CSL 008 – Is Your Church Website “Working”? How to Set and Measure Goals

Isabelle Faletti (00:00:54):

Hello and welcome to ChurchSpring Live episode zero zero eight. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Isabelle and today joining me is co-founder of ChurchSpring, Rohn Gibson.

Rohn Gibson (00:01:07):

Yes. Hello everyone.

Isabelle Faletti (00:01:09):

I would love to know who is joining us today in our live stream, whether you’re watching it live right now or you’re watching it later on and every watch, introduce yourself. Comment in the comment section below let us know where you’re from your church name. You will have to give stream yard access so that we can show off your any comments or questions or your name. So introduce yourself. We want to hear from you. While you do that, I do want to give you a quick preview of what you can expect today in today’s ChurchSpring live. You are going well first off you’re in for a lot of great information. I know I feel that every week, but it’s true. It’s true. We want to provide the best value we possibly can. So you were going to learn how you can easily set and manage and measure goals for your church website that will increase membership, your giving and just overall communication. So for those of you who are new to ChurchSpring, we are a software provider committed to the great commission. We love to help church leaders by providing really practical tools, such as this ChurchSpring live websites to grow the local church. So welcome again to ChurchSpring. Rohn, I know that you have a few announcements before we’ll dive into today’s topic.

Rohn Gibson (00:02:28):

Yes. Just want to, again, echo that welcome. It’s so good to see people commenting and telling us where they’re from. So Alice welcome., I hope I pronounced that correctly. We’ve got Jackie from Tennessee. Welcome. Jackie. We’re thrilled to have you here. I know Daryl posted a actually, I’m not sure what it was before we went live. So Daryl super excited to have you here. So welcome everyone. And I know we’ve got some others joining as well. So again, just a couple of quick, we do want to answer any questions you have. So we’re going to talk quite a bit today. Hopefully our goal is we want to give you some actionable things that you can take and actually implement there for your local ministry. So if you have questions please post them. We’re going to answer as many of those as we can during our session today, I saw before we even jumped on, there was already questions and there are some that are support related.

Rohn Gibson (00:03:23):

So we’re gonna, we’ll, we’ll try to hit as many of those as we can. Yeah, cause we definitely wanna make sure that you get the help that you need. But Danny also related to the specific topic that we’re going to be covering today. Please do that as well. Again, super excited. You’re here. If you can, if we say something and you’re like, yes, I totally agree with that. Give us the thumbs up or the heart. And we love to see that you can tag a friend if there’s maybe even somebody at your church volunteer or somebody like that, that you want to invite in to this live stream, go ahead and tag them and invite them. And we’d love to have them. Or you can just literally share this even on your Facebook page to invite them a couple of quick things.

Rohn Gibson (00:04:04):

Before we jump into questions, number one, I always say, take a sip of water to get the, get the juices flowing. We’re going to talk about a topic today regarding results and the importance of tracking and setting goals. So really excited about that today. Don’t tune out. I know that can be one of those topics that can be a little intimidating. So don’t tune out. We’re going to make it super practical for you all today, but don’t feel like you have to take notes like crazy. We don’t want to smell any smoke over here. People trying to take notes so fast, we’re going to do it all for you. So this rewatch of this video will actually be posted on our website at churchspring.Com/CSL (for ChurchSpring Live) CSL008. So if you miss something or if you hear something like, man, that’s really good, but I can’t remember exactly what they were talking about. All you have to do is go check out our website, churchspring.com/CL008. There’ll be the recording of this video, the show notes, and even a transcript over the next week or so where then you can even go and read it if that’s better for you to consume content. So we are super excited to have you all here. We’ve got Melvin, how you doing Melvin? So good to have you here. I love the regulars.

Isabelle Faletti (00:05:17):

I know! I agree. I agree.

Rohn Gibson (00:05:20):

Well, good to to see the repeat. Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (00:05:25):

Yep. Ken, I know that we’ve actually been working with you a lot this week. So I’m really excited that you’re joining us welcome to ChurchSpring, welcome to ChurchSpring Live, Clarence. Yes. I love, I love seeing customers that I work with every day. Jen also on our support team. I mean, we, we truly know and value our customers that we’re working with. So I it’s like meeting a friend almost. So yes. Well I’ve a question for all of our live attendees here and again for anybody who’s watching this at a later time. So pay attention. This is the question I want to hear from you. Have you ever wondered if your website is working, if you’ve ever had that thought? I want you to say yes in the comments below maybe you kind of avoid that question and you think, yeah, I’ve a wonder actually a lot of my website’s working, but well, I don’t really want to admit that because that’s a part of your communications tool.

Isabelle Faletti (00:06:31):

That’s okay. So if you’ve ever had that thought, is my website working type yes. In the comments below. And that Melvin thank you, you’re honest. I appreciate that. You’re wondering, does my website work? Yep. We have another one. Probably Peter. Yes that’s. Okay. That’s good that you’re having that question because that means that we can make improvements and you’re in the right place today. I’ll tell you that. So if you are just tired of not knowing if your website is helping you grow your church, or maybe you’re just frustrated with wondering if your website is even making a difference when you update events or sermons, like, does it actually make a difference? Like I said, I’ve, I have great news for you. You, it does, it does make a difference. Rohn is going to talk about so many amazing things today. We’re going to have a great conversation about how you can have goals and kind of the faithful perspective of that also. So you truly can easily set and measure goals for your church website and because of that, it will help increase membership, communication giving. So Rohn and I, we’re going to discuss how you can set smart goals for your website and how you can integrate some tools like Google analytics into your website to give you some practical, just really practical tips of what this actually looks like.

Rohn Gibson (00:07:56):

And I, I think we, we, we picked a good topic this week. Just looking at the comments, not only did we get a yes, we got a definitely from Tandre. So I’m glad you’re here. And as Isabelle said, it’s great that you’re asking that question. Now it’s time to get to work, right? It’s time to find out is it working and if it’s not working, what are the things that we can do? So it’s going to be a great episode,

Isabelle Faletti (00:08:19):

Man. It will be. So for our, all of those who are, who are listening, who you you’ve typed. Yes. I’ve another question for you. Do you have goals already established for your church website? I want you to leave your goal in the comments below if you don’t have a goal yet for your church website. Well that’s okay. Because again, that’s why we’re here. That’s why we exist at church at ChurchSpring. But if you don’t have a goal yet, just take two seconds here and drop a comment and let us know what you think your church website goals should be. And we can talk about that. Well, we will have that conversation. Yep. And that’s okay. We had someone respond, say, no, David, you’re also saying no. Oh, well, good. Well, that’s not good. But that means we can really, really be helping church leaders and churches today.

