What a Local Campaign Website Has to Do in the First 72 Hours

A city commission seat, a school board race, a county position — local elections are decided by a few thousand votes over a few months, and the campaign website has to be working before the first mailer lands, because that mailer sends people to it. Most first-time candidates spend the first two weeks on a logo. That's backwards.

I built the campaign site for Derreck Ogden's run for Stuart City Commission, and the lesson was that a local campaign site has exactly three jobs. Everything else is decoration. Here's what those three jobs are, what has to be true on day one, and what can wait.

The three jobs

1. Take a donation in under a minute

A donate button on every page, a form that works on a phone, contribution limits enforced at the form (Florida municipal races have caps — the campaign treasurer sets the number), the required disclaimer, and a receipt. If a supporter has to hunt for the button or type their address twice, you lost the donation.

2. Sign up a volunteer or a yard sign

Name, phone, email, what they'll do — knock doors, host a sign, make calls, attend an event. The signup should trigger a text within minutes, because a volunteer who hears nothing for three days assumes the campaign is disorganized.

3. State the issues clearly enough to be quoted

Two or three issue pages written in plain sentences a reporter or a neighbor can lift and repeat. Not a manifesto — a position, a reason, and what the candidate would do about it. These are also the pages that show up when someone searches the candidate's name.

What has to be live on day one

• Candidate name, office, election date, and one-paragraph "why I'm running" above the fold

• Donate, volunteer, and issue links in the navigation — nothing else competing

• The political disclaimer in the footer and on the donation page, worded per the treasurer's guidance (Florida requires a specific "paid for by" statement on campaign advertising, and the website counts)

• A photo of the candidate that looks like them, taken this year

• A working phone number and email that a person actually checks

• Mobile-first — most supporters will open it from a text or a Facebook post

What can wait

• Endorsement pages — add them as they come in

• Event calendar — a Facebook event link does the job until the schedule fills

• Press page — after the first article, not before

• Merchandise — never, unless a volunteer runs it

• A blog — the issue pages are the content

How the Ogden campaign site was built

The site went up on a compressed timeline — a first-time candidate, a small electorate, and a mailer already scheduled. Every page had the same three actions: donate, volunteer, understand the issues. The donation flow enforced the contribution cap with the disclaimer in place. The volunteer form fed a follow-up sequence so nobody who signed up waited. The issue pages were written to be quoted, and they were. That's the whole design: three jobs per page, nothing else asking for the click.

The compliance line

Campaign finance rules are the campaign's responsibility, not the web designer's — but the site has to be built to make compliance easy. Contribution limits at the form, disclaimers where the statute wants them, donor information captured the way the treasurer needs it for reporting. Get the treasurer's wording in writing before the site goes live, and don't let a template's default "paid for by" language stand in for it.

Local considerations

Stuart, Martin County, and the Treasure Coast run small, high-turnout local elections where a candidate can meet a meaningful share of voters in person. The website's job is to close the loop on those conversations — the voter met you at a Saturday event, looked you up that night, and either found a clear site with a donate button or found nothing. It also has to survive the mailer spike: the day the first mailer drops, traffic multiplies, and a site that's slow or down that day cost real money.

FAQs

How fast can a campaign site launch? — Days, not weeks. This is what the 24-hour build offer exists for — a first version live from the consult, refined as the campaign develops.

Can you handle the donation processing? — We build the flow; the campaign chooses the processor (ActBlue, Anedot, WinRed, or a standard processor for nonpartisan races) and owns the account. We never hold campaign funds.

Do you write the issue pages? — With the candidate. The positions are theirs; we make them clear, quotable, and findable.

What about social media? — Available for the length of the campaign. The website is the base; social sends people to it.

Do you work with candidates from any party? — We work on local, nonpartisan, and municipal races. Ask about your specific race.

Summary

Three jobs: take a donation in under a minute, sign up a volunteer with a text back, and state the issues clearly enough to be quoted. Live before the mailer, mobile-first, disclaimer per the treasurer, a real photo, a real phone number. Endorsements, events, press, and everything else come after. If the site can do the three jobs on day one, the campaign has what it needs. If you're filing this cycle, book a free consult before you commission a logo.