The best political websites of 2020 have adopted very clean and simple layouts with clear calls to action, they use flat design elements, and are all responsive with mobile-first designs. Almost all of these websites are designed using the WordPress platforms which means that they are easy to manage and they have one of two or three popular CRMs integrated to strategically manage data that is coming through the website.

Bennet for America

Elizabeth Warren for Senate

Do you need a political website? At Watch Street Consulting we’re political website design experts. Check out our portfolio and get in touch.

John Hickenlooper for U.S. Senate

Kirkpatrick for Congress

Jon Ossoff for U.S. Senate

Cheri Bustos for Congress

Collier for Texas

Scott Peters for Congress

Xochitl Torres Small for Congress

Are you a DIY candidate or a website designer? We’ve put together a list of the best WordPress themes for political campaigns. Setting up a WordPress website is quick and easy. Don’t miss this article!

The post BEST POLITICAL WEBSITES OF 2020 appeared first on Watch Street Consulting.

Believe it or not, we’re well into the 2020 election cycle but 2019 also had its fair share of elections. Around the United States, many of the 100 largest cities elected a Mayor and City Council on top of countless other municipal posts. While it just feels like the dust is settling from all those municipal campaigns, in 2020, we’re already hearing from tons of politicians running in 2020 that are looking for political website design .

We’re big fans of WordPress because of its flexibility and simplicity. We recommend WordPress to many of our political campaign clients.

One of the greatest things about WordPress is that there are an abundance of pre-built, easily-editable themes available. While we develop custom WordPress themes for most of our clients, a pre-made WordPress theme can be the perfect solution for campaigns with no time (it only takes a few hours to install WordPress and a theme) or without much money.

All that being said, here’s our list of the best political WordPress themes for 2020…

VoteStart – Political Campaign Theme

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Need a better campaign website or help with a client? At Watch Street Consulting we’re political website design experts. We do affordable customization, tweaks, and even custom WordPress themes. Contact us for a free quote.

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Candidate – stylish & modern Political WordPress theme. It is a splendid solution for politician, political leader, activist, election campaigns, political and social movements, political party or individual candidate website.

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If you don’t see a political WordPress theme that’s right for you, fret not. There are tons of other WordPress themes that work for campaigns. Best of luck as you search for your own best political WordPress theme.

The post BEST POLITICAL WORDPRESS THEMES 2020 appeared first on Watch Street Consulting.

Building a campaign website is one of the first steps you and your team need to take after you decide to run for office. But a lot of campaign websites end up coming across as clunky, hard to use, or dated. Your website is the first version of you that many voters are introduced to, so it needs to make the right impression. Below are a few simple best practices to make sure you get the most out of your campaign website.

Navigation

Your website needs to be easy for voters to use, regardless of their internet savvy. Before you start putting your website together, think about how you want to organize it. All of the information you want to include—like the issues you plan to tackle, your experience, and your background—should have clear and separate sections or pages. Those sections/pages should also be as concise as you can make them since attention spans are short online. We suggest frontloading the most important part of each section in the first sentence or two and keeping your pages to no more than a few paragraphs.

Another critical element of a user’s experience is the hierarchy of your campaign website. You should have a combination of information about you and calls to action (CTAs) you want visitors to make, like sending donations. CTAs should generally be larger than your website copy, stand out on the page, and be ordered based on their importance. For example, if your top priority is fundraising, put your donation CTA at the top of your website. Don’t place CTAs next to each other, as they will compete—which makes them less likely to stand out and lowers the likelihood that someone will complete either action. One way campaign often organize their websites when they have two important CTAs is to put one in the menu bar (typically in a contrasting color from the rest of the menu), and place the other CTA in a pop-up that appears over the content on the main page.

Legible Design

Your campaign website needs to come across as personable and also be legible for readers. A common mistake we see is the use of fonts that are hard to read online. A standard best practice is to use a sans serif font that doesn’t have a ton of contrast like Roboto, rather than a serif font with a lot of contrast like Bodoni. Remember, a lot of frequent voters are older and may appreciate a font that doesn’t make them squint.