Rohn Gibson (00:09:11):

Absolutely. And sometimes the goals I literally have talked to pastors and they said the goal for me is just, I don’t want somebody to walk up to me and tell me that I have an event list on our website from like two years ago. That’s the goal. That’s a goal that they had was their website. Didn’t get kind of critiqued for how old some of the information was. So anyway, it’s okay. If you don’t have a goal right now, we’re going to give you some great tips that literally you can put into action within an hour of even jumping off this Facebook live. So let’s jump in. Yep.

Isabelle Faletti (00:09:43):

Well, ah, Melvin Anna, you have unique page views Storm, you put to be a landing page for new people have to reach your community. Yes, these are amazing, amazing goals -Ken, attract new people, keep attenders informed. So important. So, Rohn, I know that hopefully I’m not the only one who make it overwhelmed at the idea of goals. I know that I’m, if there’s any Enneagram personality nerds out there, I’m an Enneagram seven,

Rohn Gibson (00:10:17):

I’m surprised! I am surprised this took until episode eight for the Enneagram to make an appearance!

Isabelle Faletti (00:10:29):

It took goals to, to show my, my true colors, But for me, as an Enneagram seven, and just how I’m, how I’m wired. I love to jump in on things. And so goals can be just stressful and overwhelming because it can I don’t really know how to set a goal and how not to be overwhelmed by a goal. So I’m sure I’m not the only one who may be overwhelmed by goals run. So I’m hoping today we can just, I mean, we will, we will take away the overwhelm will take away that stress. And my default is I’m just not going to set a goal for this because I don’t know how and it’s stressful. So I’m just gonna, again, jump right in. So Rohn, do we really need to set goals for a church website? Is it just an online brochure?

Rohn Gibson (00:11:19):

Oh, that’s such a great question. And that online brochure that’s literally taken from words we’ve heard from pastors and church leaders that it’s just an online brochure. We shouldn’t really expect anything and unfortunately they get what they expect because they’re not expecting anything and they don’t get anything. So you should absolutely have a goal or maybe multiple goals for your church website. So one quick thing regarding this kind of as a preface is it’s very easy to start putting value in the wrong place when it comes to goals. So the first thing is God is ultimately responsible for the results. It’s kind of like, you know, when you, when you’re you know, casting the net to somebody, whether it be for different reasons, whether it’s salvation, if they don’t know the Lord or that ever, that might be it’s God who calls them.

Rohn Gibson (00:12:15):

So ultimately we’re supposed to obey, like our act is obedience to God and being a witness, or in this example, it’s our, it’s being an obedient to God and actually using, leveraging my church website to be an effective outreach tool. But we have to be very careful when we start talking about goals that we don’t put ourselves in a position that we shouldn’t be at now, people can be super passive on that and be like, well, then I’m just never going to set goals because God’s responsible for the results. Well, God’s also given us minds and given us creativity and logic to be able to solve problems. So I believe in setting goals, but I also believe even understanding where the outcome truly comes from. So focus on faithfulness and leave the end result ultimately up to God. But with that said, you should still set goals and you should still put mechanisms in place to measure, how are things doing?

Rohn Gibson (00:13:09):

So you know how to make changes. There’s a, actually we took this out of the our outline here, but it makes total sense. I’m going to throw it back in. And that is Peter Drucker, who was a management expert. Many of you may have heard of, of, of Peter Drucker, but he said, what gets measured gets managed? So what’s your, what’s your looking at, what’s your monitoring. Those are the things that you’re going to be putting action toward improving and accomplishing that goal. And lastly, I just want to emphasize prayerfully consider your goals. So the very first action item that you can take even right now is just a pray that even, even during this episode, that God would give you clarity on the goals that you should set specifically as it relates to your church website. So just want to encourage it when to give that preface.

Rohn Gibson (00:13:58):

So we don’t get too far to one side or the other, we do have responsibility, but ultimately it’s God who drives the outcome. So you absolutely should have a goal for your church website. You don’t have one. And I know we had some that says, no, you don’t, by the way, don’t feel alone in that don’t like shame yourself for that. That’s the majority of ministry leaders is because they don’t understand the true value that an effective church website what it can really do for their ministry and their community. So what we’re going to do is talk a little bit about that and how to establish those goals. So here’s one thing to consider your church website more than likely is the only aspect of your ministry that is open 24 hours, seven days a week. And that tool that’s open 24 hours, seven days a week should be connected to a valuable ministry goal.

Rohn Gibson (00:14:58):

Yeah. Okay. So super important. Let’s, let’s jump in. Let’s, let’s jump into goal setting here. So how do I set a goal for my church website? So what we’re going to talk about is this idea of setting a smart goal, not all goals are created equal, and we’re we’re going to do is give you really the mix of what needs to be included to create a really effective goal for your church website. So when I say smart, you can actually think of that as an acrostic. So S M A R T each one of those letters stands for a specific word that makes up an effective goal. So S stands for specific. Alright, we’re going to dig more into that. M stands for measurable, A stands for achievable, R stands for relevant, and T stands for time bound. Okay. So that’s what makes up an effective goal, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound.

Rohn Gibson (00:15:59):

So let’s give an example. Okay. What does that even mean? So an example of a smart, a good smart goal could be depending on ultimately what your desired outcome would be is at the end of this month, our church website will see a 10% lift in traffic by increasing our weekly publishing frequency from two posts per week to four posts per week. Okay. So there’s some very specific things in that goal that really breaks it down to make it an effective goal. So I’m going to give you some very specific examples of how we get to that end goal. Okay. So S specific state what you’ll do and use action words. Okay. So an example of a specific goal could be, I want to boost our church’s website, traffic by increasing our weekly publishing frequency from two to four times a week. So our two volunteers will increase their workload from writing two posts a week to writing four posts a week, very specific. Yup.

