There’s no point denying it – Hootville Communications builds websites. In fact we are about to start work on a rather large site for a community health service but we digress…
Clients often want a campaign section on their websites. That’s OK but if a campaign is large enough and important enough we recommend a separate, stand alone campaign website separate from the organisational website. Why?
- It significantly boosts your search engine results.
- It stops your campaign priorities being subsumed by a site devoted to all the other things you do.
- It enables you to start a new site, often on a superior content management system with fresh, campaign-specific design and features.
- It is often faster than waiting for your new organisation-wide website to be developed.
- It makes the campaign look more vibrant, dynamic and attractive to prospective supporters.
Two good-to-great examples here:
1. Fat Free TV which is an ambitious campaign of the NSW Cancer Council measuring the amount of junk food advertising on our screens.
2. Wall of Hands which is a slick, celebrity-laden campaign around Indigenous literacy for the The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation.
Think twice about this if your organisation-wide site has healthy traffic and strong SEO (you do know about your traffic, don’t you?). Also; be sure to promote the campaign website on your organisation’s website. CC NSW – you reading this?
While agreeing what you say Brett to a certain extent, I would also caution organisations on not setting up a ‘microsite’ for every single campaign that they create. If it’s a large complex organisation engaging in a lot of campaigns each year this can effectively mean a lot of websites needing ongoing management as well as maintenance. Brand dilution and brand competition needs to considered by the organisation.
LIkewise an exit strategy (what’s going to happen to the page after the ‘active’ campaign ceases) also needs considering from the outset.
Cheers
Ann
@annnolan