Websites

A campaign doesn’t have to have a website, but these days, even the smallest campaigns can greatly benefit from having some kind of web presence. The internet is now the easiest way for you to connect with your potential supporters and the ‘change makers’ you want to influence.

Creating a simple web presence very quickly

A website could be a single webpage, which explains what your campaign is about and gives people your contact details. This is certainly better than nothing. You can set up one for free in a matter of minutes – there are lots of different websites that enable you to build simple yet attractive websites. They even make it easy for you to upload photos and video.

Many people use free ‘blogging’ sites such as www.blogspot.com/ or http://wordpress.org/ to create content-rich, attractive websites.

A good example of this is the Atheist Bus Campaign’s website. You will see that in the right hand menu they provide links to their social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter, and to their fundraising page on the Justgiving website. While simple, free websites generally won’t have the built in functionality that allows you to do these things, you can easily ‘embed’ links to external sites. So, through integrating a range of free tools on a free website, you can set out your campaign vision, recruit support, raise money, reach the people you want to influence.

Moving up to the next level

Once you’ve got a website, there are at least three things you can do to make it more effective:

• Keep it updated. Visitors can get turned off if they feel that there isn’t a live, active campaign behind the website. So, set up a blog, or post news/updates on the front page of the site regularly.
• Make it look good. Good design is an important aspect of a good website. If it looks amateur-ish, it may turn off potential supporters. Don’t worry if you haven’t got a great eye for design. A lot of the free websites that you can use for creating your own website provide you with templates that make this very easy.
• Make it easy to find.  While people may get to know your website because you give them its address, you also need to make sure it comes up high in the list in search results. Use Search Engine Optimisation techniques to do this properly and you will find that you don’t just have to take the campaign to people – people will come to your campaign.

Examples of good campaigning websites

What makes a good campaigning website is, of course, a matter of opinion, and even very good websites will have minus points. But below, we have listed a few campaigning websites and stated what we think is good about them.

1. Protect the Human Good use of images; attractive, contemporary design.
2. Asthma UK Provides a blog on the front page; gives easy access to research behind their campaign; gives a wide range of options about how to get involved.
3. No2ID Very clear what their campaign aims are – it’s in the title and tagline.