Isabelle Faletti (00:17:09):

And it’s not overwhelming because if I just wrote down, I want to increase my church website by 10%. I would honestly just kind of throw that goal out the window and ignore that. But now that I’m very specific and I’m giving myself the tools, the plan by using our two volunteers who encourage me to go from two to four blog posts, that’s simple. And that doesn’t take a lot of time and that’s just communication to them.

Rohn Gibson (00:17:44):

Yeah, absolutely , so it’s actionable. Cause sometimes we get caught up in the, how are we going to do this? And that’s what the, wow. Say that 10, that word 10 times real fast. But it’s so important, specific and actionable. Okay. So measurable. So that’s the second again, em, and smart, measurable you smaller mini goals to measure progress. So provide a way to evaluate and you specific measurable targets. So that can seem, like what are you even talking about? So let me give you a specific example. So, and I want to increase my church website website traffic by 10%. That’s simple. That is your measurable aspect of your smart goal is I want to see a 10% increase in church website, traffic. That’s it very simple. We’re going to show you how you can measure that almost even more simply through Google analytics and some other tools, but that’s ultimately what we mean by measurable.

Rohn Gibson (00:18:46):

You know, when you get there and you have a measuring stick to tell you, how are we doing as far as getting closer to that goal, you may not go if you’re, what, if you’re at 1% you want to go to 10%. Well, that’s not going to happen overnight, but how do you go to, how do you go to 2%? How do you get to 3%? How do you get to 4%? So setting a measurable goal. Even we use that even in our business. So at ChurchSpring, we literally have the conversation of how do we make ChurchSpring Live 1% better for our customers this week? How do we add more value, 1% better? How do we get 1% better? And Lord willing through the Lord’s help. We’ve been able to make some changes and get better. But anyway, that’s so important. It needs to be measurable. Don’t overcomplicate it. It could be as simple as I want to say, a 10% increase in my church website, traffic. Okay. So next a achievable. So make your goal reasonable and attainable. Um, so depends on your personality type. This is where like

Isabelle Faletti (00:19:42):

I’m queen of making goals that are just not achievable because I think I can do so much in a tiny little amount of time. So if there’s anyone else like that out there listening, you’re not alone. Hopefully I’m not alone. We need to hear this. Thank you.

Rohn Gibson (00:20:03):

Yes. And you, you see a lot about a person’s personality, you know, if something was like, I’m just going to dip my toe in the water and I’ll go from 5% to 6% And then you have people, honestly, like me

Isabelle Faletti (00:20:10):

95%

Rohn Gibson (00:20:21):

Yeah, I want to have a 300% increase on my church website traffic. So make your goals reasonable and attainable. So an example could be our church website, traffic increased by 5% last month when we increased our weekly publishing frequency from one, one post a week to two times a week. So therefore thinking if we doubled that to four, that we can get to 10%, that’s totally attainable. Now say, I want to increase it by a hundred percent, but I’m only going to take action and double it to get while you’re setting a goal, that’s a wish you have no plan of how to get there. So that’s the difference between a goal and a wish a goal is I’ve done the work. I understand if I do these things based on these results, I’ve gotten the past. I can get this result. That’s an attainable goal thing. 300% increase. Well, that’s a wish and a hope and not a goal that has strategic action tied to it.

Rohn Gibson (00:21:10):

That is, is achievable. Okay. So Hey, achievable are relevant set a goal that is relevant to your church website outcome and improves your ministry in some way. Don’t, don’t just like, Oh, I’m just going to come up with some random goals that have nothing to do with an achievable goal. That’s really going to improve our ministry. I know a lot of people, we asked that question. The last several episodes of church bring lives. If you haven’t checked those out, go back and check them out. But we asked what is the desired outcome you have with your church website? As many times as we want to increase attendance, we’re going to increase visitors many times. Like we’ve even heard today. It’s about communicating to my existing congregation, having a communication platform, that’s out there for them. So if, if those are two big desired outcomes that you want, I see from your church website, then create a relevant goal.

Rohn Gibson (00:22:05):

Based on that. So again, as an example, increasing church website, traffic will boost awareness in our community and generate more visitors to our church. Okay. Those two things, especially. So let me give you some, I don’t want to call it Ninja trick, but that’s the word that came to mind. So I’ll, I’ll use it anyway. Uwhen you have visitors that come to your church, if you don’t have a welcome card,uhopefully,uyou’re able to go up and shake their hand or maybe not shake their hand in the world we live in today, but at least hello and ask them, how did they find out about you? It’s so Interesting. My father-in-law’s a pastor. I had a conversation with him probably a year ago, ish. And that was one of the things he talked about. How many people, when he would ask them, how’d you find out about it?

Rohn Gibson (00:22:48):

So it used to be the phone book. Oh, we found you in the phone book and we decided stop by and visit the church swung from the phone book too. I found your website. I saw your website and one of them come and visit. So make sure that you connect those relevant goals too, that desired outcome that you’re ultimately looking for and understanding, and there is a connection. So in this example, so by increasing church website traffic, well, what did I just say? My father in law said was the biggest driver. One of the biggest drivers of visitors. Well from him, it was a big shift from the phone book to the website. So therefore if we can, can increase website traffic then based on, and you could, you could really get extra nerdy with this. And we use that term very effectively at ChurchSpring, we are just church tech nerds.

Rohn Gibson (00:23:40):

But like you can start saying, okay, if we can increase, you know, our, our, our new website, visitors to this and X percentage of those are actually going to walk in our door or we’ll be able to minister to and welcome to our local gathering. So making sure again, that you’re setting relevant goals based on desired outcome that you would like to see. That’s good. Alright. T last time-bound give yourself time, but set a deadline. How many of you have said, man, I want to accomplish this thing. And five years later, you’re still saying, man, I want to accomplish that thing. There was never a time where you got specific about when that thing should be done. So be specific on a date and timeframe. So this is kind of leadership. I literally just had a meeting with a group of guys this morning, and we were talking about leadership and some of those basic fundamental aspects of leadership and Lord willing, you may be doing a lot of this now, but eventually you’re able to lead somebody else.