Another integral part of a good user experience is responsive design. This means that your webpages should be built to adapt to whatever size screen they appear on (e.g. mobile, tablet, computer monitor). Websites that are not responsive tend to either require the user to zoom in/out or can even cause the images and headers to cover body copy when the screen someone is looking at them on isn’t the same size as the screen they were designed on. A good best practice is to ask your web designer to make your site responsive (or choose a content management system that comes with that option).

Engaging Images

Campaigns often fill their website with headshots of themselves but that isn’t the best way to engage voters. While you do need to have some clear photos of your face, you should also include pictures that people can relate to. We recommend using images of you with your family as well as pictures of you talking to voters or engaging with your community. We believe it’s worth investing in a professional photoshoot and corralling volunteers who you can take pictures with to make sure you look your best. If you have historical photos of you helping your community—for example, images of you participating in a town hall or a clean-up project—you should include these on your campaign website. They can show your commitment and character to voters.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is the process of tweaking your website so it appears closer to the top of search results. While the steps you need to complete to get Google or other search engines to rank your website highly aren’t exactly transparent and change frequently, there are some best practices we follow to improve our own website ranking (they may have even led you to this blog). We use a plugin called Yoast, which is a tool that crawls every page of your website and provides clear, easy instructions on things you can do to meet recommendations. In addition to Yoast, we recommend a few basics to get you started:

• Use your first and last name in headlines, subheads, and website copy often so your page is more likely to rank when people search for your name.
• Add a meta text to every page. This is a short description of the content of that page that includes your name and is between 135–155 characters in length, including spaces.
• Add alt text and titles to all of your images so search engines can categorize them and users can understand their content even if the image doesn’t load correctly or if they have vision impairments.
• Hyperlink to other pages on your website and ask others to hyperlink to your website (the latter is referred to as backlinking). This improves your website’s perceived authority by search engines, especially if you hyperlink to or get backlinks from respected pages like news sites.

Educating Voters

In addition to educating voters about yourself as a candidate, you can also make their lives a little easier by providing information on how to vote for you. It’s not always as easy as it should be to find out how and when to vote, so including a page on your campaign website that tells people the following information can improve their perception of you as a campaign and make it easier for your supporters to get to the polls:

• How to register to vote
• How/where to vote (are there any forms of ID people need to vote?)
• When to vote (include early voting if applicable)

From the Campaign Workshop Blog. Read the full article here.

The post 5 TIPS FOR YOUR POLITICAL CAMPAIGN WEBSITE appeared first on Watch Street Consulting.

Now, the first campaign sites of the election season are up, and we can already see some definitive trends showing us where political web design is going.

While some digital consultants are more focused on Facebook and Twitter than a traditional homepage, do a little searching, and you’ll find that even local races are investing in a professional quality web presence. For good reason: websites remain a go-to for voters to engage with a campaign.

For those still tweaking their online footprint ahead of 2020, here are six campaign web design trends to look for:

Mobile is king.

Mobile traffic accounts for over half of all traffic on the web. The proliferation of smartphones has made the mobile experience even more important than desktop, and campaigns have taken notice.

Kamala Harris’s website on desktop is a festival of movement split in two, alternating between bold colors with text and HTML5 videos. This shifts on mobile to a very simple block website with well designed, scrollable CTAs, and minimized images.

Harris isn’t unique in this: many campaign websites have put just as much work into their mobile experience as their desktop. For those who haven’t, it shows.

Simple landing pages.

Gone are the dark days of 2008, where candidates threw a kitchen sink of options on their front page. The trend now is next to no words on the front page, with very minimal and carefully selected CTAs and big font in the copy.

Candidates like Bernie Sanders have nothing but a background with a title, donate button, and an email opt-in form. The issues, volunteer, shop, and about pages are all located in sub pages.

This helps focus visitors exactly where you want them to look, namely to collect money or information to follow up later. It also speeds up the time for the site to load, a critical part of keeping attention and scoring high on Google’s new search algorithm.

Tasteful animations.

Animations can be a distracting mess, but done tastefully they can help draw visitors eyes to where you want them to look. Research has found that animations can lead to a better user experience, and more click-throughs.

