In the first issue of Breadstone Community magazine (Sept 2021) on the very first page, I did an article called, “Revelation along the road.” It was meant to be the introductory article to this new project.
I had used the example of an International minister I know of whom the Lord took her through a phase of learning all the stuff that happens behind the scenes of her ministry. As well as learning from all the haphazard adventures along the way. I used that story to illustrate our own journey to get to the place we needed to be. In it, I said the following, “My personal journey to get to this point I’m sure if plotted on a map over the last several decades would look more like the meanderings of a drunken sailor than the planned tactics of a WW2 general in the Army.”
Well… just let me say that nothing has changed. Although the strangest line between two points for most people is often the best route, I can honestly say the last six months had definitely not been a straight line. And God has often used a variety of methods to correct the direction.
Let me give a little filler for context. Many years ago I was hired by a publishing company to do data entry. Fast forward several years I got laid off, rehired, promoted, and was then leading and training the people under me as a supervisor. During that time I got a young intern by the name of Ian Winslow. Time passed and after I left the business, Ian eventually got promoted to my old job.
So here we are, years later, slapping paint and plywood together to make this business run. (FYI, we are not actually slapping up paint and plywood or each other for that matter, it sounded like a nice way to start a sentence!) But in all things, we are slowly figuring out how to make all this happen.
Aggravated, and frustrated at the recent sudden drop off of sales. It quickly became the main topic between myself and God. It was at this point I realized that with six months of history for our website I could now to a deep dive data crunch and look at the trends, as this was something I did all the time in my old job.
The numbers were shocking. In the last few months, our visits skyrocketed by 6X and this month shows evidence that it will crush the numbers before. But our bounce rate was equally appalling as only a small fraction of people even went beyond the first page.
This caused a lot of deep looking, prayer, and asking questions of people around me as some people were already sending me suggestions. So after a while, and looking over the combined evidence sharing with Ian. After a day or so we talked over advice being given us, Ian and I talked about the overall issue of building trust.
My response back was, “SO the issue is building community and what you saying is we may be talking about it, but not demonstrating it. Well…that’s bad!”
After another day I started the process of reforming and re-branding our website (the new up, just not totally complete yet) What we learned is that Breadstone will no longer be product-centered, blog, or even magazine-centered. Our goal is to increasingly find ways to BE community-centered. Basically, let’s walk the walk that we talk about. So for the last couple of days, I have been re-building the website on the back end. Getting a little excited to see it unfold as I learned new programs, then suddenly EVERYTHING slid to a stop.
Did you hear the crash as everything hit the wall? I did, and I felt it.
I was in the process of building an online, searchable table when I uploaded a product. Something looked odd, not quite right, then it hit me, “Where is the buy button?” I quickly checked everything to realize that it was nowhere’s to be found. It is at this point when driving that you reach down, find the emergency brake and sharply pull it up, as you feel like you are now spinning like a top, down an icy road. As we realized that nobody could buy or subscribe to anything.
“WHERE IS MY BUY BUTTON?”
Now I know some people feel like you should never let the customer know about the hick-ups, roadblocks, and stupid things that happen behind the scenes. But a community does not happen without transparency. And it’s normal for me to tell people about my goof-ups.
I will, however, not confess to the embarrassing amount of time we discovered that this feature was off, as I now realize the source of bounce rate.
(Insert mental picture of me banging my head on the wall)
Although it is embarrassing, it is not without humor as I find I can see the finger of God behind this, forcing us to take a hard look at everything around us.
Right now we new look, and a new feel to the website. Yes, this means it will be a bit more labor-intensive for me on the backend, versus the standard WordPress plug-play methods. But that’s all right as It will bring more value to the people who need this content.
The Body of Christ has been living under an illusion of perfection for far too long, so just let’s be real.
