Charity websites primary goals are to drive donations and raise awareness of the issues they are tackling. Persuading people to give their money away is not an easy task and effective sites need to inspire the best human emotions of compassion, sympathy and admiration. Good website imagery is perhaps more critical in this sector than any other, where engaging people on an emotional level is so important. The outstanding charity sites tend to have strong video or photography and keep text to a minimum, particularly on the home page. A recent trend has seen the inclusion of bold statistics and infographics to convey the message in simple understandable terms. A bold call to action – donate, volunteer, sign up, etc, is usually prominent on every page of the site.

This is not a definitive top ten and to asses the huge number of website out there would be an enormous task, besides defining what is a great web design is always subjective. Instead, this is a cross-section of examples that demonstrate best practice. It is important to consider each site in context, large charities with big budgets can employ a design agency, professional photographers, video makers and a team to manage the site on a daily basis. Smaller charities may be working on a shoestring and have a site designed and run by just one or two people.

RLNI

With donations in the top 10 of charities in the UK, the RNLI is obviously blessed with the resources for a great online presence. They also benefit from a subject matter that is highly photogenic and does not need quite the same level of visual sensitivity as charities that deal with more traumatic personal issues. Their website is bold and beautiful with lots of updated rescue stories with accompanying pictures and video that are updated on a daily basis. There is enormous depth to the site but easy to navigate and not overwhelming. rnli.org

Great Ormond Street Hospital

The most well, known children’s charity in the UK, this site uses a short looping video as the primary image, a technique which is becoming increasingly popular. The simple but understandable tabs help join together tow related but separate sites for the hospital and the supporting charity. The site is visually led with many great photos and video of the patients throughout. Sensitively photographing sick children while projecting a positive image is a challenge that has been met and woven with inspiring stories. www.gosh.org

Water Aid

The animated counting figures to represent their three key benefits, getting your attention and makes you want to watch the film that explains their projects in more detail. The video is cleverly overlaid and indicates the scroll down to the calls to action. This site relies on video and good design to convey its most important messages all on a single home page with minimal clicks for the user. An exemplar of attention-grabbing and simplicity. www.wateraid.org/uk

Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity

A video-based homepage showing sailors coming home to their families after a long time at sea instantly explains the human side of this charity. Bold design and a simple colour palette in harmony with the naval theme. Every effort has been made to offer simple messages, cut down text to the minimum and break it up into smaller blocks and buttons that lead you through the site. www.rnrmc.org.uk

Born Free

One of the most visually arresting charity sites around, the dark design, ultra-bold typography and stunning images of wildlife make for a potent message and it’s a pleasure to visit. The slightly loose/distressed typeface, bright colours and some rougher elements help avoid a corporate feel and give the site real personality. www.bornfree.org.uk

The Message

This website for a mid-size Christian charity is slightly unusual with a home page more like a blog with a feed of posts in clearly colour-coded categories; Audio, Video, Stories, Jobs, Teaching etc. This makes their content quickly accessible and gives a feeling of freshness. Navigation is quirky with tabs with a horizontal row above for quick links, media and locations. The site uses plenty of big bold images and on pages where large amounts of text are necessary, it’s well laid out and easy to read. www.message.org.uk

Helen Douglas House

The stories of terminally ill children are heartbreaking and presenting the work of this charity has been done sensitively but with great positivity. The difficult subject matter is helped by use of bright colours and circular theme combined with great images. The site has a soft child-like design but makes you feel this is a trustworthy organisation worthy of support. The donate ‘balloon’ remains visible anchored to the top of the screen at all times as you scroll down, a sensible way to highlight a call to action. www.helenanddouglas.org.uk

Emmaus Brighton and Hove

This is a quirky site for a small community dedicated to supporting homeless people and each other. Reflecting the informal, friendly values with an emphasis on recycling this is the opposite of the more corporate style sites of larger charities. Although it has a messy, relaxed feel, information is clear and accessible. The designer has pulled off a fine balancing act between usability and artistry that makes it fun to explore. www.emmausbrighton.co.uk

