by Stephen Rodgers

Given that I mentioned it in a previous post, a few people have asked what I meant by the “best of Beacon.” So I’ve decided that for today, I’ll pull back the curtain just a little to give you a glimpse of site statistics and how we use them here at the Beacon.

Site statistics are a bit of a double-edged sword. On one hand, they can provide valuable insight into your community. On the other hand, they can easily become an idol, and when you find yourself worshiping at the alter of almighty web traffic, you’ve gone too far.  By far, the most popular articles we’ve had are about marriage, former member Tia Han, and photography.  Someday perhaps, we’ll do an article that features taking pictures of Tia getting married, and our servers will simply melt from the traffic.  But it goes without saying that simply doing that so that we can be proud of our numbers would be wrong.  Very wrong.  Note to future editors: don’t do that. Seriously.  No.

So just to be clear, “Best of Beacon” might not be the best title (but given the alliteration, I couldn’t resist). However, for those who are curious, here are some of the top 7 lists of Beacon site stats…

Top 7 Posts

The overwhelming number of our readers seem to land on our home page and poke around to see what’s new.  I’m always a bit surprised how little direct traffic articles get, but considering that we’ve only been driving traffic to particular articles for a little while now, I shouldn’t be.  I am encouraged however, by how many people visit the site.  Once you get past the front page however, these were the most “popular” posts on the Beacon, at least as far as page count is concerned.

1. Home Page
2. LBC Ministry Overview
3. Is Marriage In Your Future?
4. Life After LBC #2 – Tia Han
5. Photography Ministry
6. You’re Not at a Conference
7. What to Look for in a Church

Top 7 Searches

Did you know that when you search for something on your favorite search engine, then click on a link, the site you go to is able to capture the search term that you used to get there?  Whether you knew that or not, these are the most popular searches that people used to find the Beacon by searching on Google, Yahoo, etc.

I think that quite a few of them were sad that we were a church newsletter, and NOT a company that cleans churches.  And ironically enough, the search for “lighthouse bible church beacon” was a popular one, but not popular enough to make the top seven.

1. “church cleaning ministry”
2. “photography ministry”
3. “knowability of god”
4. “cleaning ministry”
5. “pastor john kim”
6. “thoughts for young men”
7. “what is a convalescent home”

Top 7 Referrers

And last but not least, these are the top seven referring pages to the Beacon.  A referring page is just a place where your visitors come from.

So we obviously get a lot of traffic from people who are hanging around the church website(s) already.  We seem to get a big chunk from people emailing links to each other, finding older versions of the blogs that were combined into the new Beacon, people reading their RSS feeds, and Facebook.  What’s remarkable is that Facebook is in the #2 spot, and we’ve had our official Facebook presence for only a few months.  However, it was by analyzing the traffic patterns of our top referrers that we determined that creating a Facebook page might be the best way to to reach people with the Gospel.  We didn’t do it to become popular; we did it because we saw a need and an opportunity to tell people about Jesus.

1. lighthousebc.com
2. facebook.com
3. mail.google.com
4. google.com/reader
5. shine-the-light.blogspot.com
6. lighthousebc.com/media/sermonlist
7. lbcbeacon.wordpress.com

Well, that’s all that we’re going to share for now.  I hope you’ve enjoyed the tour.  I also hope that perhaps this helped you find an article you missed, reconsider volunteering for a ministry, or encourage you to share the Beacon with someone today.  And just so that I send you away with a big smile on your face, this is the most popular picture that the Beacon has ever linked to.

No, that’s not Photo-shopped.  Yes, that’s exactly what you think it is.  And it’s still one of my all-time favorites as well.

Pro Rege