1. Clarify your brand fundamentals

Before jumping into a website project, revisit your brand’s foundations to ensure consistency and focus:

• Mission, Vision, Values: Define your purpose and goals. These should guide every page, user journey and interaction on your site.

• Tone of Voice & Language Guidelines: Your tone should reflect who you are and enable you to create content that makes sense to your audiences. Clear guidelines help ensure this consistency across all content.

• Key Audiences & Messaging: Understand your primary audiences and anyone else you want to speak to, and tailor your messaging to their needs. Your website should speak directly to their context, needs, and values. Any proper website process will focus time on this but if you have a strong understanding of where you already speak to your audiences and what resonates you’ll make the most of that process.

Starting with these elements ensures the website aligns with your organisation’s identity and goals from the outset.

2. Understand your audience’s needs and context

Your audience’s experience is at the heart of your website’s success. Website projects should spend time getting to know the people that you’re designing for, their context and what they need. To get this working quickly, you could start discussions mapping out their:

• Jobs to Be Done: Identify the specific tasks users come to your site to accomplish, whether donating, seeking information, or contacting your team.

• Key Journeys: Plan pathways through your site that guide users effortlessly to their goals.

As part of this step, you should establish your Accessibility standards and principles, to ensure the site is usable for everyone, including people with disabilities.

Understanding these journeys will lead to a user-centred design that feels intuitive and inclusive.

3. Audit Your Visual Identity

Your website will be one of the main touchpoints that people interact with your brand. It needs to visually and emotionally resonate with people who know you. To achieve this you should consider:

• Photography & Illustration: Ensure you have a library of high-quality, on-brand imagery. Plan photoshoots if needed to create authentic, consistent visuals that can be used in a range of different formats across the website.

• Digital Colour Palette: Adapt your brand colours for web use, ensuring high contrast to meet accessibility standards.

• Icons & Brand Devices: Use these elements to reinforce your brand identity and enhance user experience - ensuring that you have them in all the right formats for use across digital channels.

Visual consistency across your website strengthens your brand by fostering trust with your audience.

4. Address Technical and Legal Considerations

A website build involves technical and regulatory decisions that should align with your brand’s values and goals:

• Font Licensing: Ensure fonts are properly licensed for digital use. Avoid substitutes that don’t reflect your wider brand in digital channels.

• Legal Requirements: Prepare privacy policies, cookie notices, and other compliance documents in advance. Make sure they’re written in a way that people can understand and fits with your tone of voice.

Having these elements ready helps streamline the build and ensures your site meets both user and regulatory expectations.

5. Learn from the other organisations that your audiences will see

Take inspiration from other brands and set clear benchmarks for success. Run a Competitor Analysis and study websites you admire. What works well? What would you do differently? Pay particular attention to organisations that have similar audiences and are trying to achieve the same kind of impact as you. People visiting your website are likely to be familiar with their brands.

Looking ahead ensures your website remains relevant and impactful long after launch.

In Summary

Starting with a well-defined brand sets the foundation for a successful website build. From tone of voice to audience journeys, accessibility to scalability, aligning your brand with your website’s goals ensures an efficient build process and a site that truly works for your organisation.

Remember, your website is often your principal brand touchpoint—make it count.