Rohn Gibson (00:24:46):

That’s able to do this. So what are those things that you should, you should have? So what needs to be done? We’ve talked about the, what we’ve also talked about, who should be doing it. We’ve already identified two volunteers that should be doing it. We need to connect the why for those people. So they know it’s not just about putting four posts a week. It’s about seeing those new faces come in and that’s why this work is worth it. Yeah. so anyway, just a couple of extra little things to think about there in relation to leadership. So again, to summarize a smart goal at the end of this month, our church website will see a 10% lift in traffic by increasing our weekly publishing frequency from two posts per week to four posts per week. Okay. Now many of you may be thinking, I can’t even think of content for that. Well, you need to get ready for next week’s episode because you don’t realize how much of a content creation hub your church already is. Like you’re producing so much content. So again, I’m not going to get ahead of next week, but if that’s a struggle for you, just even just as an example of that going, you’re like, yeah, that sounds good. But creating four posts a week, I don’t think we can do that. You can, and we’re going to show you next week. So don’t miss next. Week’s upset little plug there.

Isabelle Faletti (00:26:06):

That’s good. And really is what you just gave us. Rohn, it’s, it’s a roadmap and almost a formula because if you plug in the answers to what a smart goal is, it is specific. It is measurable. It is achievable. It is relevant and time bound. Then you have your next steps laid out for you. And so you’re not spending time and mental energy to, to figure out every day, what do I want, why am I doing this? This can give purpose and provide clarity. When you are making edits, when you are making decisions on content and maybe even on, on sermon sermons and blogs. And I mean, right now we’re in the pandemic. And so that these smart goals can guide how you’re responding to new seasons in your church to what’s going on in the world. Without, again, having to spend a lot of mental energy to figure out if you should move forward on something.

Rohn Gibson (00:27:12):

So I’m sure there’s, there’s probably people watching right now and we’ll watch it later that I thinking, okay, I don’t even know what kind of goals are important for my ministry as it relates to my church website. So let me give you just a couple of quick examples and then I’d love to hear if there’s any thoughts or ideas even in chat. So if you have some thoughts on goals, just based on what you’ve heard already, that you should be considering or working toward for your church website, I’d love to see those, but a couple that you can really think about and consider, we’ve already talked about one visitors to your website. Now there are two types of visitors and we’ll talk about this here momentarily, but there’s two types of visitors. There’s a returning visitors to your site, and then there’s new visitors.

Rohn Gibson (00:27:57):

Each one of those, you could create a specific goal too. So if your goal is, I want to get new visitors actually to come to my church and to visit us, then you want to focus on that new visitors to your website. So they’ve never been to your website before. And the tools that we’re going to tell you about can tell you the difference between somebody who’s been to your site and a brand new person, your site, but you would want to focus on that brand new visitors to your site. So there’s different strategies and different things than your website that you would want to do to drive that new visitors. One of them being content. Okay. And then the second side of visitors would be returning visitors. So those are most likely people in your church. So if your outcome that you want, which we’ve already heard here again, is I just want to communicate effectively to my church members that are already there.

Rohn Gibson (00:28:43):

Okay, well then if your church website is going to be an effective tool for that, a measurement that you could look at is how is our returning visitors increasing our, our church members really utilizing the church website as an effective communication tool. And what do we need to do to continue to send them there? Hey, you can find out the answers to your questions on our website, go visit XYZ, to go get that information. So you would look at measuring, returning visitors to your site. In that example. Another thing that you may want to think about as a goal is you can actually get specific and say, we want to increase traffic to our website from our social media platforms. Yeah. Well, inside of the tools, we’re going to show you. You can actually look and see where’s the traffic coming from. Is it coming directly?

Rohn Gibson (00:29:27):

Is it coming organically through a Google search? Is it coming from social media? If you do some advanced things, you can actually tag them. And we’ll, we’ll actually, we’ll put this in the show notes. So there’s a tool that we’ll share where you can actually create these URLs that then you can see if it’s an email or what it’s actually from. So you can traffic, or you can measure traffic based on specific sources, like social media, another thing. And this will be my last example because I’ve already given quite a few, but is the number of website plan, your visit completions. So ChurchSpring does not currently offer a plan, your visit feature technically. However, number one, you could have a page right now on your site that’s using our contact form. It says, plan your visit. They fill it out to plan their visit and it submits to you so you can follow up with them.

Rohn Gibson (00:30:19):

So, number one, you can do that. Number two, stay tuned. We’ve got some exciting things coming over the next couple of months, specifically in the area of planning your visit and in creating an environment to take a brand new visitor to your website, and actually turning that into somebody, walking in to your local gathering, that gives you the opportunity to get to know and to minister to. So I’ll just say that that’s another thing you could think about is the plan your visit. So again, you can create one right now just through a contact form, but stay tuned. We’ve got some really cool stuff coming in. The area of that plan, your visit future inside of ChurchSpring.

Isabelle Faletti (00:30:58):

Yeah, it’s true. We have, we have a lot of amazing things coming down the pipeline. I can’t wait to share actually later on in this episode, I’ll be sharing some new features and updates that we have. So Rohn, I feel like we’ve, again, we’ve given our we’ve given a really good roadmap of this. This is the blueprint of how it can have success. However, what next, how do I go about achieving these goals? How do I measure it? So what are some tools that we can use to measure the results of their church website?

Rohn Gibson (00:31:35):

Yeah, so right out of the gate and I couldn’t even contain. And so I’ve already said it a couple of times here, but Google analytics even in, you know, outside of the church and the business world, it’s one of the most powerful website analytics tools out there and the best part it’s free. There is no, yes. Woohoo – we love free!

Isabelle Faletti (00:31:55):

Woohoo!

Rohn Gibson (00:31:55):

There is no fee associated with it and it is powerful. Yeah. So if it would, if you would like to have us do a ChurchSpring Live specifically on Google analytics. So not just like what we’re talking about today, but like an in depth, deep dive into Google analytics from creating an account, maybe to like going through each of the sections to really understand what that is, type type “analytics” type “analytics” in the comments to let us know, “Man, I would love that that would be so valuable for me.” and so anyway, you guys can go ahead and type that in there, but Google analytics, great tool, highly recommend. So I’m not even going to share really anything else. Cause that’s the tool. There is another tool though, once you get Google analytics set up, is that they have what’s called the Google URL creator.

Rohn Gibson (00:32:52):

I forget the exact name from it right off the top of my head. But basically you go there, you put your, your church website URL in, and then you can put like the campaign. So let’s say you’re doing a campaign around Easter Christmas or some event VBS or whatever. At your church, you can put VBS in there and then you can put the source of traffic, like email and then in analytics. You actually be able to see the source of traffic was from this campaign. So it was for the VBS campaign. They came through email and it just gives you so much more information to help you understand what’s working and not working. So let’s be on doing this for the sake of just collecting information. That’s, that’s like, that’s worthless. We want information that’s valuable to you that you can take and then act upon to help you reach more people and ultimately achieve whether it’s reaching more people in your community to have more people come to your gathering or some other source.

