When churches first engage with us, we often hear about local design agencies that are competing for their business. Deciding what is the best organization to work with can certainly be a stressful decision for any church communicator. Local agencies promote their personalized experiences, proximity, and expertise online but often we find these aren’t the necessary benefits a church needs to launch a successful web project.
Here is why we think it is more important to have an expert ministry partner instead of a local design firm.
Why Choose an Expert Ministry Partner vs. a Local Design Firm
Personalized Experience
Agencies can make you feel special, unique, that you’re their only church client and they want to ensure your success. A church can feel like this may equal a hand-held experience that will lead to great customer care. If you’re going down the path of “one of a kind” with an agency, you’ll most likely have a tailored, custom process made just for you. What we have found is that this comes at the expense of having a wealth of ministry experience on your side. No agency process we’ve seen overcomes the years of experience of our designers, content/strategy and project teams bring to the table.
We will help you through a proven ministry design process. We strive for excellence, committing to continuous improvement in being and doing our best for churches. Our process has been refined and tested time after time.
"Scott is super friendly and responsive. He obviously cares about our site as much as we do."
Karen Kubiak
Directory of Communications & Experiences; Elmbrook Church
Proximity
One thing a local agency has on us is their proximity. They can provide one-on-one face time; which in this day and age can be rare. On certain projects we do onsite visits for clients who want our strategy services.
But, in today’s wired world we have managed nearly all of our projects remotely and have the tools and process to ensure they are handled with excellence.
We have experience working across multiple timezones, scheduling meetings and making your team feel comfortable with each phase of your project. If we need to, we’ll come meet you too, but add video conferencing throughout the process, live demos and 24 hour response times, we believe you’ll find that being local isn’t much of a advantage at all.
Jake Day, Communications Director of Bay Life Church recently re-engaged with us after working with a local web company in Florida. When we asked him why he chose to leave his pervious company to work with us he responded,
"our local company would go weeks without updates. I came back to MonkDev because we needed to have the customer experience; we needed the reliability."
Our team is uniquely built to serve local churches and ensure successful website launches worldwide.
Expertise
It’s easy to look at an agency’s portfolio and become dazzled looking at all the beautiful websites. Maybe it’s filled with brands you use or recognize. We understand there is an appeal to all of this. Certainly, agencies are filled with skilled people; but knowing how to ensure ministry happens through your website isn’t something easily learned. We’ve had to learn, grow, and implement with hundreds of churches to really know what works.
There’s more to a website than how it looks though. MonkDev has a pretty awesome portfolio ourselves. However, we want to push you to think strategically about your online presence with tangible ministry goals and results. A beautiful website is a given, but if it doesn’t serve to further your mission then that’s all it is: a pretty website.
Your success isn’t measured by another beautiful website in our portfolio. It’s measured in the ministry impact at your local church. Are more new people joining the community? Are your small groups growing? Can people easily access the resources they need to grow?
Serving the local church is our mission and passion. We aren’t just concerned with your launch, but we have ongoing support to help you. We schedule 90-Day Mission Online Assessments to evaluate the effectiveness of ministry taking place on your website. We have a team of developers continuously improving our product to serve your local ministry needs.
Often churches who selected a local firm decide to stop their project and reach out to us. Why? The value of real ministry-focused experience far outweighs the perceived benefits an agency brings. We strive to put people first (that means you). When you work with MonkDev, you have the expertise of thousands of church websites on your side and a team made up of pastors, communicators and church volunteers who are fully committed to growing the Kingdom with you.
