No Clear Next Step

A guest should not have to work out what to do

Imagine a man standing in the lobby of a church he has never entered. No one speaks to him. There are no signs he can make sense of, just framed photos of events he was not part of and a long letter on the wall written to people the pastor calls family. He does not know where to sit, whether his children go with him or somewhere else, or who he would even ask. He is not being rejected. He is being left to figure it out, in public, while everyone else seems to know the system.

No pastor would accept that lobby. Yet many churches run its exact equivalent online. A guest lands on the homepage and is offered a slideshow, a dense welcome paragraph, a menu of ministry names she does not recognize, and no plain statement of what she is supposed to do next. Plan a visit in one tap ought to be possible. Instead the next step is left as an exercise for the stranger.

This article argues that a clear next step is a form of hospitality with a long theological pedigree, and that the research on what guests actually want points in one consistent direction: a small, concrete, guest controlled step, stated in plain words, asking for very little.

What guests say they are weighing

Pew Research Center's study of Americans who had looked for a new congregation found a clear hierarchy of concerns. Among searchers, 83 percent said the quality of preaching played an important role in their choice, 79 percent said feeling welcomed by clergy and lay leaders was important, 74 percent named the style of worship services, 70 percent named location, and 56 percent named the quality of children's educational programs (Pew Research Center, 2016). Gallup's polling of regular attenders points the same way: sermons that teach more about Scripture were a major factor for 76 percent, children's and youth programs for 64 percent, and community outreach for 59 percent (Gallup, 2017).

That list is a description of what a homepage should make easy to sample. A recent sermon a guest can listen to before Sunday. A clear statement of where you are and when you meet. An honest account of what happens with children. A named way to take a first step that is smaller than walking in cold.

Pew also supplies the honest baseline about how the search is usually done. In its 2016 findings, 85 percent of searchers attended a service at a church they were considering, around 70 percent spoke with members or friends, 55 percent spoke with clergy, 37 percent looked for information online, and 19 percent phoned the church. Among adults under 30, 59 percent searched online (Pew Research Center, 2016). Note the wording, because accuracy matters in this series: Pew measured that 37 percent looked for information online. It did not find that 37 percent rated a website important, a version of the claim that circulates loosely. The traceable version is strong enough. For the youngest guests, the online search is already the normal front end of the visit, and what they meet there should end in an obvious action.

Guests want the controls in their own hands

The most useful research for designing a next step is about how little a guest wants to surrender on the way in.

Barna's national survey of Millennials found that the only information a sizeable majority were comfortable giving a church on a visit was a first name, at 82 percent. Only 53 percent would give a last name, 33 percent an email address, 19 percent a physical address, and 12 percent a phone number. Fifteen percent would rather share nothing at all, rising to 28 percent among non Christian young adults. Barna's own advice to churches was to put the guest in the driver's seat about how and when more information is shared (Barna Group, 2015).

Lifeway Research found the same instinct among formerly churched adults. Only 11 percent said they would be willing to identify themselves as a visitor on a first visit. Sixty three percent preferred to wait until at least the second visit before letting anyone know they were visiting, and 26 percent wanted to slip in and introduce themselves casually after the service. Lifeway's director concluded that these guests clearly want to be in the driver's seat (Lifeway Research, 2006).

Hold those two findings together and the design of a good next step writes itself. It must be optional. It must be usable in private, from a phone, before the guest ever enters the building. And it must ask for almost nothing: a first name, one way to reply, which Sunday, and whether children are coming. A plan a visit form that demands a full address, a phone number, and a date of birth is not a welcome tool. It is a census, and guests have already told researchers they will not fill it in.

Language matters as much as the form. Lifeway Research's study of religiously unaffiliated Americans found that 42 percent said they do not understand the language of most churches, and 57 percent said the language Christians use about their beliefs does not relate to things they care about (Lifeway Research). A welcome paragraph written for insiders, full of ministry names, acronyms, and phrases a guest has to decode, is not a neutral greeting. It is evidence, to the person reading it, that the page was made for somebody else.

