Blog

Sanctuary First across the globe

November 27, 2017 0 4
Sanctuary First across the globe

Julie Barr, our new team member specialising in analytics has been delving into the stats behind our website and it’s fair to say she’s been round the world in 80 clicks...

Did you know that Sanctuary First is used by Christians across 6 of the 7 continents? We haven’t quite managed to reach Antarctica as yet but we do have visitors across the rest of the globe. 

Given that we are part of the Church of Scotland and based here in Scotland it’s not surprising that the majority of those using Sanctuary First are from the United Kingdom. The number of visits from those in other countries changes as more people find out about us, but as an example, over the last 6 months frequent users came from the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Australia.

Quantity is of course not everything and each individual visitor is most welcome, we are just delighted that you found us. So hello to just a few of our sole foreign visitors this year from Madagascar, Kuwait, Cambodia, Palestine, Barbados and Iran! We hope that you are the first of many people where you live to find this pioneer ministry.

Web analytics can tell us a lot about the groups of people who are using our site, how they came onto it and which pages they view once they have arrived but please don’t worry, we don’t know anything about you as an individual. It is however very interesting to find out just how people found us. 

Many people search directly for the term “Sanctuary First” so they have found out about us at church, from a friend, a leaflet, an advert, at an event or by reading an article. Others come to us via social media so thanks to everyone who has “shared”. We also receive inward referrals from other websites when they have posted a news story about Sanctuary First or created a direct link to our pages to allow their users to have access to our services. Again thank you to all those Churches and groups who have done so and a special mention to one our most prolific sources of referral in Europe, The Church of Scotland Geneva.

The last group are those who have simply searched and found Sanctuary First. They did not know it existed but they were looking for something, typed a few random words into a search engine and found a space on the internet for reflection and spiritual growth. We hope that you found just what you needed.

Perhaps you would like to share with others just how you found this internet ministry. We would love to hear from you in our comments section below or on Facebook/Twitter.

So as you can see the Sanctuary First visitors are quite diverse. Next time you spend a quiet moment in prayer with our Daily Worship reflect on the fact that you are likely to be sharing that time with someone right across the world living a very different life in a very different place, but sharing your faith.

Julie Barr