Rohn Gibson (00:33:44):

That’s why this data is really important. So you can connect the data that action, that data to an action item. Okay. How do we do that better? Or how many, how many here? I mean, I wish we could raise hands, say yes. So, so say yes, if you’re in this category, how many of you are doing things at your church that you have? Well, we already know partially you have no idea if it’s even working or not, but you keep doing it year after year, after year, after year, you keep doing it and you have no idea if it’s even adding value to somebody, if it’s helping you achieve a certain outcome. So Google analytics online, that’s one of the benefits of online is you can track it and measure it and see. So then you can actually stop doing something that’s not working well.

Rohn Gibson (00:34:32):

Or if it’s a community like your church website, like that’s not something where you just like, Oh, forget it. I’m not going to do it. That’s an example of, we have to figure out how to do this better. And hopefully that’s why you’re here. So hats off to everybody who’s joining us today and watching this video, you’re already way ahead of the curve because you’re investing your time, your effort, your energy into learning, how to do it better. So congratulations, hats off to everybody here. That’s joining us today. So Google analytics, check it out. What are some data points that you can check in analytics? We’ve already shared some of those. So number of users to your website as a whole, and then a breakdown of new visitors versus returning visitors you can look at page visits so you can actually look at what pages are people visiting on your website, so important.

Rohn Gibson (00:35:21):

And then you can also do what’s called setting up goals. So let’s say that you want people to contact you, or you want people to schedule a visit. Then you can start attaching goals to that. And Google analytics can actually tell you of the, let’s say, 20 by people that fill out your contact form to say that we’re going to come and visit what percentage of those are or what percentage of your traffic actually fill that out. And then one of the really cool things is of the 10 people that did where’d they come from? Was it Google analytics? If you, if you start doing advertising and promotion, like through Facebook ads or on holidays and things like that those are all things that you can track the performance to say, we’re doing this. Is it working so goals? You can actually literally set up trackable goals inside of Google analytics. So, yeah, I don’t remember if we asked this question or not. Are you currently using, I’ve seen some, some comments on here that they have it and they can’t log into it, or they’re having issues logging in been their little password reset trick can help you out there, just go through that process. But are you using the analytics? So yes or no. Are you currently using Google analytics to measure the performance of your church website? So let us know.

Isabelle Faletti (00:36:45):

I want to know what are you using right now?

Rohn Gibson (00:36:48):

Let us know, and we’ve got quite a few people. My goodness. I’m scrolling scrolling. Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (00:36:53):

I think we need to have a ChurchSpring Live episode Rohn about analytics. Yeah.

Rohn Gibson (00:37:01):

Mark and Melvin, Sheila, Jackie, Ken Carole. Well, I guess we had a topic, so,

Isabelle Faletti (00:37:12):

We hear you!

Rohn Gibson (00:37:14):

And it will come ! And be able to get somebody who is a Google five pecialist that’s like,

Isabelle Faletti (00:37:22):

That’s like chief nerd of nerds

Rohn Gibson (00:37:23):

Kind of. And again, an affectionate way. We’re not using that in a derogatory way whatsoever. That is a term of endearment here at ChurchSpring. But we may be able to even get somebody in here that can come and help us walk through it even at a whole nother level, but also he understands the church. So anyway, we got all kinds of teasers!

Isabelle Faletti (00:37:41):

I know we do. This is awesome. Well, Rohn, I just, I wanted to follow up one thing that you mentioned in what tools we can use. And you mentioned, I mean, our entire thing is what is working and how do we know what is working? And if you log into your Google analytics and you see, Oh, I have really low traffic to my website. That doesn’t mean as you mentioned, Rohn, that doesn’t mean to shut down your website. No, that means you are aware of the situation of what’s going on and that sets your goal right there of increase your website, traffic. So the, the, the tools, Google analytics, it can give you an insight into what’s going on so that you can know what’s working and what’s, what’s not working so that you can ultimately, I mean, truly reach your community, communicate to your church members because that’s, that’s what we want here in the church. Yes. Yeah.

Rohn Gibson (00:38:39):

And one of the really cool things is if you’re a website traffic’s low now, well, Hey, it’s up from here?

Isabelle Faletti (00:38:45):

Yes.

Rohn Gibson (00:38:48):

But let’s get to work. Let’s get to work on improving it. So that’s my, that’s my Enneagram eight personality, right? There’s like, let’s climb this mountain, let’s do this thing. And one of the really cool features actually that’s super encouraging for you inside of analytics is they have an easy compare feature. So you can look at, so anyway, talk about comparison real quick. Do not compare yourself to other churches. Don’t do it. If there’s some of you who are like crushing it with analytics and have goals set up, are you talking about, Oh yeah, we use animal. Don’t compare yourself to them. I heard a great quote recently, and I don’t even remember the source where I would give it, but it was basically the only person you should compare yourself to as the person you were yesterday, don’t compare yourself to some other church. So let’s just get a little better.

Rohn Gibson (00:39:32):

Let’s get 1% better. Let’s get Google analytics set up. Let’s get it installed, which is super easy as well as going to talk us through that here in a moment. But you can use this compare feature inside of analytics, where literally you can say here’s our traffic from let’s just say June. So here’s how much, how many visitors we had in June. And you can very easily quick compare select the dates for July at the end of July. And it will give you a comparison report. So you can see what percentage of new visitors are you up or down based on where you want to be. What percentage of total traffic, what percentage of, you know, if you’ve got a specific goal set up, how did you do month over month comparison? So it is an invaluable tool and I know it’s very easy to get in there and get overwhelmed. Don’t

Isabelle Faletti (00:40:17):

Yeah. Literally

Rohn Gibson (00:40:20):

One screen, which I’m going to show you. And that is going to be the screen. That’s going to just give you so much information that just focus on a very few metrics. It’s not about volume. It’s about looking at a few of the right things that tell you you’re on track to get to where you want to go.

