3 Key Metrics Every Online Church Should Be Tracking

One of the personal development axioms we have here at Life.Church is “Where performance is measured, performance improves.”

While this is true for each individual team member, we’ve also found it to be true with the metrics tracked by our Life.Church Online campus. 

But not all data is created equal. 

Choosing the right data points can make or break any team’s effectiveness.

This post outlines the three most important church online metrics we track. If your church has an online presence, we’d recommend you track them as well.

Key Metric #1: Monthly Average Attendance (30-Second Views)

Of the three on the list, this is probably the most obvious. 

Just like tracking attendance in your physical services is important, it’s also important to track digital attendance. 

But why monthly rather than weekly? 

While both metrics are helpful, we focus on monthly to account for hybrid attendees and social media attenders. 

Not all of our audience attends in the same way every week. Some attend in person, others attend on YouTube, and others will attend our services using the Church Online Platform. 

We’ve found that tracking monthly attendance gives us a good idea of our audience without so much variance from week to week.

You can track either one, but whichever one you choose, be sure you’re tracking and monitoring it consistently.

Key Metric #2: Average Monthly Active CRM Accounts

While online attendance is critical to track, you also want to track how engaged those online attenders are.

One of the best ways to do this is by tracking your active CRM (relationship management software) accounts. Our CRM is RockRMS, but your church might use a different one like Planning Center or PushPay.

So how do we determine an “Active” CRM User?

Someone can qualify as active by taking any of these actions:

• Creating a Church Onlne Platform account
• Signing up for baptism
• Submitting the “I’m New” form 
• Submitting a prayer request
• Signing up for Known (Our “Get to know Life.Church” experience)
• Submitting a commit to Christ form
• Submitting a general question form
• Submitting a renewing my commitment to Christ form
• Attending while being logged in
• Giving

Most CRMs should have most of this information available in their analytics dashboard. 

Even if your CRM doesn’t track the list above exactly, you can use whatever metrics are readily available and track them consistently month after month. 

Look for trends and see how your marketing strategies are impacting the data you’re able to see. 

Key Metric #3: Church Online Platform Moment Engagements

When the Life.Church Online team looks at their biggest stories of life-change, almost all of them start with an attender engaging with a Moment in the Church Online Platform. 

What is a Moment? A Moment is a pre-selected point in the service where you use the Church Online Platform’s Moments feature to invite attenders to take their next step. 

Whether it’s signing up to serve, starting to give, or giving their life to Christ, a Moment is the next big step for your online attenders. 

If you aren’t already, we’d love to invite you to try out Moments during your online services this weekend. 

They’re easy to set up. Just sign up for a free Church Online Platform account and tap on the Moments tab to build your first Moment.

Once you run a service with Moments, you can track the data by going to Admin → Analytics → Services on the Church Online Platform.  

If you have any questions, feel free to email us at info@online.church. 

So What’s Next? 

Almost everyone you’re trying to reach spends multiple hours a week online. And hosting online services is a great way for your church to reach them where they’re at. 

The problem? Many online church solutions are expensive, siloed to one social media platform, or don’t have an easy way to invite your people to take their next step. 

Church Online Platform from Life.Church has solved all of those problems. It … 

• Is completely free
• Makes it easy to invite your attenders from any platform
• Has a built-in system for leading people to take their next step