Many local candidates use a site builder to create a website to engage voters, raise donations, and build support. A solid website is the hub of that digital marketing presence. There are a number of site builders available for political candidates to create a site quickly and easily. However, most are not optimized for political purposes.
Here are some things to look for when choosing the best website builder for your campaign.
What are the features of the content management system?
Generic website builders have generic tools. They typically include a page editor, a form creator, and a design suite. Most are little more than an online copy of Dreamweaver.
What? You don’t know how to use Dreamweaver? This ‘generic builder’ approach is like giving you access to a fully-stocked garage and leaving you to fix your own car.
Ideally, you’ll want to use a system that is made for non-technical users and designed specifically for political candidates. For example, Online Candidate includes built-in contact, volunteer, donation, and endorsement forms. The forms are pre-designed, easily configurable, and can be added to one or more pages with ease. We’ve worked hard to create a tool that makes building your website as easy as possible while providing a great end-user experience.
Elements of every election website
There are several main elements that every political website should include. The Online Candidate system comes configured with the following pages and forms:
- Home Page
- Issue Pages
- About the Candidate
- Election Information
- Blog Area for Updates
- Donation Form
- Volunteer Form
- Endorsement Form
- Contact Form
- Landing Pages
More content provides more user engagement. Besides issue information and candidate biography information, polls are a great way to get people engaged on your website. You can use them for feedback or just for fun. Online Candidate provides a simple polling feature and allows you to add outside poll or survey systems. Email signups are another common tactic for user engagement and to keep supporters up to date on election information and to solicit donations.
Creating forms is not a fun task. They take time to create. That’s why our sites have those forms already built-in and ready to go. They include data capture, so you can keep a record of those who have contacted you. We also include additional features such as an image gallery, a blog area, multiple user logins, integration with popular political donation systems, and the ability to easily tie into outside vendor services.
Need content inspiration?
Sometimes our clients don’t know what to write for their websites. Through our resource site, our clients have access to a selection of sample home page and about copy to help them started.
Political website hosting services
Our hosting is different than some other services. Your domain is stand-alone on our server and not part of a sub-folder of the host company’s website. Some hosts for political sites allow ‘immediate sign up’, and then simply add your new ‘site’ as a hidden sub-folder. Then, if you want your own domain name, they point the domain to that subfolder, where the entire site remains under the host site.
Website hosting through a subdomain or folder is bad for a number of reasons. It makes the site difficult to rank on search engines – or looks professional in the eyes of your visitors.
And if you register your domain through a service or a web developer, are you sure that you actually own the domain? Or can you even transfer the domain to another account in the future? This is an issue with any web hosting service, not just political website hosting services. When clients sign up for a domain through Online Candidate, the domain is registered in the the client’s name.
Many no-cost site site creation tools get you to sign up with a free domain name but then make it almost impossible to use the domain elsewhere if you want to leave their hosting service.
We don’t believe in that. If someone wants to move their website and be hosted elsewhere, that’s fine. We can point the domain to another server. If they want to transfer the domain to a different registrar, that’s fine too.
Keeping a client hostage to a particular web host just because they registered a domain through you is wrong.
Does the website builder service what you need, like email accounts?
These can be full email accounts or email forwards, which allow messages sent to youremail@yourdomain.com to forward to one or more other addresses.
Many free or low-cost builders do not offer email. If the service lets you create a website using a subdomain (yoursite.sitebuilderservice.com), then you definitely won’t have email available to you.
A branded email address that matches your domain name helps increase a candidate’s brand recognition. It also helps establish a consistent identity across various communication channels, such as social media profiles, brochures, and email signatures.
Online Candidate provides email accounts and forwards. A campaign email address is critical for advertising on Google Ads or Facebook.
What’s the cost?
The cost of any website can vary. For high-end, custom websites built by marketing firms, the price can be thousands of dollars. Larger campaigns often take this approach. Smaller campaigns have a more limited budget. Generic site builders cost around $10-15 per month. That may not include a domain name, and you are building your site from scratch.
Website platforms for political candidates, like Online Candidate, have the advantages of including features that political candidates need, such as initial pages, specialized forms, an image library and integration with related services. For example, our platform costs $29/month, with discounted pricing for longer hosting periods. The system is designed to help get a political website up and running quickly. Users do not need to know how to code or have design experience to make a great-looking site.
