In web design, the first 3 seconds count the most. What does this mean for your Church? You need to make sure you do these 3 things:

• Know your audience

• Craft your website for your audience

• Bring your audience to your website

Step 1: Know Your Audience

In order to know your audience, you need to first know more about your community, because that’s where your audience is. Use a tool, such as Community Profile Builder (which is free), to do research on who is within a certain number of miles from your Church. I’d say 3 miles, as a good start: https://www.thearda.com/us-religion/community-profiles/build-a-profile-of-your-community.

Next, you’ll want to create your personas. You can use my favorite tool, PowerPersonas, to do that: https://www.powerpersonas.com/?ref=rq82nxde (while this is an affiliate link, I do use and recommend it as a tool).

Step 2: Craft your website for your audience

Using that persona that you created, you should next design your homepage for that person. Yes, you will be needing multiple personas for a Church (because members aren’t all the same), but still you should know either what types of people there are near your Church that you’re trying to reach, or else have a specific type of person that your Church is looking for to join. Perhaps you’re looking to get more youth in the Church - design your website to get them into your Church.

Step 3: Bring your audience to your website

Now that you know who your Church is trying to reach, and have a website crafted just for them, start promoting your website on digital platforms that your specific persona uses. If your persona isn’t on Twitter (now called X.com), you may consider not focusing on that platform and, instead, focus on the platform that they’re on.

Yes, this can take time to get right. Don’t worry, you won’t get it from day 1 - you need time to learn that platform. Find some resources to help you learn how to use that platform, or those platforms, or use a digital marketing agency (like us at FaithVenture Media) to help you reach your target persona.

Why all this work?

It’s quite simple - someone who enters your site usually knows within 3 seconds whether or not they’re going to stay on your website. What this means is that you need your website to be made just for the person you’re trying to reach. That way, you’re not lost about whether your website will work or not. Once you’ve done all 3 steps, you’re ready to beat the 3-second rule with ease.

If you need any help with this, FaithVenture Media is here and ready to help.

If you're a Church leader, you can also join our free Church Growth community to talk about this (and other topics) more.