Make it clear what the organization does
A first-time visitor should be able to say, in one sentence, what the organization does, where, and for whom. It sounds obvious and it’s what fails most often: the site speaks in internal language —mission, vision, strategic pillars— and the visitor leaves without knowing.
On the International Medical Committee site, the headline says what it does and the line above says who it belongs to. Everything else comes after.
The test is simple: if someone reads only the first screen, what can they tell another person afterwards?
Structure the site around the work, not the org chart
Institutional websites tend to mirror the internal structure: departments, committees, units. Visitors need something else: what you do, where, and how to get involved.
Each program or line of work deserves its own page, with its own URL that can be shared. When everything hangs off the home page, that page grows every year and nobody finds anything.
Programs and news you can keep up with
A well-presented program says what problem it addresses, what is being done and how to take part. What doesn’t help is promising a pace the organization can’t sustain: a news section whose latest post is two years old signals neglect, even if the work continues.
Before creating a section, know who will update it and how often. If the answer is “nobody”, a well-written static page is the better choice.
Languages: only the ones you will maintain
If the organization works in more than one country, languages are part of the structure, not a translation layer: each language gets its own URLs, and the menu lists only the ones somebody will look after. We cover this in A multilingual institutional website.
Mobile and accessibility
The site will be read on phones, often on a poor connection. The ones we built in 2005 and 2006 for OMPP · WOFP and Sport and Peace don’t adapt to mobile: back then they didn’t need to. It’s one of the reasons the Sport and Peace site is being rebuilt.
Accessibility isn’t a badge. It means the site can be used with a keyboard, text has enough contrast, images have descriptions and headings follow a logical order. We use the WCAG guidelines at level AA as our working reference.
If a law or a funder requires a specific level from your organization, confirm it with whoever is responsible and verify it with an audit. Don’t take it as given because someone promised it.
Security and privacy
The less data the site collects, the less there is to protect. Before adding a form, a newsletter or an analytics tool, ask what personal data it involves, where it’s stored and who is accountable for it.
The baseline is a secure connection across the whole site, admin access in few hands, and a privacy policy that describes what the site really does, not a copied template. On this site we measure visits without cookies, which is why there’s no cookie banner.
Make it easy to get in touch
An organization has several audiences: someone who needs help, someone who wants to contribute, a journalist, another organization. Each should find how to reach you without combing through the site. The International Medical Committee has separate pages for partnerships, medical professionals and contact.
And someone has to be on the other end. An email address nobody reads is worse than not publishing one.
What to ask before you hire
- Who will update the site, and with what?
- What do we receive at the end: files, access, documentation?
- Are the domain and hosting in the organization’s name?
- What happens to the old site’s URLs?
- How are languages handled?
- Who checks accessibility, and against what standard?
- What personal data will the site handle?
These answers matter more than the design of the home page. They’re what we settle at the start of a web design and development project.