Websites like Pete Buttigieg’s show how animations can draw your eye to a certain area through subtle fade-ins and movement. His website starts blank with only a photo of him, then a box narrows in to focus on that photo, soon after an email opt-in form fades into the right. The transitions and time delays create a very natural eye movement left to right, toward the action he wants you to take.

Campaign shops

Campaign shops have always been a part of a campaign website, even the late John McCain had one in 2000. Fast forward to 2020 and it’s ubiquitous, with everyone from Eric Swalwell to Donald Trump selling hats and mugs — or even Space Force shirts. Down-ballot campaigns are getting into the mix as well, with congressional candidates like Russ Fulcher or Adrienne Bell selling T-shirts and hats.

Web software has made creating a shop easier than ever, with intuitive, well-designed WordPress plugins and shop add ons becoming standard with most websites. It’s a cute way to offload your extra swag, bring in some new donors, and draw more dollars out of your most fervent supporters.

Speed rules everything.

Load times have always been important, but in 2020 they’re critical, and campaigns are designing around that. The 2018 Google Search update put speed as a top important factor for how it ranks websites. Meanwhile, as voters are accessing sites via mobile over cell connections, heavy, slow loading sites risk losing donors and supporters.

In response, nearly every presidential site is using a CDN, or a content delivery network, and minifying scripts to ensure speedy websites and high ranking sites. A slow site in 2020 could mean money, and supporters, left off the table.

Notification banners.

Sitting there above the menu, in bright red, a banner hovers to tell you something you need to know right now. For Andrew Yang it’s a chance to win a trip if you donate today, for Harris it’s merely a need for donations.

Meant to mimic a “breaking news” alert on a news site, or an update on an app, our eyes naturally gravitate toward it in a way a donation button might be overlooked. The whole box is clickable, bringing you to the call to action they want you to take. It’s a savvy way to bring new elements into your design that points visitors in the right direction.

From Campaigns & Elections. Read the full article here.

The post 6 CAMPAIGN WEB DESIGN TRENDS TO WATCH IN 2020 appeared first on Watch Street Consulting.

The answer so far? Experimentation, with an emphasis on appealing to the grassroots. We’ve seen some weird results in the process: Bernie Sanders wowed a Fox News-selected audience, the mayor of the fourth-largest city in Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, vaulted to prominence via a CNN town hall, and Andrew Yang appeared on a podcast and is suddenly a viable White House candidate. Meanwhile, Roy Moore’s polling well in Alabama and Ukraine just elected a comedian and TV star as their next president. Is it May yet?

Some bets may or may not pay off. Consider Elizabeth Warren, who’s invested heavily in staff, though her campaign may struggle to raise enough money to feed them. She’s not alone in risking flameout, since outside observers may reasonably question whether Beto and Buttigieg can maintain their current buzz in between now and New Hampshire. Go back to 1968 and ask Eugene McCarthy about the dangers of peaking too soon. Not helping Buttigieg? The lack of anything resembling policy positions on his website.

Just about everyone’s bullish on social media and text messaging, with the average presidential campaign posting on Facebook about four times per day (according to my Crowdtangle monitoring list). Texting an SMS short code also seems to have replaced signing up for an email list as the candidates’ ask du jour, judging by what I see on their podiums and signs. But will the voters be as enthusiastic about 24/7 contact? They at least say they’re souring on the socials when pollsters ask them, though we’ll see if they live up to that sentiment and do something else with their fingertips this year.

I do suspect that broadcast SMS and peer-to-peer (P2P) texting may both see somewhat of a backlash this election cycle. I’ve heard anecdotal evidence that voters in battleground states wearied of the constant barrage of texts Hustle-ing out of myriad turnout operations last year, partially fueled by the DNC’s big mobile-number buys for the 2018 cycle.

Friends of mine at least are already being turned off by campaign texts this time around, with one noting that Beto’s campaign texted him five times on the day he announced his presidential campaign alone. Considering that P2P lives in a grey area (it does an end-run around the usual limits on mass-texting from a phone number), could overuse imperil the entire industry?