Isabelle Faletti (00:40:37):

Yeah. It is a gold mine inside of Google analytics. I will say that. So I know that we we’ve had a couple of people say, yes, they’re using Google analytics, but they don’t really know how to use it. Or you log in and it’s overwhelming. I mean, what is, what is this dashboard? There’s a lot of graphs and a lot of things to click on. So Rohn, how can we set up Google analytics for my church website?

Rohn Gibson (00:41:01):

Yes. So let’s go ahead and share the screen here. And Isabelle is actually going to kind of walk us through the, behind the scenes of how to do this. And it is crazy easy with ChurchSpring if you haven’t set up an, a Google account, there’s a process they literally like will walk you through it. And then we’re even going to show you then how to take once. You’ve got that set up with Google analytics. Here’s how you implement that to connect the dots between your Google analytics account and your ChurchSpring powered website. Okay. So what you’re seeing here on your screen is actually the dashboard that I would recommend you look at when you log into Google analytics. So you’ll see, it’s really small on my screen. Let me see if I can make it bigger here real quick.

Rohn Gibson (00:41:48):

Okay. There we go. So you’ll see the audiences tab there on the, on the left hand side, and then there’s an overview. There’s so much information just in this one screen that if that’s all you look at to get started, that’s a win, that’s a massive win because now you can actually see how many users are coming to our website. How many of those users are new? So you can see that there, so total users would be 20,000, 286, obviously that’s a ton of visitors. But new users, you know, 17,420. So they’re reaching a ton of new people. And so if that’s your goal, if you’re trying to reach new people to get them to come then to your church, like this is incredible to see this I’ll talk about kind of to the, to the right of that. There’s some other page views.

Rohn Gibson (00:42:36):

So that’s just number of pages like individual pages they visited, but ultimately like just looking at those first two metrics to say how many total people came to our website as users, and then how many, what percentage of those were new users just for you to have that understanding and start connecting that to that end goal outcome that you want, whether it’s, I want to have increased visitors to my church or whether that’s, I want to communicate more effectively to my existing church members super, super effective tools. I mean, literally it even tells you here, you know, what is the average session time, which means what’s the average time somebody spends on your website looking at it. So obviously you want to add value to the longer, the better, but two minutes and 37 seconds, even in the world we live in today, that’s holding somebody’s attention for a decent amount of time. So anyway, just some things to to look out there, but again, if that’s the only screen you look at just to get started, we’ve already connected some serious, important goals to just those two metrics of, of users and new users. So you can check that out there and our audience and then overview.

Isabelle Faletti (00:43:41):

Yup. Yup. And we, we have Gerald, he said it can be a monster referring to Google analytics. It can be overwhelming, but this is how you can tame the monster by logging in. And by going to the overview and doing exactly what Rohn said, and if you’re not sure, what does sessions mean? Then pull up another tab and literally Google, “what does sessions in Google analytics mean?” And you will have a ton of resources at your hand. I mean, I know that’s what I do. I’m kind of new to Google analytics myself. And so it can be a monster as, as Harold said. And so that’s what I do. I do. What does, I’m looking at the left side audience in this screen? What do I need to know about demographics or what is audiences in Google analytics? And then that can give you some information that you didn’t have before and then that can guide your next steps and even create goals from that.

Rohn Gibson (00:44:43):

Absolutely. And like I said, we will stay tuned for a future episode. We’re going to do a, we’ll probably do multiple deep dives, kind of a one Oh one and maybe like a two Oh one and et cetera, versions of diving into analytics, just based on the response that we’ve seen, it’s an incredible tool, but here’s the reality. It’s only beneficial to you and your ministry, not based on volume of data, not based on knowing how to use every single aspect of Google analytics. You get tremendous value out of Google analytics just by looking at those two metrics that are on the screen right now in one page of Google analytics. So don’t let it overwhelm you because it absolutely is. I love data. I’m a total data nerd. I love getting in there and doing that. And it’s overwhelming for me. Don’t let it be just focus on the two metrics that actually are going to connect to your, your ultimate outcome that you’re looking for. And then just, just be good with that and then learn a little bit more and continue to grow in that way. That’s 1% better every day.

Isabelle Faletti (00:45:41):

I know that we had really, it sounds like we have a good mix of viewers who have Google analytics set up. They don’t know how to use it. And then we have some visitors here who they don’t really know even how to set up Google analytics. It’s not set up yet on their website. So I want to show you just walk through how you can set up Google analytics. So just to be very, very basic and how I’m explaining this right now, you have your website and there’s a tool called Google analytics to tell you how your website is doing. You have to connect those two. So right now if you’re not using Google analytics, then it’s not talking to each other. It’s very simple to set up that integration on your, on your ChurchSpring website. So I’ll show you in Google analytics what you need to set up on your website, whether that’s with Church Spring hopefully not with any other provider, we’re the only ones out there, right?

Rohn Gibson (00:46:49):

And we are thankful for that. We over that this world is bigger than ChurchSprings. So there’s a lot of people doing it, doing it really, really well. We think we do it pretty good too, but

Isabelle Faletti (00:47:00):

The basics to grab or to integrate will be the same, no matter what your, your provider is. So your first step will just be to go to Google analytics. You can go to analytics.google.com, or if you’re like me, you can Google analytics, Google analytics, and then your log in will pop up. So if you’re lazy like me, then that is your first step. And then log in again, if you don’t, if you don’t have Google analytics set up yet, then you will need to create an account. So create an account or login and you will click to the bottom left. You’ll see, I have a little green circle there click the admin button, and then that will pull up three different panels. Again, we’re staying focused on what we’re getting and right now we are getting what you need, your tracking embed code to add to your website.

Isabelle Faletti (00:48:01):

So stay focused on that click admin, and then in the middle panel, under the property, you’ll click into the tracking info and then that will bring down a drop down menu. And you’ll see here, there’s something called tracking code that I have highlighted click on tracking code again in that middle section under properties. And then that will display this side menu. You will see tracking ID at the top and website tracking global site tag there at the bottom, do not click the tracking ID. I put an X there because that’s not what you’re going after. It can be distracting as kind of that, that shiny gold thing that you, that you want to go for. Instead scroll down and grab or scroll down under the category of website tracking the global site tag and then where that arrow was pointing where there’s a lot of code.

