What funders need to know: Scoping international development websites
In global development, every resource matters – and that includes project websites. This Insight uncovers the hidden complexities of creating them, and provides a tactical framework for building websites that deliver.
Some of the following scenarios might be familiar to international development professionals. A project website that seemed so straightforward isn’t turning out to be so in practice. A web address matching the name the project has announced isn’t available or affordable. It’s suddenly clear that a website you’re already halfway through developing isn’t really suitable for its intended users. Costs – including your own time – are running unexpectedly high.
The good news is that many such problems are avoidable with forethought and care.
First, Principles
All development professionals need a working familiarity with the Principles for Digital Development, recently (2024) updated. Likely your organisation already endorses them, as we do at Oxford Policy Management. These Principles were originally developed in 2014 as a collaboration between various global development donors and organisations to ‘serve as a compass for those working to promote sustainable and inclusive development in today’s complex digital landscape’. I’ll draw attention here to four key Principles here with relation to websites, though all are important and have many wider applications within development:
- Design with people: Are the stakeholders that any digital resource is really for at the centre of its scoping, planning, testing, and life? The importance of this one can’t be overstated.
- Understand the existing ecosystem: What’s the context of your stakeholders and project – and also of technology?
- Share, reuse, and improve: Would you be reinventing the wheel? Can you collaborate, or anticipate future collaboration?
- Build for sustainability: What’s your resource’s long-term future?
These can not only help ensure that your ToR accounts for what would be involved in developing a website, but even help in deciding whether you need one at all.
Check your assumptions
‘We need to build a project website’ is a common assumption. But do we? If the assumption is really; ‘This project needs a website because... global development project have websites’, then as responsible international development professionals we should be prepared to push back, using the Principles as our prompt.
What’s the purpose (or purposes) of this website within or beyond your project? Is it community engagement, or providing a repository of project publications or outputs, a combination of these, or something else entirely? Will it be working in conjunction with social media accounts, other websites, or other partners? Who will run it? As technology (especially AI) is in a period of rapidly accelerating change, what impacts could this have on what you’re trying to achieve?
Above all, who is it for? Have you clearly identified and involved the project’s stakeholders (see below)? If so, are there resources, or websites, or previous project, or existing groups (especially local ones) which might better deliver all or most of what stakeholders need? Is a website the best way to meet those needs, or might it meet the needs of some but not others? And what happens when the project ends – is it sustainable?
Finding out the answers will require time and resource, and it’s important to account for this. It may be wise to make it an explicit part of the ToR requirements that a project partner will do this scoping work and recommend which digital channels (including potentially a website) may be needed, Not only could this help you determine whether you need a website, but if you find that you do, the pre-build phase of the website (the Discovery phase) would already have fairly well defined parameters, including a broad picture of what resources would be needed.
Being people-focused – stakeholder personae
On the key topic of identifying your project’s stakeholders and their needs, a best-practice way to do this is to use stakeholder personae.
These are fictional but fact-based user profiles from each of your main primary, secondary, and tertiary project stakeholders. This could include (not exhaustively!) their job, where they are geographically and virtually, what technology they use, what languages they know – and above all, what need the site is intended to meet for them, and how they’ll find, access, and use it. The brief to your website developers (and to those developing any project branding) will need enough detail to enable them to understand all your project’s stakeholders, and design in a way that addresses their needs.
Developing usable personae from desk-based research is better than nothing at a pinch, but risks a top-down approach that embeds the assumptions and power dynamic that can come with that. Infinitely better is for prospective users of your website to lead this and indeed be fully involved in every stage of the build and further development of the site. Again, this is something that you should consider in your project’s planning from the very beginning, and something which partners in your project should aim to facilitate.
Appreciate the scale
Assuming that building a fit-for-purpose global development project website will be an insignificant project can in itself lead to many subsequent headaches. As is probably already clear, even a modest website may require considerable up-front and ongoing resource. The up-front costs will include (the list is not exhaustive):
- Project management of the discovery phase, build, and launch;
- Researching and creating a development brief;
- Any project branding, including;
- Purchasing a suitable domain (web address): is one available at a price you can afford? It’s easily overlooked!
- Content creation – writing content, image research and commissioning, graphic design;
- Website analytics setup;
- Development and testing (testing may need to be extensive and costly should the website require higher security, for example);
There are then ongoing costs for the duration of that website’s life, which may include (again not exhaustively):
- Ongoing project management, including interpreting metrics to see how the site is being used, and evaluate its fitness for purpose;
- Hosting and maintenance – both will be required, as website platforms need regular patches and updates to remain secure and usable;
- Content creation, uploads and changes – in line with development and evaluation;
- Rental for the domain;
- Any further development costs (which are highly likely).
The biggest resource of all is time, as building and maintaining a project website with the responsible approach we’d expect in global development requires thought and care. Has your ToR taken this into account?
Think ‘legacy’
Finally, what happens to the website and its resources when the project ends? Again this is easily overlooked at the start, but keeping your project’s material online will be a cost and/or responsibility for someone; you need to plan for whom in your ToR and contracts.
Could a partner organisation host the material? Could your own? Will you keep the domain live for a period and redirect users to its new location? Could you archive the material using a national or sector-specific service? What are your organisation’s or partners’ requirements around the future accessibility of the material the project has produced?
This section admittedly presents more questions than answers, but if you only ask those questions as the end of the project looms, you’ll find it a scramble to resolve them. It’s better to ask them at the very start.
Summing up
This Insight only scratches the surface of what is a huge topic, but that’s significant in itself; it can be easy for those unfamiliar with the scope of work to overlook what’s involved. However, fit-for-purpose project websites can add real value for your project’s stakeholders, and leave a legacy that benefits future stakeholders too (including ones you can’t currently foresee), without the headaches. The key approach is to plan them carefully and with realistic expectations from the start – and for this alone, the Principles for Digital Development provide an invaluable guiderail.
About the author:
Dan Allen is our Senior Digital Marketing and Communications Officer, specialising in websites, brand, and digital strategy.