It only takes a few seconds for a guest to your website to decide to leave – or stay.

Guest Services in your church is more than just a friendly face greeting everyone who comes onto your property – because increasingly, your Guests have “visited” your website before coming to your church facility. Mark MacDonald, a close friend and founder and Creative Director of Pinpoint Creative Group, recently had this to say: 

 85% of people visit a website before visiting a church. If your church doesn’t “feel” like your web; most of them will never return.

You can read the full article here, but note the close relationship between the digital and the physical: your digital “doorway” must match your physical doorway – at least in “feel.”

While you’re pondering that nugget, add this to the mix:  Evidence points to information from trusted sources getting a better hold on our brains than the noise from everything else.

Martin Lindstrom, consumer advocate consultant and best-selling author, recently elaborated on this topic in a Fast Company online column:

Let’s say that not that long ago you came across a fascinating article. But when you later try to verify some of the facts, you just can’t pinpoint exactly where you first read it. What you do recall is that the source was reliable and you trusted the message. This is a situation I find myself in quite regularly. So much so, that I’ve pondered the conundrum and come up with a theory: we store information according to how trustworthy we deem the source of the message to be.

I make no claims to being a marketing expert (see Mark if you need one) or to being a student of what consumers – including church consumers – are looking for (read more of Lindstrom’s work here).

But when I connect all of the above, it boggles my mind. If you are a leader in ChurchWorld, it ought to do the same to you.

Here’s the summary:

• An overwhelming majority of Guests coming to your church have visited your website first
• Your digital doorway must match the physical doorway or your Guests will feel a major disconnect
• Brands (and that includes your church) that are trusted have a better chance of staying top-of-mind

What are you going to do about it?