Creating a website has never been easier for small charities, with a raft of easy to use web development tools readily available.

But setting up a website or revamping an old, clunky site can still be a daunting prospect. There is a lot to consider, such as ensuring content is eye-catching and encourages visitors to donate and get involved.

Choosing from the array of platforms around is also tricky. Once chosen charities may decide that extra help from a freelance web specialist is also needed.

Website traffic also needs to be monitored so that poor performing sections can be tweaked.

In addition, charities need to ensure their websites are accessible, so that its content and information is available to all. Websites also need to be environmentally friendly, and content should be equitable and diverse to reflect a broad audience.

Here we look at some of the top tips for charities looking to create or revamp a website, with particular attention to small charities who are often operating on shoestring budgets and do not have the inhouse expertise of their larger counterparts.

Have purpose

Before creating website charities need to map out what they want to achieve, for example recruiting volunteers, encouraging donations, highlighting impact and promoting events. Each one of these sections needs to be easy for visitors to find and interact with.

Due to the importance of highlighting impact to attract funding and support, this sector should be the most prominent and on the charity's home page.

Charities are not always good at promoting their impact, especially in highlighting their environmental, social and governance (ESG) achievements, but they are improving according to evidence published by finance firm RSM.

This research found that the number of charities with a separate page on their websites outlining their environmental, social and governance (ESG) achievements more than doubled, from 14% in 2022 to a third (33%) in 2023. But this still leaves most charity sites making it hard for visitors to find out about these important areas of a charity’s work.

Be green

As well as actively tackling climate change in their work, charities need to ensure their websites are environmentally friendly.

This can be achieved be ensuring websites are not full of too much content to ensure the amount of energy used in loading and using pages is kept to a minimum. By ensuring only the most up to date data is used it is also easier for charities to keep track of content.

Another way is to use system fonts rather than custom fonts, which can also hinder a website’s performance. Each font is an additional resource that can slow down web pages and increase the site’s energy use.

Images are a great way to make a web page attractive and eye-catching, but try not to use too many, as these add more resource and energy use to a webpage.

Another way to develop an environmentally friendly website, which is also easy for visitors to us, is to cut down on wasted user journeys. These are where a user can’t immediately find what they are looking for so spend time clicking several links. This creates further energy consumption. Creating clear paths for users to find what they want can greatly reduce a website’s impact on the planet.

Call to action

Content should also involve ‘calls to action’. These are clear ways to engage visitors and making it easier for them to donate, volunteer or get involved in lobbying, through prominent ‘donate’ buttons on the home page for example. This also cuts down on each visitor’s browsing time, to further reduce the energy consumption of sites.

If a call to action, such as “help us to support our community” is followed by too many clicks and complicated forms then potential donors and supporters could be lost.

Choosing a platform

There are several web creation platforms for charities to choose from, to suit different organisations based on factors such as available budget and how much expertise is in house. A freelance web developer may also be needed to look at areas such as design, branding and functionality.

Popular website builders include:

• Wordpress, which has a variety of templates aimed at charities that can be customised through plug-ins helping users to donate or shop online. As it is an open-source site, new templates and plug ins are constantly being created and upgraded. Another bonus for charities is that it is responsive to mobile use and is search engine optimisation (SEO) ready. There are two versions of Wordpress, WordPress.org, where charities can host their own website, which can cost between £5 and £60 a month, depending on the level of functionality and design involved. The other is WordPress.com, where WordPress hosts the website for free, or for £7 a month offering extras such as premium themes and live chat support.

• Wix, which uses drag and drop techniques to make it easy to use. This may be particularly handy for small charities to construct a website. It was voted the best website builder by Cnet in 2023. There are a range of templates for charities, including those with built in donate buttons. A free version of Wix is available as well as advanced options, ranging from between £4 and £21 a month.

• Weebly which also focuses on ease of use, with Cnet voting it the easiest web builder to use. However, it also comes with a more limited range of added features and reduction in flexibility. Weebly also has a free option, as well as more advanced packages costing up to £19 a month.



Be accessible

A strong charity website needs to be accessible to all, including users with visual impairments. Sight loss charity RNIB's website is a good example of this in action, as it has been designed and developed with the needs of people with sight loss and disability in mind. This includes regular user testing by blind and partially sighted people on a variety of web browsers and devices.

RNIB’s web design includes ensuring pages can be magnified. The site’s sections are clearly titled and separated by space to avoid looking confusing. In addition, users can switch between light and dark mode at a click of a button. A large 'donate now' button, in pink to stand out further, is also prominent on the home page as colour contrast is vital for users with a visual impairment.

Monitor performance

Monitoring of web page use and demographics is vital to finding out which aspects of a site are working well to engage visitors and which are working less well. This process could, for example, show that a website is less successful among users using certain web browsers, or devices. A raft of monitoring tools are available to help including:

• Sematext, which offers insight into website infrastructure to show performance in different locations, on devices or among those using different connection speeds.

• Pingdom, which sends out detailed alerts when a website goes down and has real time monitoring of visits to a site, including geographically information.

• Uptime Robot, which offers a set of tools that provides checks on a site every five minutes and is integrated with work management tools such as Slack.

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