Seconds, and steps, are both in short supply

General web research, not church research, adds two useful cautions. Nielsen Norman Group, summarizing large scale dwell time analysis, reports that people often leave web pages in 10 to 20 seconds, and that a page has to communicate its value clearly within the first 10 seconds to hold attention longer (Nielsen Norman Group, 2011). That does not mean a guest decides about your church in ten seconds, and this article will not pretend otherwise. It means the obvious things have to be visible inside the first screen, or a share of guests will never scroll to where your church eventually explains itself.

The same organization's form guidance is blunt: keep forms short, and every field removed raises completion (Nielsen Norman Group, 2016, updated 2024). E-commerce research tells a consistent story at larger scale. Baymard Institute's quantitative studies find that 17 percent of U.S. online shoppers have abandoned a purchase because the process was too long or complicated (Baymard Institute). Shopping is not churchgoing, and that figure should not be dressed up as guest research. It is cited here for one narrower point that pastors recognize from ordinary life: every added step and field costs people, in every setting where it has been measured.

One thing must be stated plainly, because this series aims to be useful rather than impressive. No traceable primary study measures how much a plan a visit button or page raises first time attendance. Anyone who quotes a conversion percentage for it is inventing one. The case for a clear next step rests on firmer ground: guests say they want control and little asked of them, insider language measurably excludes, and practical facts are what website introduced guests rate as helpful. That is enough.

Hospitality names the step for the guest

The biblical pattern for welcoming a stranger is to take the initiative and remove the burden of figuring things out. Abraham runs to meet his visitors in Genesis 18 and tells them what will happen next: rest, water, bread. The welcome in Romans is active, not passive: "Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God" (Romans 15:7, ESV). Christ's welcome of his people did not wait for them to decode the system. It came to them, plainly, with the next step stated.

A clear next step on a homepage does the same work in miniature. It says: here is what Sunday looks like, here is where your children will be, here is where to park, here is a name of a real person who will look for you at the door if you want that, and here is how to tell us you are coming, or not. Nothing about that requires pressure. In fact the research says pressure is what breaks it. The step works because it lowers the cost of a decision that, for many guests, is already a brave one.

Lifeway's research on invitations underlines how brave. Half of unchurched Americans, 51 percent, said a personal invitation from a friend or family member would be effective, but only 35 percent said they would attend a worship service if invited by someone they knew, while lower threshold activities scored higher (Lifeway Research, 2019). Sunday is a big ask for someone outside the church. A homepage that respects that, by making the ask concrete and small and by naming other doors in, a service project, a meal, a weekday group, treats the guest as a neighbor to be hosted rather than a target to be captured.

What a clear next step looks like

• One primary action, named in the guest's words. Plan a visit, in the first screen, on every page, worded the way a guest would say it. Not three competing buttons of equal weight.
• A short statement of what happens next. After you send it, a real person replies, here is roughly when, and here is what they will and will not do with your details.
• A form that asks for the minimum. First name, one contact route, which Sunday, number of children and their ages if they are coming. Everything else can be learned later, in person, by a person.
• The visit described before it is requested. Times, address and parking, what children do, how long a service lasts, what people wear, stated plainly and without insider vocabulary. A guest should be able to picture the morning before being asked to commit to it.
• Permission to come anonymously, stated out loud. A line that says guests are welcome to slip in and sit at the back with no form at all. It sounds small. The anonymity research above says it is the offer a majority of returning guests are waiting to hear.
• More than one door, each with its own next step. A food pantry shift, a community meal, a parents' group, each with a named action, not a paragraph and a hope.

The quiet conclusion

A guest who cannot tell what to do next has not been given a decision to make. She has been given homework, in a subject where she is the least equipped person in the building to do it. Naming one clear, small, optional step, in plain words, on the first screen, is one of the most concrete ways a church can practice online the welcome it already practices at the door.

If you want to see your homepage rebuilt around one clear next step a guest can take in a single tap, Tov will build you a free demo of your homepage, and you can judge it before you spend anything.