I’m a little late on posting this – I was so relieved to be finished with my graduate research project that I have been loathe to pick it up again. But, I promised to post the results, and folks have been asking about it.

Quick link to the report: https://artofmission.com/survey/

We had a great response for Survey Version 2.0 — 219 responses in about a month! In all, I looked at over 220 church websites. The feedback we received was wonderful – thanks so much to everyone who participated.

Surprisingly, I found that there was not as much connection as I expected between the cost of a church’s website and its quality. Of course, in my opinion, more expensive church websites tended to look better. But many churches are endowed with generous and talented volunteers that help keep the costs low.

The most important factor seemed to be attitude. From my executive summary:

churches that embrace the web as an opportunity tend to get more value out of the medium than those that approach it as a necessary evil. It can seem obvious when a church has forgotten about their website, or “slapped one together” just in case it turns out that they need one. At the same time, it can also be obvious which churches genuinely expect to connect with people through their website.

You can download the final paper and presentation from https://artofmission.com/survey/. Enjoy!

P.S. Congratulations to Garet Robinson, who won the iTunes gift card! (Garet was randomly selected by a computer program from a list of everyone who filled out the second survey and provided an email address.) Happy listening Garet!