At least we know digital fundraising still works, with Democrats announcing big numbers regularly — and Donald Trump even bigger ones. But in an environment where Jay Inslee can raise over a million in his first weekend in the race, grassroots donors seem likely to keep the Democratic field healthy and large for many months to come, a boon for campaigns whose only hope of making it into the Democratic debates is a large fundraising base.

At least Trump’s predictable: between rounds on the golf course, he’s still tweeting about NO COLLUSION. At least when he’s not busy accusing his political rivals of insufficient patriotism (this from a man who specifically asked Russian intelligence to hack his opponents, hours before they did so). Just as in 2016, his campaign is spending heavily to reach his base on Facebook, apparently without much attention to persuading anyone who doesn’t already agree with him this time. Also pouring significant money into Facebook and Google ads: Bernie, Warren, and Harris, along with Tom Steyer, whose Need To Impeach apparently knows few financial bounds.

Meanwhile, campaigns are madly live streaming every speech, rally, and appearance, when they’re not sharing their dental visits with the world. No potentially viral moment may go unexploited! The pace must be exhausting: candidates at least used to have a moment here and there to think. But now the social beasts must be fed at all costs and all hours. I eagerly await the inevitable video from the bathroom of an Iowa truck stop. Just think: only 18 months until Election Day. By then, I’m sure we’ll be happy to elect a new president who only exists in virtual reality.

From Campaigns & Elections. Read the full article here.

The post MAKING SENSE OF POLITICAL TECH IN 2019 appeared first on Watch Street Consulting.

Believe it or not we’re well in 2016 election cycle season but 2015 also has it’s fair share of elections. Around the United States, 55 of the 100 largest cities will elect a Mayor and City Council this year on top of countless of other municipal posts. Politicians participating in the 2015 and 2016 cycles are looking for political website design right now.

We’re big fans of WordPress because of it’s flexibility and simplicity. We recommend WordPress to many of our political campaign clients.

One of the greatest things about WordPress is that there are an abundance of pre-built, easily-editable themes available. While we develop custom WordPress themes for most of our clients, a pre-made WordPress theme can be the perfect solution for campaigns with no time (it only takes a few hours to install WordPress and a theme) or without much money.

All that being said, here’s our list of the best political WordPress themes for the 2015 – 2016 election cycles.

Amazing websites using Hero: burkeforwisconsin.com, seaneldridge.com

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Need a better campaign website or help with a client? At Watch Street Consulting we’re political WordPress experts. We do affordable customization, tweaks, and even custom WordPress themes. Contact us for a free quote.

Not technically a political WordPress theme but still a great option for campaigns.

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Again, not branded as a political theme but it has tons of features for campaigns.

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If you don’t see a political WordPress theme that’s right for you, fret not. There are tons of other WordPress themes that work for campaigns. Best of luck as you search for your own best political WordPress theme.

Ready to make your own mark online? Let’s get started.

The post BEST POLITICAL WORDPRESS THEMES appeared first on Watch Street Consulting.

UPDATED: The Best Nonprofit WordPress Themes as of March 2015

It’s 2015 and the timing couldn’t be better to launch a new nonprofit website; and with WordPress the process couldn’t be faster or simpler.

We love WordPress because it’s easy to use and quick to set-up. Most of our nonprofit and NGO clients are currently using the WordPress platform and adding a beautiful theme only takes a few minutes.

We suggest custom nonprofit WordPress websites to the majority of our nonprofit clients, but WordPress themes can be a nice alternative for organizations with simple and straightforward needs.

So, here we go. These are the best nonprofit WordPress themes of 2015.

Amazing websites using Hero: nydems.org, dems.gov

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Need a better nonprofit website or help with a client? At Watch Street Consulting we’re WordPress experts. We do affordable customization, tweaks, and even custom WordPress themes. Contact us for a free quote.

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If you don’t see the best nonprofit WordPress theme that’s right for you, don’t worry. There are tons of other WordPress themes that can work for nonprofits and NGOs. We also develop custom nonprofit WordPress websites and offer discounts to nonprofits.

Ready to make your own mark online? Let’s get started.

The post BEST NONPROFIT WORDPRESS THEMES appeared first on Watch Street Consulting.

