Comments on: A great church web page http://www.gomission.ca/index.php/2011/02/a-great-church-web-page/ Making disciples. Connecting churches. Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:12:45 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Stephen Sheane http://www.gomission.ca/index.php/2011/02/a-great-church-web-page/#comment-447 Stephen Sheane Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:03:19 +0000 http://www.gomission.ca/?p=3828#comment-447 Thank you so much for the encouragement. I agree with you Jacob that these days web presence is very important. Many people will check you out online before they will ever show up at your church. Often they will decide whether to visit or not based on the quality of your webpage. The other amazing thing about web presence is how many people you touch without even knowing it. I just looked at our Google Analytics (a tool which shows who and how many people visit your website) and in the last little while we have had 411 people from 11 countries. It is amazing to think that in the last month people from Russia, India and China have listened to sermons posted online. Just last week I recieved an email from a guy in Georgia that had wandered upon our site and is now faithfully listening to the sermons and using them to teach his own weekly bible class. Having a quality site is not hard but does have initial costs. Our site is through a company called Clover Sites ( http://www.cloversites.com/ ) and was $1000 to set up but then is very easy to update and work with. You do not need to know anything about webpublishing. You do not need to rely on volunteers to keep in updated - you simply choose the template you like initially and then all the maintenance is done by you online. You can go to their website and try it out - see all the types of sites they offer and then even edit one online putting in all your church logos/pictures etc so you have a good idea of what the finished product will look like. If anyone has any questions give us a call. I think what we paid has been a great investment. Thank you so much for the encouragement. I agree with you Jacob that these days web presence is very important. Many people will check you out online before they will ever show up at your church. Often they will decide whether to visit or not based on the quality of your webpage.

The other amazing thing about web presence is how many people you touch without even knowing it. I just looked at our Google Analytics (a tool which shows who and how many people visit your website) and in the last little while we have had 411 people from 11 countries. It is amazing to think that in the last month people from Russia, India and China have listened to sermons posted online. Just last week I recieved an email from a guy in Georgia that had wandered upon our site and is now faithfully listening to the sermons and using them to teach his own weekly bible class.

Having a quality site is not hard but does have initial costs. Our site is through a company called Clover Sites ( http://www.cloversites.com/ ) and was $1000 to set up but then is very easy to update and work with. You do not need to know anything about webpublishing. You do not need to rely on volunteers to keep in updated – you simply choose the template you like initially and then all the maintenance is done by you online. You can go to their website and try it out – see all the types of sites they offer and then even edit one online putting in all your church logos/pictures etc so you have a good idea of what the finished product will look like.

If anyone has any questions give us a call. I think what we paid has been a great investment.

]]>