What are your design options?
With website software, you are often limited to specific designs. And most services are geared toward business clients. Because they are more generic in purpose, you may find it difficult to find a political design template that meets your needs.
Online Candidate is a platform specifically designed for political candidates and organizations. You won’t need to hunt around to find custom color schemes and graphics you need to customize your site’s look. We also include a library of political images for you to use in your site content.
Easily edit your site template look:
- Choose from a library of header graphics
- Upload your own header graphic or logo
- Load a professionally-designed color scheme or to create your own
- Choose a wide or narrow page layout
- Select header and body fonts
- Modify your navigation position and links
- Edit your sidebar options and layout
Our Regular and Enhanced Website Packages include design customization to match your campaign colors and design. If you don’t have a campaign logo, we can create one that you can use in your website, print materials and signage.
Our Lite Website Package and our $29 Monthly Option has a great selection of color templates and header graphics designed for political office and organizations. We also include specific graphics and color schemes for candidates running for sheriff, judge and school board.
How easy is it to use?
When creating a website for a campaign, not all systems are all the same. Many systems claim they are ‘easy’ to use, but turn out to be anything but simple. Is there a demo? Can you actually try the site editor before you sign up? Most don’t show you exactly how it works, and for good reason.
Even with free systems, you must load in a template. Then you need to build out all the pages. And then you have to make sure all the buttons are linked properly, find and scale your web images and so on. A free site creator can cost you plenty of time setting things up from scratch.
We’ve continually improved the Online Candidate content management system over the last 15 years. They system has evolved with technology, design trends and with customer feedback. We’ve made the system as simple to use for non-technical users, while allowing the flexibility that advanced users may require. Each step has detailed explanations built in, along with separate support articles with more information. Our editor has built-in styles, layout blocks and tools that are specifically made for political candidates. In fact, you can see our back-end demo for yourself.
Free campaign site builders – are they worth it?
There are a few risks involved with using no-cost services to create a website. You may find you will spend more in time and frustration to get things working. If you are currently using free hosting solution like WordPress.com, Weebly, or Wix you may want to be careful.
- Are there limitations? The first problem with free website hosting is that it often comes with serious limitations. For example, the site might be free, you may be limited in features or functionality that is important for your site be found on the web. You may find that an upgrade locks you in on an annual basis, and can end being more expensive than premium hosting providers.
- Are you just an extension of another website? The trial site may be free, but until you purchase an upgrade for a domain name and hosting package, your website is stuck in a subfolder (nocosthost.com/yoursite) or subdomain (yoursite.nocosthost.com). Unless you website starts with its own domain name, your site is just a subsection of your host’s website. This is bad for your site and bad for SEO. This can mean that when people search the candidate’s name, the host’s domain shows up, and not yours.
- You can be shut down and locked out. If you aren’t paying for a service, there is no guarantee of service. If you site is shut down or locked out, what are you going to do? Ask for your money back?
- You can’t transfer your website later. Many of these free hosts have terms of use that prohibit the transfer of your site to another provider. We’ve seen this happen often with new clients who are forced to ‘abandon’ their old domain name and website for a new one because the free host does not allow your domain name to point to any servers other than their own.
- The time factor. While a free site may seem like a way to save money when you start, you may find that you will spend more time and money building your site. That’s time and effort that can be used for other political purposes. If the right forms and tools are not built into the CMS, then you will have to build them out yourself.
Where’s the support?
If you use a free system to create your political website, good luck on getting help from a live person. With a low-cost site builder, you are typically limited to just email or ticket support.
With Online Candidate, we’ve tried to make our system as intuitive as possible for the least-technical user. We also have a full online support system, email support and – most importantly – a phone number that you can actually use if you get stuck or have a question.
Our ticketing system is build directly into your site admin. If you have a problem, just click on the box in the lower right and send us a question.
If you are planning to build your own site this election season, start early. Lay the groundwork with best online foundation you can. Check out your options and choose the system with the features, functionality, and services that work best for you.
Additional Resources:
- Download: Political Website Domains and Hosting – What You Need To Know
- Download: Online Candidate Quickstart Guide
Read More:
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