures both visits and visitors in your account. Visits represent the number of individual sessions initiated by all the visitors to your site. If a user is inactive on your site for 30 minutes or more, any future activity will be attributed to a new session. Users that leave your site and return within 30 minutes will be counted as part of the original session.

    The initial session by a user during any given date range is considered to be an additional visit and an additional visitor. Any future sessions from the same user during the selected time period are counted as additional visits, but not as additional visitors.

    Pageviews vs. Unique Pageviews

    A pageview is defined as a view of a page on your site that is being tracked by the Analytics tracking code. If a visitor hits reload after reaching the page, this will be counted as an additional pageview. If a user navigates to a different page and then returns to the original page, a second pageview will be recorded as well.

    A unique pageview, as seen in the Top Content report, aggregates pageviews that are generated by the same user during the same session. A unique pageview represents the number of sessions during which that page was viewed one or more times.

    Viewing Traffic Reports

    Check out the video below to see report checking in action.


    MORE RESOURCES FOR GOOGLE ANALYTICS

    Getting Started Guide – Google Analytics
    Quick Start Guide for Custom Reporting – Google Analytics
    Reporting Basics – Google Analytics
    FriFridayMarMarch26th2010 Live With Power
    Posted Friday, March 26 2010 @ 3 PM byTravis Hickox Tagged Semi-Custom 0 comments Add comment
    Lina AbuJamra, M.D., MBA, speaker, and Bible teacher, wanted a way to promote her ministry. She needed a ministry website that could showcase her blog, her upcoming speaking engagements, and provide a way for people to contact her. Even with a custom skin and look, AbuJamra's Live With Power website was set up and live within weeks.

    Now she has a website that hosts her blog (which automatically updates her homepage), her events calendar, her Twitter feed, and more information about her (including a photo slide show).

    This sharp, fresh skin will be available for purchase when we launch our new Premium package.
    MonMondayMarMarch15th2010 Google Analytics: Why Add it to Your Ministry Website?
    Posted Monday, March 15 2010 @ 9 AM byBryan Young Tagged Best Practices for Church Websites Google Analytics Improving Google Search Results 0 comments Add comment

    Track your website traffic with detailed reports from Google Analytics.

    Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. It is the most widely used website statistics service, currently in use at around 40% of the 10,000 most popular websites. GA can track visitors from search engines and other websites and direct traffic. GA is designed to be used by both the casual Web administrator to the advanced Web marketer.

    Google Dashboard

    In your general reports, GA will display:
    • number of visitors to your site (within custom date ranges)
    • average pages per visit
    • bounce rate
    • average time visitors are on your site
    • percentage of new visitors
    • traffic sources
    • a list of your most-visited pages
    The more advanced user can create custom reports with an astounding amount of variables.

    How to Add Google Analytics

    Adding Google Analytics to your iMinistries website is as easy as "copy and paste."

    We are excited to offer you the ability to track your websites hits through Google Analytics. Set up is easy and free and the information that Google provides you is very useful.

    1. To begin, you must create a Google account. It is free.
    2. After you create your account, go to Google Analytics.
    3. Login with your new Google account.
    4. At the bottom of the screen, click on "Add a website profile."
    5. Next, enable the first radio button titled Add a Profile for a new domain.
    6. Add your url into the URL area.
    7. Click Finish.
    8. The next page is the important one. Look at the code that is provide and find your Google tracking code. Here is a example:
      Analytics Code
    9. Now, go to your website and log into Site Administration.
    10. Click on Site Controls
    11. Click on Site Preferences
    12. Enter in your Google Analytics Account number. It will be in this format - UA-xxxxxxx-x.
    13. Save
    14. That's it! Your reports should begin to populate after 24 hours.

    Free Trial

    We believe the best way to describe our tools is for you to try them out yourself. We offer a 15-day free trial account which will give you a few days to use all of the features available to our paying clients. There's no risk and no obligation. Who knows, you might even enjoy the new control you have over your very own website.

    Create Your Free Trial Account

    MORE RESOURCES FOR GOOGLE ANALYTICS

    Getting Started Guide – Google Analytics
    Quick Start Guide for Custom Reporting – Google Analytics
    How Do I Tag My Links? – Google Analytics
    FriFridayMarMarch5th2010 Harvest Bible Chapel - Dallas
    Posted Friday, March 05 2010 @ 3 PM byTravis Hickox Tagged Harvest Bible Chapel Harvest Skin Semi-Custom 0 comments Add comment
    Chris Keathly from the Harvest Bible Chapel church plant in Dallas, Texas took advantage of iMinistries' Harvest Church Plant Package. For his customized Harvest Skin, Keathly chose Dallas Cowboys blue to display his pride in the local NFL franchise.



    After his site was set up and live, Keathly had only good things to say about his iMinistries website and experience.
    Travis,

    Man you have NO IDEA how fast and Incredible this is. When I did this with my last church, it was VERY LABOR intensive, more complicated, more expensive and not half as convenient to work on and in my humble opinion did not look near as good. If you want me to do a commercial for you, I will! :)

    Thanks again for all your help and the quick responses!
    MonMondayMarMarch1st2010 Why Add Highlights?
    Posted Monday, March 01 2010 @ 9 AM byBryan Young Tagged Best Practices for Church Websites 0 comments Add comment

    How Highlights improve the look and function of each page on your church website.


    Each page, news item, and event on your iMinistries website has five "slots" to insert highlights. Highlights are other pages, blog entries, news, events, or content that you select as a highlight when you create it. To maximize your ministry website's potential, it is important to fill each page with as many relevant highlights as you can.

    Look

    Although you may have heard that empty space is a good way to break up text on a page, allowing too much space can make your site look empty and unimportant. Each inch of space is valuable real estate--don't waste it by forgetting to add highlights.

    When creating a page and selecting it to be a highlight, add a thumbnail. Thumbnails provide you a chance to be make your site pop by breaking up text with images (people love images!).

    Be creative. Choose a theme for your thumbnails and run with it. Have all your thumbnails feature:
    • People from your ministry
    • A consistent color scheme
    • Christian imagery (a Christmas star, open Bibles, and empty tombs)
    • A similar look-and-feel
    • Or a mixture of all

    Free Trial

    We believe the best way to describe our tools is for you to try them out yourself. We offer a 15-day free trial account which will give you a few days to use all of the features available to our paying clients. There's no risk and no obligation. Who knows, you might even enjoy the new control you have over your very own website.

    Create Your Free Trial Account

    Function

    Highlights help your users find related information as they explore your website–content they might not otherwise have found. For example, on your About Us page, highlight your Contact Us page so visitors can easily navigate there to send you a comment or question. On an event that is located at your camp, highlight a page with camp directions and information. On a blog entry that hosts your sermon audio, highlight sermon notes for users to follow along.

    Using highlights as links to other content on your ministry website makes it easier to keep your menu clutter-free. Partnering highlights with hyperlinks, resource pages, and widgets keeps you from adding every page into your menu. Your users will thank you for this ease in navigation. Not necessarily in verbal (or e-mailed) praise, but definitely in repeat visits to your site.

    OTHER RESOURCES ON HIGHLIGHTS

    What Is A Highlight? – iMinistries Support Document
    Adding Highlights (Video) – iMinistries Support Video
    What is a Thumbnail? – iMinistries Support Document
    Follow iMinistries on Twitter



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