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What should a small organisation ask for when it commissions a website?

Plan your website, point by point

Free offer Already have a website? Email your website address for a free 79-point audit of how you could make it (even?) better.

Plan a website now Tick what the site should do and the brief builds itself as you go, ready to email or copy.

About your site

Your details label the brief. Nothing is sent anywhere until you press the button.

What branding does your website need?

The look a visitor recognises when they see it again: your logo, your colours, your typefaces, and the name and line that sit under them.

What sort of visual design should your website have?

How the site is laid out and how visitors move around it, beyond the basics of the brand. Every site is designed from scratch in plain HTML and CSS, which keeps it lean, lightweight and robust, or it comes with the design layer of the system which it is runs on (e.g. Wordpress), where there's usually a wide choice of well-constructed designs.

Who should compose the text and information for your website?

Much of a website is text. A site should be written in a consistent voice (this is part of the brand). Pages are written not just to be read by people, but also to be found and quoted by search engines and AI answer tools, so that more people will read it.

Where do your website's pictures come from?

The images, diagrams and social cards on the site. This site draws its charts as vector graphics, which stay sharp at any size and are very small files.

What can your website do beyond showing pages?

Features beyond pages of information: taking bookings, signing people in, showing live data, connecting to your other systems. This is the digital toolmaking service. Anything with a login or a payment also needs a higher security level, chosen further down.

How fast should your website load?

Visitors leave slow sites. Most of a site's speed is decided when it is built, and is hard to add later.

Figures and sources

Google's web.dev guidance says the largest thing on screen should appear within 2.5 seconds, for at least three visits in four.

How does your website get found by Google and by AI answer tools?

Search engines and AI answer tools read your site too, and many people now ask an AI tool instead of searching. Both need the site to state plainly who you are and what you do.

Figures and sources

In a Pew Research Center study of US Google searches from March 2025, people clicked through to a website on 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when none did.

Does your website have to be accessible?

An accessible website can be used by people who rely on a screen reader, the keyboard alone, or magnified text. Making it accessible is a legal duty for anyone providing a service to the public, with extra duties for public-sector bodies.

Figures and sources

The government's Family Resources Survey counted one person in four in the UK as disabled in 2024 to 2025, and the WebAIM Million found detectable accessibility failures on 95.9% of home pages in 2026.

The Equality Act 2010 covers the website of anyone providing a service to the public, paid or free, as the Equality and Human Rights Commission's code of practice confirms.

“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.” Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, on the W3C accessibility page.

Pick a level:

How secure does your website need to be?

How hard the site is to tamper with, impersonate or misuse. A brochure site needs less protection than an online shop taking payments, so there are three levels to choose from.

Figures and sources

The government's Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025/2026 found that 42% of micro businesses, 46% of small businesses and 28% of charities had a breach or attack in the previous 12 months.

Pick a level:

What does UK privacy law require of your website?

What happens to a visitor's data from the moment a page opens. UK law (the UK GDPR and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, or PECR, which cover cookies) sets the minimum, and going further gives people a reason to trust you.

Figures and sources

The ICO's data protection fee for the smallest organisations is £52 a year, or £47 by direct debit.

How do you make your website low-carbon?

A website uses electricity whenever it is stored or visited. A lighter site on renewable power costs less to run and loads faster, so this seldom conflicts with the other choices.

Figures and sources

The HTTP Archive's Web Almanac 2025 puts the median home page on a phone at 2.6 MB.

Which pages make a visitor trust your website?

The pages a visitor, funder or customer looks for to check that your organisation is genuine. They cost little to add. Which pages apply depends on what kind of organisation you are, so start there.

What should you get when your website is handed over?

What you have when the build is finished: a website you own and understand.

More answers

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