By Jake Williams, Campaign & Elections Magazine

In today’s campaign world, tools and tactics are advancing quicker than ever. Digital is now an essential part of campaigning, and an essential part of any campaign’s advertising budget.

But for the upcoming election cycle, say consultants, the name of the game is reinforcement—finding ways to get your message in front of voters and then make sure it stays top of mind. We’ve highlighted four tactics that should be a part of your strategy discussions in 2014.

1. Set-Top Box Data Mining

While there’s plenty of potential for political campaigns in set-top box targeting, mining data from television set-top boxes and pairing it to the voter file is a good starting point this cycle, according to NCC Media’s Tim Kay.

“It’s no longer hoping you’re hitting the person,” says Kay, the company’s political director. “Now it’s about knowing whether you’re hitting the person and knowing how to hit the person.”

After watching what President Obama’s 2012 reelection effort was able to do in terms of television targeting, Kay says it would be foolish for campaigns to think they can target voters effectively only through news-related programming. Slicing and dicing lifestyle and sports programming to ensure you’re reaching the right audience is now the norm. Viewers consume hundreds of different channels, and the fragmentation is only getting worse.

Through data pulled from set-top boxes, a campaign can get a sense of what their targeted area is consuming, and then figure out how to best reach the voters in those target zones. This type of data mining, says Kay, can be scaled to fit just about any size campaign—you don’t need a presidential budget to do it.

Targeting directed toward specific set-top boxes is only usable in some metropolitan areas at the moment, but the technology is expected to have a more nationwide reach within the next couple of election cycles.

2. Cookie-Targeted Online Advertising

This is a tactic we’ve heard about plenty over the past year, and digital consultants anticipate that it will go completely mainstream in the 2014 cycle. Like TV set-top box targeting, cookie-targeted online advertising allows for the sort of one-to-one targeting that campaigns covet.

According to Jordan Lieberman, president of CampaignGrid, the key this cycle is addressability. Due to lower turnout, Lieberman says successful campaigns will keep it local, social and mobile. Local ensures you’re reaching voters where they are, and mobile combines the addressability of local and social outreach.

In addition to assisting in the placement of online advertising, cookie targeting also offers data a campaign can add to the voter file. And the targeting cost doesn’t necessarily change whether a campaign is up or down the ballot, says Lieberman.

Still, it doesn’t make sense for every campaign to spend money on cookie-targeted advertising.

“If the area is less than 10,000 people, consider investing in sneakers and start knocking on doors,” Lieberman says.

Yet cookie targeting, like other methods of modern advertising, is not an either-or scenario. It’s part of the reinforcement of the message that’s essential for successful political advertising. Lieberman thinks set-top box addressability, or specifically targeting segments by cable box, will eventually take off, but it will take a few cycles to get there.

3. Facebook Custom Audiences

2013 was the first year that Americans spent more time online than they did in front of a television, according to a study from eMarketer. So where exactly are they consuming? Facebook is one answer. Facebook’s Jamie Ruth says campaigns should be using the social network to reinforce and extend their reach in a more targeted way, and not just using Facebook to develop a social media presence.

“Campaigns up and down the ballot are using Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences, and conversion-optimized bidding to raise money at scale like never before,” Ruth says. “They’re taking advantage of Facebook’s deep mobile penetration and cross-device targeting, including voter-file targeting through Managed Custom Audiences, to persuade and turn out key voters.”

Custom audiences allow a campaign to upload, match and eventually solicit their existing email list on Facebook. On the superficial level, this can help increase “likes” on their page, but it can also bring in money and help campaigns reach specific audiences with online messaging tailored specifically to them.

“As email open rates slip and email-filtering technology develops, campaigns are turning to Facebook Custom Audiences to reinforce their email marketing messages in supporters’ News Feeds,” Ruth says. “As it becomes harder to reach voters through TV, media buyers are increasingly using Page Post Photo and Video ads to reinforce messaging and extend the reach of their TV spots across desktop and mobile devices.”

Last year, Facebook introduced Managed Custom Audiences, which allow campaigns to target their voter file universes on both desktop and mobile devices—merging the standard online and mobile advertising worlds. Lookalike Custom Audiences allow a campaign to take its list of supporters from its custom audiences to find voters with Facebook profiles similar to the campaign’s existing supporters.