Citizen Housing

This is a small website for a not-for-profit family housing association, launching its new branding and services. This is not an appeal for donations or volunteers but presents information to its clients in an attractive way.  Navigation design is unusual, a single page with icons on the left that scroll to the different sections. Strong colours and white space makes this simple to use and a quite different approach to the other examples selected for this article. www.citizenhousing.org.uk

Umbrella Brighton & Hove

As the designer of this site I must declare an interest… This site introduces a new charity helping homeless people into rented accommodation in Brighton. I worked with the client for a holistic approach to the site design that included taking the photos that are key to telling the story. With four categories of potential visitors to the site it had to be obvious where they could find information relevant to them.   www.umbrellabh.org.uk

If you work for a charity and need help or advice about developing your website, then please get in touch.

Defining what makes a great church website is always open to discussion but for the purposes of this article, we are looking at design, usability and impact. Content is clearly just as important and the primary goal of most church sites is to attract visitors to the church. Metrics to measure whether this is achieved successfully are not readily available but good design and content are very much linked to how potential visitors feel reassured and prepared.

When comparing sites, it should be remembered that the budget is likely to vary wildly, depending on the size of the church and the priority that communications are given by the leadership. For churches with more resources, the biggest difference is often seen not so much in the design and scope of the site, but in having the ability to employ a media or communications staff to keep the site and social media up to date. Bigger budgets also allow for better use of video, although with imagination and the right talent, it is possible to build and maintain a very good website without enormous expense.

The list below is not definitive or exhaustive, rather some examples of sites that have caught my eye while researching a broad cross-section of church websites in Britain. I’ve spent the last 15 years of my working life involved in designing church websites and it is always interesting to observe how design fashions and technology have changed and to see who is getting it right. So here in no particular order…

HOPE City Churches

www.hopecity.church

This is a large group of churches with locations across the world. The landing page has eye-catching motion graphics and video with easy links to the local sites. The local sites consistently use the dark theme and with strong images and content based around blog post-style presentation. This format won’t work for every church but this the gold standard for a large church group.

Liverpool One Church

www.liverpoolonechurch.com

Big, bold and punchy, Liverpool One church have consistently had a strong website over the years. Great use of photography and video with clean design and typography – a site definitely designed to appeal to a youthful audience.

Kingdom Faith Churches

www.kingdomfaith.com

Another site that cleverly acts as an umbrella for a group of related churches while allowing each church to express its own identity. The logo and corporate identity are strong and in keeping with the fashion for simple and colour-neutral designs. The landing page guides you to the individual locations which have single deep pages featuring parallax scrolling background images. The conventional menu at the top is reserved for navigating between the locations while the main navigation uses a mobile-style-menu for the desktop site which makes the site structure easy to understand.

Cedars Church

www.cedarschurch.com

(As the designer of this site I may declare an interest…) This is how to do a small church website. The attractive colour palate sympathetic to the identity and country surroundings of this church, with the key information obvious for visitors. The site is built on the Church123 system, which allows churches with limited resources to easily manage the site. Many of the other sites shown here that use WordPress or other sophisticated content management systems which offer lots of options but require greater know how or a dedicated team to support site.

C3 Church, Cambridge

www.thec3.uk

Built using the Church Insight platform, this site epitomises almost every single web design trend of the last 2 years. Simple colour-neutral logo, minimalist navigation, large dark-tone video dominating the home page, deep pages with parallax scrolling and a feed of beautifully shot Instagram photos. There is nothing wrong with following the crowd, especially if it makes for clear communication that works well on all kinds of devices. This site makes it look easy but a great deal of effort has gone into photography and copywriting to make this one of the strongest sites I’ve come across this year.

St Matthias, Plymouth

www.stmplymouth.org.uk

A site that stands out for its particularly strong images. The ability to capture really great photos of a congregation, church members and church staff are rare but St Mattias has pulled this off and used other stock images creatively throughout the site.

