Example community site

Apply for a website

What kind of site should you have?

Having decided to take the plunge and set up a community website, it’s worth looking at how to spread your message. Like everything else there are good and bad websites and the way yours is received in the local community will depend on the kind of content you include and the way you present it.

Presentation

The first page your viewers will normally see is called the homepage. This is a very important jump off point. Your audience will need to be inspired to go on from here and click through to your services and information. If you follow some simple guidelines you can easily produce an inviting gateway to your site.

Think of a magazine or newspaper in the rack. What tempts you to buy one over the other? Perhaps it’s the headline, perhaps a picture, or maybe it’s the list of contents. These kind of things are also important for a website.

Gotcha!

When someone arrives at your homepage they will not see everything at once, something will jump out at them and make a first impression so make sure it’s the thing you want them to see. It could be a mission statement like “Your local community — helping to improve the community”, a topical statement like “Black History Month October 2005” or a call to action “Get involved and help us to help you”. Whatever it is you will need to strike a chord with your audience and make them want to go further.

List of contents

This is also called the menu. It is a list of section names, which will link your audience to all the content on your site. They should be concise, unambiguous and make sense to your audience.

Here is a great menu from the City of Westminster website:

I want to...
- Contact my Councillor
- Pay a parking ticket
- Park in Westminster
- Find a job vacancy
- Apply for a licence
- View the licensing register
- View planning applications
- Report a street problem
- Report a racist incident
- Search the library catalogue
- View council tax information
I am...
- Getting married
- Moving home
- Starting school
- Looking for work
- Starting a business
Fast Find
- A-Z of services
- Forms
- Maps
- Publications
- Freedom of Information

Obviously this is a big site with masses of information and services and yours will be on a much smaller scale but you can see how friendly, useful and logical the list is.

Every picture tells a story

Photographs can be very powerful tools in themselves when delivering a message. Using pictures of familiar local scenes or people, or dramatic, funny or attractive scenes on your homepage will capture the attention and create a good atmosphere. However it is good to keep file sizes small where possible for those people who have slow connections. You can use small versions of pictures they can click for a full size version.

What's in it for us?

Because a website is such a versatile tool there are different content types you can use to tempt your audience. In many ways a website mimics lots of forms of communication from other media. Here are some useful approaches:

Brochure

This kind of information doesn't change very often but provides useful details about the kind of services you offer, like this kind of list:

Consultation and feedback
A-Z of Councillors
Complaints and compliments
Consultation
Contacting council officials
Emergency contacts
One Stop Services
Register of interests
Ward Finder

Newspaper

Like a newspaper you should include some topical up-to-date stories that change on a regular basis. Most local community sites find that this is one of the most popular areas. You can include information about:

decisions that the local authority has made or is in the process of making, giving local people the chance to have a greater input themselves
information on events that are happening in the community
stories of local interest pictures of local characters and scenery

TV channel

You can include video, sound and animation. This may be

footage from local events
broadcasts of meetings
interviews with local people
campaigns or local entertainment

The radio phone-in and newspaper classifieds

Most of us are familiar with the radio phone-in shows or the letters page of a magazine. The online version can be really useful and fun. You can set up

discussions and forums where anyone in the parish can introduce a topic and people can respond
noticeboards where local people can post items of interest themselves including events, jobs, items wanted or for sale

Get the balance right

Two things about the content. Firstly, make it relevant, topical and useful. Secondly, break it down into meaningful sections that will make sense to your audience. Here are some useful pointers on the kind of sections a Community Group website could have:

What we do

A clear explanation of the role of your organisation, the boundaries of its responsibilities and where to go for help in these areas.

Contact us

Address and telephone contact details. Include contact details for key members of the Community Group with an email address and telephone number. You can also include a query form that people can fill in and send to you from the website.

Latest news

This can be one of the most popular areas of your website. You can include information on local decision-making on issues affecting the community, local events, stories of local interest.

Minutes and agendas

Minutes or summaries of meetings posted regularly will help you keep the community informed

There are also more advanced techniques and technologies which can be used to make your site even more useful which are detailed below. These will require some more familiarity with the technology and there should be help available in the form of courses or advice from service providers, libraries or principal authorities to help you with these.

Discussions or forums

Set up a discussion section where anyone in the community can raise a topic and allow others to respond. This is a great way to introduce issues into the community and get local opinions and feedback.

Weblogs

You’ve probably heard talk of weblogs or “blogs” as they are usually called. Blogs are like an online diary where people can record their impressions of events in a chronological order. Blogs can be anything from individual diaries to campaigns by groups or companies. They range in scale from the writings of one occasional author (known as a blogger), to the collaboration of a large community of writers. Many weblogs enable visitors to leave public comments. This is becoming a very popular pastime on the Web and you might like to offer this service to your community.

Surveys and polls

You can run surveys on your website collecting useful information and statistics from the community. You can also run instant polls on issues of local interest and importance.

Newsletters and alerts

Community members can sign up to receive periodic newsletters, which you can send out by email. You can also allow people to request an alert when some future event is about to occur.

Photo gallery

Photos of local activities, campaigns, local community personalities, appropriate events

Local events and diary

A great way to keep local people coming back to the site is to keep them posted about relevant up coming events

Local history

Enlist the help of your local history society to provide some interesting local colour

Useful links

Provide people with links to other sites for more information or for services that you do not cover as a community

Privacy policy

Many websites include a link to the organisation’s privacy policy from all pages that collect personal information from users, which summarises:

What personal information is collected

How that information is used
Who the information is shared with
Security measures taken to protect the information