“These tools have completely transformed down ballot campaigns’ ability to acquire low cost email acquisitions and donations, even if they can’t hire a dedicated digital ads staffer or agency,” Ruth says.

4. Twitter’s Tailored Audiences

Although not as campaign-oriented as other offerings, Twitter’s latest in advertising is a broad way to reach voters in 140 characters. Twitter has yet to see extensive use as a political advertising venue, yet with products like Twitter plus TV, along with keyword and geo-targeting, Twitter has now fully entered the political advertising game.

“In 2012, Twitter was the real-time spin room for politics and drove the narrative with reporters,” says Peter Greenberger, director of global political sales for Twitter. “Our new direct response capabilities, and the power of Twitter plus TV, will make Twitter a core component of list building, fundraising, persuasion, and mobilization for political campaigns in 2014.”

In December, Twitter unveiled its Tailored Audiences feature, which allows advertisers to connect with users who have already shown interest in their brand. This feature is broadly made for businesses, but is applicable to campaigns as well.

Like Facebook’s Custom Audiences, a campaign can upload a list of its supporters, and link them with existing Twitter IDs. This allows Twitter users to be targeted with a specific promoted tweet, or a promoted user, that’s relevant to them.

From the article “4 tactics your campaign should explore in 2014” published here.

Ready to learn how you can put these political campaign tactics to use for you? We’re political online marketing experts. Let’s start the conversation!

The post FOUR POLITICAL CAMPAIGN TACTICS YOU’RE PROBABLY OVERLOOKING IN 2014 appeared first on Watch Street Consulting.

Today it’s impossible to win an election without a website that enables you to connect with your supporters, present your ideas through interesting content, and most importantly, host a two-way conversation with supporters that truly keeps them engaged throughout the campaign.

With so many political website builder tools available for campaigns to create compelling websites, choosing the right tool can be difficult. The best political website builders let you easily manage your website, utilize social media, organize events online, accept donations, and keep a database of your supporters online.

We’ve put together this guide to help you pick to pick the best political website builder for your campaign. Here we go…

The best political website builder tools for campaigns:

1) NationBuilder – Community Organizing System

In Short: NationBuilder is taking the political website builder market by storm. NationBuilder is powerful, offers a 14-day free trial, and starts at $19/mo after that (a fraction of the other political website builders). NationBuilder designs are 100% customizable and you’re free to use the designer of your choice to complete your website update.

NationBuilder is a political website builder that combines a CMS and CMR system. It’s one of the newest solutions you can find, with more and more campaigns choosing it as their website builder solution. It is a reliable and SEO optimized platform that lets you create custom designs and domains, organize events and actions, create blogs with different types of content, have in depth website analytics, and much more.

NationBuilder is the world’s first community organizing system that lets you create groups around a cause or campaign which is a great way to engage your supporters. You can easily create dynamic profiles for all your users, keep track of your supporters, set follow ups when someone takes an action, create lists, match your email list to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and create public profiles for supporters. All these features are great assets for any successful political campaign.

One of the first things new users consider when it comes to choosing a political website builder is comparing new solutions to popular platforms like WordPress. The first thing that separates the two is that this is a fully hosted CMS. NationBuilder also doesn’t have plugins and uses different page types and integrated toolkits which are easier to use for most inexperienced web administrators.

2) WordPress

In short: WordPress is the world’s most popular website builder (used for about 19% of the websites online today). It’s equally popular among political campaigns. WordPress is free and open-sourced. There are tons of plug-ins geared towards political campaigns so it’s a great choice but it can take a significant amount of customization to reach the level of functionality as NationBuilder.

WordPress has been around for years. It simplifies all the complexity of building a professional looking website so even people with no experience in coding can use it with ease. You can also do whatever you’d like with the source code itself, so if you choose to extend it or modify in any way you can do it without any licensing fees. In addition to its simplicity, WordPress is a flexible platform that lets you create any type of website, or network of websites. It’s SEO optimized which is a great advantage when it comes to search engine ranking, and it lets you easily publish all types of content. It also lets you integrate some great plugins and tools that can help you create a powerful campaign website.

