A free simple, practical guide on how to design and create a charity web site - a template and links to sources of free website hosting and grant funding. If you're getting someone to create your website for you, it will enable you to create a design specification for your web developer to ensure your new website works the way you want it to.
The first thing you must be clear about in creating and designing a charity website is what is it for? Specifically, what do you want your visitors to do and, based on that, who are they, what will you say that engages them and how will you encourage them to visit your website. Trying to engage everyone about everything won't work, so be clear on your key objectives. Here are some examples:
Purpose. Encouraging people to:
Audience.
Engaging Visitors. Provide them with content that will be of interest to them and using language/terminology they would engage with.
Encouraging Visitors. For the vast majority of charities, visitor numbers via internet searches will probably be very low.
The Charity Excellence Sector Data Store tracks every aspect of sector performance, including websites. Five of the six metrics are at amber. That is the majority of charities report they are not doing these well. Your website is your shop window and making it work well needn’t be expensive nor difficult and even small changes can have a big impact.
The Charity Excellence Framework online toolkit enables you to improve your impact, income and performance in every area. It's easy to use, quick, completely free and 46% of users rate it 10/10. Find funders using the Funding Finder database and 50+ funder lists. Health check your charity in half a day, access the huge resource base and achieve the Quality Mark.
To find the help and funding you want – Register Now
Once they arrive, make sure you engage them and encourage them to take the action you want them to. Ensure your site:
And having got them all the way to your donation form, don't lose them because it's poor. Check that your website donation form is mobile responsive, quick and simple to use, with a minimum number of fields in the form and, ideally, does not require donors to login or create an account. Here are 10 easy fixes.
Check out the Analytics Academy and become an analytics ninja in no time.
To find free support to help you and grant funding for your website, use this Charity Excellence resource.
You may not understand it all, but you'll have the questions you need to ask your web people. Speaking of which;
Find funders using the Funding Finder database and 50+ funder lists. Health check your charity in half a day, access the huge resource base, including 100s of organisations that provide free help and resources, and achieve the Quality Mark.
To find the help and resources you need – Register Now. Everything is completely free.