Making A Good Impression

June 11, 2007 by

In lieu of a strikingly original and intensely thought-provoking original work of art, I wanted to give a little link love to an interesting post from Todd Rhoades at Monday Morning Insight. He discusses first impressions in the realm of both web visits and brick-and-mortar visits.

For those of you with too little time on your hands, here’s the quick overview:

  • “Your sermon starts in the parking lot.” -Andy Stanley
  • A Canadian study found that impressions were made in the first 50 milliseconds of viewing a web site.
  • A typical web site gets 60% of its traffic from search engines, so these impressions are pivotal.
  • Where does your sermon start? Home page? Parking lot? Welcome area?

For those of you that have too much time on your hands, here’s a recommendation:

Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in his book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. It’s a great read.

The book on church visitors: Unwelcome: 50 Ways Churches Drive Away First-Time VisitorsMore:

Post By:

Joshua Cody


Josh Cody served as our associate editor for several years before moving on to bigger things. Like Texas. These days he lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, and you can find him online or on Twitter when he's not wrestling code.
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One Response to “Making A Good Impression”

  • Mean Dean
    June 13, 2007

    Great minds? I blogged about this yesterday – offering some bullet points on what to offer up-front to pastors seeking to get people in the pews …
    … rather than a church web site that makes one say “peee-eeewwww!”


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