A charity website needs to work for people who may arrive for very different reasons. Someone may need support, want to understand your work, make a donation, volunteer, refer someone or find out whether they can trust your organisation. A good website helps each of them quickly understand what you do, find what they need and take the right next step.
A good charity website helps people quickly understand your work, find what they need and know what to do next.
Start with the people using the website
A charity website may need to serve people looking for support, professionals making referrals, funders, volunteers, donors and partners. They arrive with different questions, different levels of knowledge and different reasons for being there. That makes it important to plan the website around what each audience needs to understand, find and do. The 2026 Charity Digital Skills Report found that 42% of small charities struggle with conducting and acting on user research, while 38% see revamping their website as a priority. Before deciding which pages to create, work out who the website needs to serve and what each group is trying to achieve. Visitors should not have to understand your departments, programme names or funding structures before they can find the information they need.
Make the essentials easy to find
Every charity is different, but most visitors will need answers to some basic questions. Your website should make it easy to find:
What gets the most attention should depend on what people come to your website to do. A service charity may need to make support and referral information prominent. A community organisation may focus on activities and participation. A fundraising charity may place greater emphasis on impact, donations and other ways to support its work. Give the most important information the greatest visibility, based on what your visitors actually need from you.
Give different audiences clear routes
People visit your website for different reasons, so they shouldn’t all have to follow the same path to find what they need. Someone looking for support needs to quickly understand whether you can help them and what to do next. A funder or partner may want to understand your work, its impact and the evidence behind it. A potential donor or volunteer may want to see the difference their support could make and how to get involved. Your navigation, page structure and calls to action should make those different routes easy to follow. Help each audience get from the reason they arrived to the information or action they need as simply as possible.
Make the next step clear
Once someone understands what you offer, they should be able to see what to do next. Depending on your charity, that might mean:
The right action will depend on where someone is and what they are trying to achieve. A service page might lead to eligibility information or a referral form. An impact story might encourage someone to donate or get involved. You don’t need to give every action equal prominence on every page. Make the most useful next step easy to recognise at the moment someone is ready to take it.
Give people reasons to trust you
Your website often helps people decide whether they can trust your organisation, use your services or support your work. Clear information, evidence of your impact, real examples, visible people and easy-to-find contact details can all give them greater confidence in who you are and what you do. The website also needs to be accessible, so people can find, navigate and understand important information regardless of how they access it. Keeping information accurate matters too. Outdated services, incorrect staff details or neglected sections can quickly undermine confidence. A website people can trust is clear, accessible, accurate and kept up to date.
Four questions to consider
When reviewing your website, consider whether your most important visitors can:
If your website struggles in these areas, adding more content is unlikely to solve the problem. Look first at who the website needs to serve, what those people need and how easily they can find their way through it. A useful charity website makes it easier for people to understand, find, act and trust.
Build around the people who need it
The best charity websites make things simple for the people using them. They help visitors understand the organisation, find the right information, feel confident in what they see and take the next step. Start with what people need from your website, then build the content and structure around helping them get there.
If your charity website has become difficult to navigate or no longer makes it easy for people to find what they need, Grinning Graphics can help you create a clearer, more useful website built around the people you need to reach.