Join Kenny for today’s episode of Church Butler’s Lunch and Learn Podcast to see the brand new North Point Church website that was just launched and hear Kenny’s perspective on the content, the layouts, and more! This is part 1 of a 2 part series, so be sure to tune in for the continuation of this episode!
To see North Point Church’s new website, click here:
TRANSCRIPTION:
Hey, Kenny Jahng here with a Lunch and Learn Session today. Just wanted to share with you an update. North Point Ministries, North Port Community Church in Georgia, which I think is now the second largest church in the country. I think that’s the stat rank. They just launched a brand new website this week.
I wanted just to catch a glimpse with you together, just in case you haven’t checked it out. These guys have done a really good job of positioning the homepage and I just want to share with you the copy, the headline that they’ve chosen to go with. It is something that I think many churches are missing out on. If I were to do a rant on nonprofits and churches is that they don’t communicate the WHY. They don’t communicate what problem they’re going to try to help you solve. They just assume intent and they don’t demonstrate relevance, as I talk about in my Netflix Nation’s talk. There are these four cultural shifts that we need to all change our game on in terms of communications from a nonprofit or a Christian church point of view. And this is one of them. North Point hits it on the head.
Let’s look at the headline here. They start with “Life is complicated”. They just call out the elephant in the room, that life is not easy, life is complicated. It is hard. People go through struggles. People go through valleys. You feel it. If you are a human living life, this is not complicated at all to actually convey to someone and have it resonate. So, that first sentence is very empathetic. It puts the audience first. Notice, most of these video shots are about the people in the church. It’s not about just Andy Stanley or the building.
Now, the second one is “You want to get it right”. “Life is complicated, you want to get it right.” That is talking to, as we say in the StoryBrand language, going through the certification for StoryBrand as a copywriter, we are called out to look at problems in three different ways: an external problem, internal problem, philosophical problem. Life is complicated as the external problem. That’s the actual tangible thing that we all have in front of us.
The internal problem is how you feel and what the barrier or obstacle is, and that is you want to get it right. The feelings inside is frustration. It’s anxiety. It’s this little drive to say, “I want to get life right, but it’s complicated. I don’t know exactly how.”.
The third one, what StoryBrand says is you make your audience the hero and you, your solutions, your offerings, your products, you are the guide. You are the sear. You are the tour director. You’re not the hero. You’re the one who enables the customer, the audience to actually win and succeed and be the hero. Right? And so if the audience, if the community member who’s not going to church feels that life is complicated, they want to get it right, and they are able to find some resources and figure it out and find some order and meaning and significance in their life, then when they become the hero, and this is where the church is positioning itself. It says, “Hey. Let us help. We want to help. We can get you there.”.
This three lines, very short, in fact, it doesn’t even take up more than 25% of the real estate of the homepage above the fold. It’s really interesting that North Point has shifted to this empathetic approach that really calls out, and it should resonate on the basic humanity, that anyone is looking and searching for a church for the first time, that they should be able to resonate with these statements. Life is complicated. That’s a generic enough statement that captures almost all people groups in whatever life stage they’re in, whatever socioeconomic stage they’re in, whatever subgroup in the community they’re in. Life gets complicated. It’s a great statement that’s applicable to all. It’s general, but it’s very specific as to what the problem is, and then, the internal issues that you want to get it right.
I think these guys have done a great job of really articulating that. Then, it is the clear call to action. Plan a visit. It’s actually in two places in bright orange, one on the upper right hand side and one on the left hand side, right underneath that headline. Then, there’s this. I think what a lot of websites miss out on as they offer one option, and one option only, and it says if you’re not going to take that option, then forget about it. Just close the browser, go somewhere else. We don’t want you.
Here, there’s two options: Plan your visit and just show up. A lot of people don’t want to plan the visit, and reveal their contact information, and endure the risk of being known, or being contacted, or being sold. They want to be a little bit anonymous the first time they visit a church to check it out, to see if it really is a safe environment, to see if it’s the place that they want to commit to, right? They are, again, calling out the elephant. Some people just want to show up, and so if you either plan a visit, it goes down a whole track. If you click the “Just show up”, it goes to a page, I think that they’ve done a really good job here.
Again, it says clearly “Sundays at North Point community church, everything you need to know before you arrive”, and it goes through when you meet, where you meet, where to park, what to wear. It talks about all the kids for any parents, infant through preschool, elementary school, middle school, high school, so there’s no black holes. We call this the paparazzi principle in my signature system. You don’t want to leave these fill in the blanks to the imagination of the church goer who might’ve had terrible baggage from previous church visits, or their history growing up in a church, or just their really bad reputation.
They’re showing paparazzi previous, leaving no stone unturned, answering every question, including lik, what to wear, even where to park, how far in advance you should show up, where each of the, I guess, life stages should be. The adult services are here, preschools here, elementary schools here, et cetera. Then again, their headline, I think, the copywriting is spot on. It’s empathetic. It’s an agreement plan, basically. It basically says, “Our goal is to make Sunday the best day of the week.” Our goal is to make Sunday the best day of the week is what we call the plan. There’s an agreement plan, and it basically shares one of your commitments to your audience, and so that they resonate with that and they will be invited in further.
So, just wanted to share with you this refresh of the website and just how simplicity and clarity is key. If you have any questions, hit me up in the comments. Let’s get some discussion started about what else is going really well on this refresh of NorthPoint.org website.
I’m Kenny Jahng. We’ll check out here next time on the Church Butler Lunch Learn. In the meantime, be social, stay social.
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