Nov
30
5 Reasons Church Websites Don’t Work
ByJames at the New Church Marketing blog gives 5 reasons why church websites don’t work (aka why they don’t rock):
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I’m really enjoying the website. Awesome resource guys!
I just moved from Australia to Japan to serve with an International Church in Tokyo. So far, Jesus Lifehouse has found that it’s main website http://www.jesuslifehouse.com brings more people to church than any other medium; including personal invitation – of which there is plenty.
So a few weeks after we arrived I saw the need of putting the sermons online in Audio and Video format. I headed straight for a wordpress platform – experimented with a few themes and a few days later http://www.jesuslifehouse.tv was born. 3 months later we’ve had over 3,000 new visitors and around 75GB of downloads. Which is so awesome because there is very little available for the Japanese people in there language.
Of course it wasn’t without it’s challenges. (I’m not fluent in Japanese yet) but we worked around it with templates and using a spreadsheet of common translated words and phrases that I can cut and paste in the posts.
I’m also working on a wordpress mod to create a light site that can be browsed from mobile phones – which is the most common form of web access here.
It’s all still early days but we are always improving and re-inventing ourselves. I have found that I’ve had to lean towards the feminine style of site because the market here likes the cute sort of stuff… sometimes over the practical! In other words, it needs to be more Hello Kitty and DragonBall Z than Friends and 24.
Blessings and keep up the great work.
Dave
Dave, this is incredible! I really appreciate you checking in and letting us know what you’re doing in Japan to push the envelope!
I love it! Keep us informed.
–Cory