CiviCRM – A Powerful WordPress Plugin for Political Campaigns

In Short: CiviCRM is a great, web-based, CRM solution that includes supporter management, events, an email platform, online contributions, all types of reports, and much more. CiviCRM is much more popular among nonprofits but it can be an amazing tool for campaigns as well with a little training. It’s free to download and use.

3) Salsa Labs

In short: Salsa is a great management tool that’s easy to use, has great online community, and a wide range of useful tools to manage your campaign website. Salsa is really popular with nonprofits but it is also great for campaigns. Salsa hosts “action” pages (i.e. donate, volunteer, RSVP, etc.) so it should be used alongside WordPress to make a complete website. Salsa pages can be easily skinned to seamlessly match your full website, they even include a tool to help with this. Salsa has great customer support but pricing could be more competitive.

4) Blue State Digital – BSD Tools

In short: BSD Tools are a suite of digital applications that form an effective platform for organizing, engaging, and activating online. Unlike the other tools mentioned here, we don’t have any experience with BSD Tools, but it’s a product of Blue State Digital (the team that built the Obama online campaign in 2008 and 2012) and we’ve heard positive reviews. Based on feedback from our clients their monthly fees start at around $350 a month and their pages are fully customizable.

5) NGP VAN – Accelerator Web Platform

In short: NGP VAN is the platform of choice for progressive candidates and organizations on the federal level in the US. NGP was a groundbreaking tool when it was released (and it’s still a very powerful option) but we rarely recommend it because of pricing and customer support issues. From my experience, monthly fees range from $450 to $1000+ (ouch!). NGP also doesn’t allow third-party website design customization so you’ll be forced to work with their in-house design team. From my experience, they charge $1500 to $3000 for a landing page or $8000 to $12000+ for a full website (big ouch!).

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This year online marketing strategies have shifted for nonprofits but beautiful, responsive websites are still the best ways for nonprofits and NGOs to present their work globally and raise awareness about their causes.

The best nonprofit websites stand out because they clearly communicate the organization’s mission, have succinct calls to action, and engage their audience.

Nonprofits and NGOs often have limited budgets but the best nonprofits websites of 2013 manage to do a lot with a little using open-sourced software like WordPress and affordable online organizing tools like NationBuilder.

Here are the best nonprofit websites of 2013:

American Cancer Society

The American Cancer Society website is the online headquarters for an organization that’s been around for more than 100 years giving hope to cancer patients and their families. The website features bright colors and photography that inspires all. The website touches everyone who visits through teaching them more about the disease, its prevention, and the ways to help those who are suffering from it.

Amnesty International

Amnesty has had one of the most recognizable nonprofit websites for years running. With more than 3 million supporters, they are fighting to stop human rights abuses. The website is great looking and engaging. They make great use of color and emphasize their actions with a homepage slider. They include big join, donate, and take action buttons which make it easy for visitors to get involved.

Do you need a nonprofit website? At Watch Street Consulting we’re nonprofit experts. Check out our nonprofit portfolio and contact us for a free quote.

Acumen Fund

Acumen Fund has one of the most engaging and innovative designs of all the best nonprofit websites this year. They feature large sections that clearly state their ideas and actions on fighting poverty around the world. The developers found a perfect way to keep the website colorful while maintaining the seriousness of the problem the organization is devoted to. You will easy find all the necessary information about their cause and ways to help.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is another of the largest and most recognizable organizations in the world. They’re devoted to resolving global issues like poverty, diseases, and education. They use touching images and a clean design including a lot of content on their ideas and projects. They make clear calls to visitors to take action and start helping others.

Solar Citizens

I Am That Girl

Sandy Hook Promise

RoadTrip to End Poverty

National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce

Mistakes Kids Make

Counterspill

Are you a DIY nonprofit or a website designer? We’ve put together a list of the best WordPress themes for nonprofits. Don’t miss this article!

Charity Water

Change.org

A Billion Thanks Mandela

Ready to make your own mark online? Let’s talk.

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