Kings Church, Manchester

www.makingjesusfamous.org
Got to love the memorable URL for this church site which instantly makes it stand out. The home page has a rich image montage which can work as well as video and the site does a good job of breaking down a lot of information about a very active church in an understandable way.

Grace Church, Exeter

www.gracechurchexeter.org

This site has a pleasant, airy simplicity and the unusual side navigation makes this site is a little more distinctive than many church websites. It is welcoming and easy to navigate.

Cornerstone Church, Newcastle

www.cornerstonechurchnewcastle.co.uk

Very much in keeping with current website design trends but this site manages to convey its messages with attractive images that make you want to keep clicking to see more. They have struck a good balance between telling their story while resisting the temptation to put too much text on the website.

All Saints, Newport

www.allsaintsrcnewport.org.uk
This a website for a group of Catholic churches in South Wales. This site is quite distinctive amongst the others in this list as a more conventional and classical design. However, it is followed through with consistency and style and proves that the best websites are not the preserve of large or charismatic churches.

I’m sure there are other great sites out there that I’ve overlooked. Let me know what you think of this selection and other UK church websites that you think are are contenders for a top 10 and why.

My Church website design service

So you’re thinking of building a website. Here are some of the import an issues you need to consider and discuss with the team building your website before taking the plunge.

1. Purpose

Before starting any website project we must decide what is the purpose of the site. Who is the target audience? Most websites will have some kind of “Call To Action” (CTA) some more obvious such as “buy this” or “contact us” but it can be more subtle such as encouraging attendance at event or presenting a specific point of view. A website usually has several purposes but its most important function will be to reassure people that you are trustworthy, reliable and credible. Once you have established trust you can then begin to influence users responses. The site may have several types of users such as clients/suppliers or members/visitors and it is important to define who are the users and think about how you can meet their needs. Try to think in a user-centric way – i.e.“How can we help” rather than “This is what we have to say”. Create a website that quickly answers the questions or responds to the needs that brought the user to the site in the first place.

2. Budget

The size of your budget will define the scope of the project and will inform many of the other steps below. It is possible to build a website for virtually nothing or spend thousands of pounds but you will generally get what you pay for. The return on investment in a website can sometimes be hard to define exactly, the trust and credibility it may give your organisation will be had to evaluate in monetary terms. However, there are lots of specifics that can be measured such as visitor numbers, sales or enquiries which give an indication of its success. Your website will often be the first point of contact people have with you or your organisation and that first impression is important. It is therefore well worth investing properly in a well designed, attractive website.

3. Process

Before you build the site it is important to plan the process with all of those contributing. Think about how you will work together, feedback and communicate as well as agreeing on a schedule. Even for small sites, you will need some kind of plan for the different ‘milestones’ in the project such as supply of initial brief, sign-off of the design, supply of content, testing, snagging and go-live date. Even if you do not stick exactly to the schedule it is helpful for everyone involved in the project to have some kind of timetable. Both the client and the designer/developers need deadlines and this will ensure that things don’t drift and the project gets finished.

4. Title and domain name

The name of your site is important, ideally unique, memorable and descriptive of who and what you are. If you already have an organisation or company name then it’s a no-brainer but choosing a domain name is more complicated.  Shorter domain names are easier to remember but maybe less descriptive and very few domains of less than 5 letters are available now. A descriptive domain name may also help with your search engine rankings as relevance is important. Eg. www.funkywidgets.co.uk will probably rank well when people search for “widgets”. You also need to decide on the appropriate top-level domain (TLD) .com, .co.uk, .org, etc

