John Thorman did a bit of analysis and some strategic suggestions.  Here is his report.Skip,

I read through your email questioning the TW readers about the email statistics and I read through all of the wonderful comments that followed. I’d like to share my thoughts about the community and also offer some more perspective on the ministry.

First some perspective. The daily email list does not reflect the magnitude of the impact this ministry has. Your website statistics reveals another very interesting story. Here are the facts:

Year to Date (Jan 1, 2012 – October 23, 2012):

Your website has received a total of 222, 919 visits from 120,531 unique visitors resulting in 492,804 Pages of content viewed!

Compared to the same time period in 2011:

Your website had received a total of 145,253 visits from 76, 344 unique visitors resulting in 322,322 Pages of content viewed.

As you can see, the impact of the ministry has grown dramatically since last year.

If we look at the Month of September 2012 here is what you got:  25,548 visits from 15,038 unique visitors who viewed 56,678 pages of content.

Further, this ministry is reaching people around the globe. There are 193 members of the United Nations, and the United States’ State Department recognizes 195 independent countries, but if you include Taiwan, then the total number of countries in the world is 196. So far in 2012, your website has had visitors from 183 countries. The number of countries that had at least 10 visits to your website this year is 132!

It is clear to me that the website needs to be redesigned and repurposed to do a better job of converting all these visitors into more product purchases, subscribers, and regular financial supporters, and more active community members so that everyone can benefit more.

We have spoken before about your website and particularly my desire to see it updated and improved so that it could better support the community, and impact more people. I think now is the time to make these changes.  One of the consistent themes I hear and read from TW readers is a sense of not fitting in with their local churches and a feeling of being all alone. I have some ideas about this too and would be really interested in hearing some feedback from the community.

1. Include a private social networking environment within the At God’s Table website that is for members/donors only. Similar to Facebook, but provided to encourage more relationship development and interaction among members. Within this community, we could then set up sub-groups tailored around geographic locations where there are concentrations of readers so they can get to know each other better and arrange for face to face meetings.
2. Multiply the ministry through local volunteers/home group leaders/small group leaders. My suggestion is to take some of your materials and develop leaders guides and then train those in the TW community who are interested and empower them to begin their own local groups that can study the Hebraic worldview and interpretation of the scriptures together. I think Roderick Logan and Cheryl Durham have collaborated and already created something like this for your Guardian Angel book.
3. Challenge those in the TW community to schedule local weekend seminars. Since most of your readers and website visitors are within North America, the TW Community ought to be able to fill your teaching schedule with high impact events located right here. A new page on your website that promotes this kind of activity, with a downloadable document that provides step by step instructions on how to go about doing this, plus your speaking schedule, etc., could be very beneficial in this regard.
4. I know that Luzette in South Africa has been absolutely amazing in scheduling, booking, and coordinating your teaching series there in back to back events spread among several different cities. Perhaps she could provide a “How To” guide with suggestions and provide it to members of the TW community. Then, let’s see if we can raise up volunteers in each state who can duplicate what she has done at some level.

I have been blessed and fortunate enough to have traveled with you to Israel and sit in on a number of your teaching seminars and Bible studies. You do such an amazing job. I also know that there have been a few members of the community that have had you in to speak to their local church groups or private home groups. Since you love teaching in person and are willing to go just about anywhere you are asked to teach, I think the community has a tremendous opportunity to interact with you personally and have a positive influence in their local areas by arranging to have you come and teach. They just need to coordinate it, get it funded and then be amazed.

So, TW Community, what are your thoughts

Respectfully,

John C. Thorman

Chief Problem Solver