Isabelle Faletti (00:49:04):

And if it’s overwhelming to you, that’s fine. You don’t need to understand everything. That’s what you’re going after. That is your embed code for your, for your tracking ID. So just copy that and then you’ll hop on over to your website. So let me hop over actually to a ChurchSpring website. So I can show you how to add that right on your ChurchSpring website. So again, you’ve copied that tracking embed code go to your website login, click settings on your church, spring website. And I’m on the flourish plan. If you’re on Sprout or Grow, your settings will be at the top right section click settings, and then select the website tab, click into the analytics enter tab. And then you’ll see a page called Google analytics code. All you have to do is paste that code that you had copied into this text box here and click save.

Isabelle Faletti (00:50:10):

And that’s actually all that you have to do to integrate Google analytics into your website. And I mean, I’m not joking. That is all you have to do. It’s so simple. If you do use another website provider reaching out to their support team, or I love Googling or Google, how to set up Google analytics on my website and then put in whoever you use for your provider. However, again, the same information will be there for pulling that information from Google analytics. Dwayne, you said “you lost me.” Oh, no, I don’t want to lose you! That’s okay. This will be again available for every watch and Dwayne send in a ticket and we can answer any specific questions that you have. So

Rohn Gibson (00:50:58):

And as far as creating a Google analytics account, we’ll link to that right in the show notes. But if you just go, if you just do a Google search for Google analytics, when you come to that page, if you don’t have an existing account or go to analytics@google.com, thank you, Isabelle is on it. Literally you can create your account, it’ll walk you through the steps and then it’ll take you right to the place where your tracking code, which is what Isabelle just shared. So do that again. You can go check out the show notes, we’ll link it up. You can watch the video again, walk you right through that process. But that will make it pretty simple. And like Isabelle said, we’re here for you. Don’t feel like you’re alone if it doesn’t, if it doesn’t exactly if you have questions along the way or becomes just kind of hit a roadblock, reach out to us. We want to help you with that. So don’t hesitate to reach out. All right, let’s see here. All right. You still there? Isabelle. Alright, well, we’re going to go ahead and just keep walking through at this point. I think Isabelle might be a frozen there. We’ll see if she jumps back in. So definitely Google Google analytics go and create their account. We will you know, help you every step of the way, so don’t hesitate to reach out. So action items. It’s time to set and start moving forward and taking action on the things that we have discussed today. Welcome back.

Isabelle Faletti (00:52:25):

Hey Thanks.

Rohn Gibson (00:52:28):

So time to take action! So set some SMART goals- even set like two to three max. Just set two to three goals, max, and I mean, one is ideal because then you can get laser focused on that, but set some smart goals for your church website. Next implement Google analytics. Isabel just walked us through it. And again, if you have any questions as you’re walk work, working through that process, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We’re here to support you every step of the way. I know we have a mix of people. We have some people who join us and watch this video afterwards, which is wonderful. Cause it’s on Facebook, YouTube on our website. If you’re not currently a ChurchSpring user. And you’re like, man, that looks really cool. I’d like to learn more. We’d love to have you join us for a demo. You can sign up for a demo.

Rohn Gibson (00:53:18):

They operate Monday through Saturday. You can pick the time that works best for you. We have live chat support during our normal business hours, Monday through Friday, eight to five, but you can go and select a time that works best for you at churchspring.Com/Demo to see literally myself and my co founder will walk you through how you can go from no church website or a church website that’s really frustrating to a brand new church website that you can get in and manage and launch very quickly. Excuse me, we just received a testimonial this morning from a,a customer that because of COVID and everything going on, they were just scrambling in regards to live streaming and just how it was just a huge help. And obviously we love hearing that. That’s why we do what we do is to support you to support the church.

Rohn Gibson (00:54:03):

Lastly, if, if you’ve seen like, this is great, I just want to, I just want to get signed up. How much is the signup fee and all that stuff? Well, I have great news for you. There’s no sign up fee and secondly, you get a seven day free trial, so you can go to churchsring.Com/Trial and sign up, kick the tires on ChurchSpring. See if it’s a great fit for you. If it’s not no worries. We literally make it super easy. There’s a cancel button right there. You click cancel and you’re done. If it’s a good fit for you, we’d love to obviously welcome you to the ChurchSpring family and support your ministry efforts moving forward. So if you are interested in a trial churchspring.Com/Trial, so we’ve got some new things. I love this. I have such a hard time, not telling people all the cool things we’re working on. But we’ve got some things that are ready and that are out there and live on your site right now. So Isabella, tell us about a couple of those things.

Isabelle Faletti (00:54:56):

Yup. Yeah, our tech team. They’re just amazing. Let me tell you, they worked so hard on making ChurchSpring a better platform every single day. So I’m excited to show you two new features actually that we launched this week. So I’m going to share my screen here so that I can just give you a quick highlight. So we just launched our inline editor on every single text block that you add on your website. So this is so amazing because you have even more control over what information you’re adding. So when you add a new block on your ChurchSpring website you can obviously you can update your text but you can also change the formatting of any of your text. And you can add links. You can add bullet points, you can add video content. So go ahead, log into your website, check out the new inline editor in your blocks.

Isabelle Faletti (00:56:00):

And you’ll have a lot of fun with that. I know I did when I was testing it out earlier this week. And then I also wanted to highlight some new images that we’ve added in our ChurchSpring image library. For those of you who are new to ChurchSpring, when you sign up with ChurchSpring, you get access to hundreds. I don’t know how many photos we have probably a thousand have hundreds of photos. Yeah. And already uploaded, ready to go. And your ChurchSpring image library there. They’re free to use. There’s no there’s no charge or anything to use them. And perfect for different seasons for your church. We always upload and add a new images. So we just added 25 new images that are kind of related to the, the season that we’re in with the, the current current pandemic focused on social distancing video meetings and get togethers because we know that right now that’s how small groups are meeting sometimes or live streaming.

Isabelle Faletti (00:56:59):

So log-in to your website today and take a look at the new images at our new inline editor. I know that we’re excited about it. We want it. We want to hear back from you if there is something that you want to hear back, if there’s even some images that you want us to upload next time that we upload new images, let us know. Because we make new updates based on you, of how we can best serve you. Darryl, you asked is the image library searchable. It is not yet. That is on a roadmap actually. So thank you for that feedback. Because that helps us prioritize next quarter of new feature updates. So I appreciate that, Melvin, you said they are great. The images, thanks, Melvin.