5. Platform and hosting

This is a technical decision which will largely be driven by your budget and how you see the future of the site. In almost all cases I would recommend building a website using a Content Management System (CMS) which allows you to log-in and manage the site without the continued involvement of the original site designer.  A CMS may cost a little more than a simple hand-coded site but it will give you much more flexibility and ability to add more functionality in future. There are several options for CMS from very cheap basic online web-builder services such as Weebly to ‘premium’ bespoke CMS built by specialist web developers. For many small-medium sized organisations, WordPress will be ideal – a free CMS that requires a designer or developer to set up and configure initially. As your organisation grows so your website requirements may become more sophisticated so it is important to select the right platform to allow some growth otherwise you may be faced with the cost of re-building the site virtually from scratch if you need to switch to a more powerful platform. Hosting may be included with a paid-for CMS but if using WordPress you will need to purchase hosting separately, usually on an annual basis. There are hundreds of web hosting providers many with almost identical offerings. Your web designer can probably advise you on a good host but you need to consider how good is the technical support, is it secure and reliable and can the server cope if there is a sudden increase in traffic to the site.

6. Content

Content is king, without good content your website is almost pointless. However, it is about the quality and not necessarily about the quantity. It is advisable to devote considerable effort to structuring and writing the content of the site. Decide on your information structure i.e. the pages within the site and how they might logically be broken into sections. Maybe create a tree diagram showing roughly how the pages will sit within the sections. If you have the budget consider employing a professional copywriter otherwise try to involve people with good written English and editing skills from within your organisation. The content does not have to be complete before design and construction of the site begins (indeed the content of a good site is continually evolving) but you will need some idea of size and scope before starting.

7. Imagery

Most websites will require imagery which are a foundational part of the design because visual elements have greater impact than text. Although you may use illustrations, diagrams and icons, most websites rely heavily on photography. There are three main sources for photos. Photos taken by you or those within your organisation, photos taken by a professional on your behalf or stock photos purchased from online stock photo libraries. If you have someone within your organisation who is at least a ‘talented amateur’ photographer and can produce good results this will save you a great deal of money as professional photographers will charge at least £1,000 per day. Obviously a professional will usually get far better results and this will be reflected on the website. There are many good stock photo libraries with photos from a few pounds, up to around £100 per image depending on size and quality. The big snag with stock images is that they are generic and are not specific to your organisation. In some instances, it will not matter but particularly when you show pictures of people, your users may sense that the images are not authentic.

8. Design

Website design is a very large topic but when briefing your designer there are some fundamental things to consider. Do you have an existing corporate identity that should be the foundation for the design? What are the tastes of your target audience and how can the site best engage them? What are the values and the things that define your organisation that the design should reflect? It is also helpful to look at other sites (especially your competitors or those in a similar field) and decide what works well and what is less successful. Design is not just about ‘making it look pretty’ it is far deeper than that, how information is presented and what is the complete experience for the user. Trust your designer to do the design, provide a brief and some guidelines but avoid making arbitrary choices based on subjective personal preferences Eg. “make the site red or make the logo bigger”.

9. Management

Owning a website requires an ongoing effort beyond the initial design and build. It needs to be kept updated and evolve with you or your organisation and the needs of the users. Building on a CMS allows the owners to log-in and make changes as required. A website really needs a manager who is responsible for this as well as monitoring its performance and responding to enquiries or issues with the site. In small organisations this may be the job of one person but in larger organisations maybe a team. They may also have to act as ‘advocates’ for the site within the organisation to ensure appropriate and timely new content is added, while outdated content is removed or archived. The website manager need to keep up with developments online and may need to involve the designer or developers further to add additional features or make design changes.

10. Analytics and promotion

One the site is live it is important to analyse its performance and try to improve visitor traffic. There are many analytics tools available, Google Analytics being the most widely used free option. Building a good website is not a guarantee of lots of traffic. I always build sites to be as search engine-friendly as possible (from a technical point of view). However, there are SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and web marketing specialists who can help fine-tune the content to improve its listing. This is something of an art as Google continues to evolve and changing their ranking criteria. This is a niche skill and you may want to consider paying an SEO specialist if you want to significantly increase site traffic and responses.