Chapter 10 of 15 · Tactical Ideas
What Should a Church Measure Online?
Chapter 10, “Measuring Digital,” from Online Church Is Not the Answer by Jay Kranda
Short answer: Measure a high number and a low number for every digital area, keep the dashboard simple, and watch the trend for a year. Reach and impressions are cars driving past your building, not people in the seats.
What is this chapter about?
Data is malleable. Cable news does it, YouTubers do it, and people do it with the Bible too, reading the verses they like and skipping the rest. But numbers matter. Rick Warren says every number represents a soul, and if God didn't care about numbers he wouldn't have named a book of the Bible Numbers. A friend once told me about a retailer that used eye tracking to learn people pick birthday cards at eye level, then moved the expensive cards there. I'm not telling you to buy eye tracking. I'm telling you the right data, in context, changes decisions.
COVID was a shotgun wedding with digital for most churches (my friend Bill Staffieri's phrase). Churches of a hundred suddenly saw thousands "watching" on Facebook and YouTube. Those were reach and impressions, which can be three seconds of viewing. Nobody was lying. They just didn't know the context. So here's my approach: for every digital area, track a big number and a low number. The big number is potential, the low number is deep engagement. A friend who owned a Chick fil A had a traffic map on his office wall because cars driving by predicted sandwiches sold, and he got the city to connect a dead end street to get more cars. Cars and sandwiches. Both numbers together tell the story.
At my church we don't report reach or views for the online service. We report how many people watched at least thirty minutes in a seven day window, because that's when our ushers have counted the room for decades. I've had seasons of hating that metric because you can't buy an ad to bump it. It forced us into online groups and Zoom classes and, honestly, made the Online Community healthier. Our low number early on was people active in an online small group. Keep your dashboard to a few metrics, look at the same ones every week for a year, and you'll feel the trends. We knew YouTube retained about 30 percent of views past thirty minutes and Facebook didn't, because we'd tracked the same number for a decade. We even put a cheap TV with a browser in the office to show the dashboard, and I emailed my boss the numbers every Monday.
What are the big ideas?
What you measure decides what moves forward at your church. Churches that only chased reach have no deep engagement years later because every incentive pointed at three second views. Ask every team to pick a top of the funnel and a bottom of the funnel number for their area and watch them for a season.
Who is this chapter for?
The pastor who reports Facebook reach to the board, and the team that has a dashboard with forty numbers on it and no idea what any of them mean.
What is the Big Idea of chapter 10?
Big Idea: Measure a high and low number for specific digital areas of your church to see the movement of people and historically monitor trends to see the larger story of what is happening. Views and total followers aren't helpful by themselves.
What else do people ask?
What is a high and low metric?
A big number that represents potential (impressions, page visits, signups) paired with a small number that represents deep engagement (thirty minute watchers, group participants, people who attended). Together they tell a real story.
Why shouldn't churches report views or reach?
A reach or impression can be a few seconds of viewing, more like a car driving past your building than a person in a seat. Reported alone, those numbers mislead leadership and skew resourcing.
What is Saddleback's 30 minute metric?
How many people watched at least thirty minutes of the online worship service in a seven day range. It mirrors the moment ushers count the room and can't be inflated with ads, which pushed the team toward deeper discipleship online.
How many digital metrics should a church track?
A few. The book argues consistency beats volume: track the same simple numbers every week for a year and the trends become obvious.