Rohn Gibson (00:57:43):

Yeah. So on the searchable. So that is something that we are working on. One of the things that we’re doing in the interim until that’s up is we are uploading new seasonal images based on kind of where we’re at. So as we get into different seasons, whether it’s fall Christmas, et cetera when we upload new images that automatically puts them on the top. So you’ll be able to see those seasonal images. Not that we’re saying that’s any type of replacement for search, cause trust me, we want it to I want it the church I attend uses it and I, I, I use it too. So I want it. We’re totally with you on that. And you’ll see from the images that is about to share it, obviously they’re pandemic related images. I think it’s important as a church for us to just not act like nothing’s happening. So we wanted to give you those there’s 25 new images. You can use them, however you wish just to communicate during this time. Obviously we Lord willing we’re on the tail end of it. God’s in control of that, but in the meantime there’s tools we can use to communicate effectively. So those tools and resources are available for you there. Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (00:58:55):

Well, thank you to everybody who has attended this live event for anybody who’s watching this and the rewatch. Thank you for watching this again, we exist to equip you with the tools that you need to reach your community to grow the church. I do want to put in a quick plug for next week. And I

Rohn Gibson (00:59:14):

Before we do that. Do that. Let, let let’s hit the pause button. I think we may have had some questions and I know we’re, I know we’re getting near the end, so I don’t want to, I don’t want to hold it too long, but I want to make sure if there are any other questions cause we had, we had an active chat today. Wonderful. so I’m going to kind of just breeze through here real quick. Can’t even get into Google analytics to read them, do a password reset. You’re not going to be the only person that’s ever done that. I’ve done that more times than I want to admit. So anyway, definitely you can go check that out. Yeah. Let’s see,

Isabelle Faletti (00:59:53):

Darryl, you asked if there will be a replay. I know that,we mentioned that a couple of times, but I want to bring that up again. Yes. There is a replay and you can also access that and show notes. I know we talked a lot about Google analytics. Rohn mentioned the, the tracking tool that you can use to track your links. That will be in the show notes churchspring.com/CSL008.

Rohn Gibson (01:00:17):

Okay. And we’ve got one Alice. I hope you’re still here. Cause I know you had a couple of other comments, but when I try to go onto my website, it doesn’t come up. Why won’t I just type in the domain? So we don’t want you to be frustrated. We’re here to help and we want you to get help today. So if you can’t get in your website to even submit a support ticket, then just go to ChurchSpring.com fill out, actually let’s just make it easy. Just send an email to support@ChurchSpring.com. And we will follow up with you to get you into your website and answer any questions that you have along the way there. So Alice, if you’re still on, I hope you are. Definitely reach out to us. We want to be here to serve you.

Rohn Gibson (01:00:56):

And we had another question come in from Carl. Still wondering if all fix your security problems. I’m not sure what security problems we’re talking about. I have a feeling, I know what this is. So if, if it’s not, Carl, if you’re still watching obviously we want to, we want to help solve whatever problem it is. I think you’re referring to when, when somebody signs up for ChurchSpring, we provide a free security certificate. But you have to get your domain name pointed to our servers to get everything to work. So we offer a free service. You don’t pay anything for this. If you don’t know how to go in and update your DNS information to point your church, a domain name to our church, bring servers, we’ll do that for you. And that’s why we ask for your registrar information so we can log in and change it.

Rohn Gibson (01:01:46):

If you’re not comfortable with that, Hey, no worries. We actually can send you a help file where you can read it. It literally gives you step by step instructions, how to make the changes yourself. And I know for some people it’s just a little intimidating, so we just do it for you. So you don’t, you’re not required to give us that information if you’re able to go in and make the changes yourself. So on the security side of things, I have a feeling that’s because something on the DNS wasn’t set up correctly, if there were changes that were made and what that does is it basically causes the security certificate to not work, which will then throw a security error warning, basically warning people. This site’s not secure. So that’s not a security, excuse me, not a security issue with church ring. It’s an issue with connecting the domain name to our service correctly. So all the parts and pieces that need to talk to each other, talk to each other correctly. So Isabelle, did I read that correctly? Are you interpreting that differently?

Isabelle Faletti (01:02:44):

Yep. That is correct. That’s that’s also, yeah. So Carl reach out we, we definitely want to make sure that we can issue that SSL certificate to your website. And so then you can have people easily go to go to your website. So again, send in a ticket to, in your website asking for some help so that we can know where to start otherwise, as Rohn had mentioned earlier to Alice if you cannot log-in to your website, just send us an email support@churchspring.com so that we can make sure we can get this addressed and fixed today as soon as possible. Cause we understand the importance of that. So we don’t, we don’t, we don’t want you to have any frustration either.

Rohn Gibson (01:03:26):

Awesome. All right. We’ll just wrap up with this. Well, I think we’ve got maybe one or two more things, but Melvin, thank you so much. It’s awesome. Serving the church. It’s so encouraging to jump on ChurchSpring Live and get to interact with you all this way. It’s truly a blessing and it’s not a, it’s not something that we take lightly. So thank you all for joining. So tell us a little bit about next episode. I know I, I had to let the the secret out a little bit, but tell us more information. Tell us about the next episode.

Isabelle Faletti (01:03:55):

Oh man, well next week I say this every week, but next week it is so value packed and, and everybody who’s attending right now. Put it on your calendar next Thursday at 10:00 AM. You’re going to learn a ton. I mean, it’d be amazing if you could reuse the content that you’re already creating, if you can reuse that content on your church website. So instead of just feeling stuck or overwhelmed of trying to think up new content ideas to use on your website to use on your social media if you had content all ready to go, yes, I need that. I want that for my church website. So next week, join us because you are going to learn how you can save time and ultimately grow your church by repurposing content for your church website. So get ready for that, Gerald. Thank you.

Isabelle Faletti (01:04:53):

You just said all sessions are all that are value packed. I appreciate that. That’s that’s why we exist. So if you have any questions about what we’ll be talking about next week of how you can repurpose content for your church website ask, you can put the question in this live stream. We’ll also be posting next week’s live stream event. So you can post that question or just go to ChurchSpring.com/contact and submit your question that way. So again, thank you so much to everybody for joining. We are truly honored and blessed to serve you. And God bless and we will see you all next week.

Rohn Gibson (01:05:34):

Yeah. See you all next week, everyone.