Our New Web Site is Reaching a Lot of People

I know that most of this online community has probably seen the website of the new church that I'm at, the High Pointe Church of Christ. But just in case you had not, here is our web address: www.highpointechurchofchrist.org.

We are getting about 80 unique visitors a day, which translates to about 2400 unique visitors a month. And we are just now starting to show up in the search engines on Google. Without personal contact, technology is limited in value. But as a point of first contact, the power of the Internet is tremendous. As the site is established, takes on more great content, and is promoted by our members, we will see this traffic increase even more.

No one under age 40, when looking for a church home, goes to the yellow pages. They all do web searches. And if the site is bad, many will rule out this church automatically. Why? Because a church without a good web site--such a vital part of today's culture--shows that it does not care about nor understand the world in which we now live, particularly in regards to young people. And this is increasingly applying towards older people too, as they become more familiar with this technology. A great number of our registered users on our website are older, which is great.

Today I met Laura, a woman who has a consignment sale at the church and then donates the remaining clothes to our church's clothes closet. She said that she looked at the site, and loved all of its "bells and whistles." She said that if she didn't live in Denton, she would go hear. Of course, she says this not just because of the site, but because of the wonderful people here. She just bragged about them, to which I heartily agreed! So technology alone will not reach anyone, but it can be a powerful tool to help introduce people to a loving church and the people of God.

What features do you think most people who are looking for a church are drawn to and help them want to visit? What would you look for in a site if moving into an area or searching?