How to set up a government campaign website

A communications campaign is a planned sequence of communications and interactions that uses a compelling narrative over time to deliver a defined and measurable outcome.

If appropriate for your campaign objectives, you can apply for a campaign website on the GOV.UK campaigns platform. This self-service platform is hosted on WordPress and allows you to create a site with:

A single page (e.g. Family Hubs)
Multiple pages (e.g. Ready to Pass, Prepare or Tax Help for Hustles)
A range of design components and colour themes
Access to analytics to monitor your user’s behaviour

On this page you will find information on:

Campaign website requirements
What you should do before you apply
How to apply
Building your site
Final review and testing
Ongoing quality assurance
Managing Cookies and Privacy features
Further reading and technical support

Campaign website requirements

All government campaign websites must be:

Time-limited: designed to support a planned programme of communications activity, with a specific end-date (typically within two years).
Focused on some aspect of attitude, perception or behaviour change, rather than solely public information provision.
Aligned to one of the government’s priorities.
Co-branded: the site should carry a distinct brand, different to that of the parent organisation, but also marked as official HM government information.
Delivered in line with the Government Communication Service (GCS) OASIS campaigns planning approach.
Evaluated in line with the GCS Evaluation Cycle.

What you should do before you apply

Before you apply for a campaign website, you should:

Explore all other options with your department’s Head of Digital Communications (or equivalent), e.g. GOV.UK, social media channels, existing campaign sites.
Produce an evidence-based strategy, which is based on audience insights and shows how you will get your target audience to engage with the campaign website. This should be evidenced in your campaign OASIS plan (Objective, Audience insight, Strategy, Implementation, Scoring/evaluation). For this reason, campaign plans are often managed and overseen by a Campaigns Team.
Make sure your team has the skills and resources (either in-house or through an agency contract) to build, and maintain, a campaign site.
Obtain GCS Professional Assurance (PASS) approval for your campaign site, if spend is over £100k.
Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your campaign website to monitor site effectiveness. You will need to refer to these KPIs when you provide GCS with your six-monthly evaluation metrics, which is explained further under ‘Ongoing quality assurance’. When setting these KPIs, ensure they:
- Align with your campaign objectives
- Are measurable and time-bound
- Include both quantitative and qualitative measures
- Consider accessibility requirements for all users

You don’t need a site on the campaign platform for:

Generic news announcements, statutory guidance or policy updates (these should be on GOV.UK)
Duplicating information already on GOV.UK
Information about government services (these should be on GOV.UK).

If your proposed website doesn’t meet the requirements of a campaign website or the campaigns platform does not meet your needs, you should discuss alternative options with the Government Digital Service (GDS) Policy & Strategy team, this may include their exemption route.

How to apply

To apply for a campaign website you must complete an application form and submit it to the GCS through GOV.UK Publisher (‘Support’ > ‘Request a new campaign’).Only those with login rights can submit an application – this will be your department’s GOV.UK Publisher point/s of contact.

You must submit your application with:

OASIS campaign plan, showing how your campaign site will integrate with a wider campaign.
A basic sketch of your planned website. This video provides guidance on how to visualise your website design.

Whilst reviewing your application GCS will contact you with comments and queries. If your application is approved, you will be provided with terms and conditions you must follow when building your site.

Please allow a minimum of 6-7 weeks from, overall, the time you submit your initial application to your site going live.

For further information about campaign website applications contact GCS at: onlinecampaigns@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.

Building your site

When planning the build of your campaign website, you should:

Consider the amount of time required to build your website. This will depend on the design (e.g. number of pages, languages etc.) and your team’s capacity and capabilities.
Follow the Campaign Platform User Guide to set up the pages and content of your website, as well as analytics and privacy/cookie options.
Make sure your website meets accessibility standards. Follow this guidance on creating website content that is accessible for people with a diverse range of hearing, movement, sight or cognitive abilities.

If you require a shortened marketing URL for your website e.g. gov.uk/readytopass you must contact GDS to arrange this.

Final review and testing

Your campaign website will need to be reviewed by GCS before it goes live. This is mainly to identify errors or missing features, but recommendations may also be made on user experience including accessibility and page hierarchy.

You must allow a minimum of five working days for GCS to complete their review and any resulting changes to be made. Your website will only be approved to go live by GCS once the changes are completed.

GCS requires email confirmation from your Head of Digital Communications (or equivalent) that the final version of the website has also been quality assessed by them.

Once your website is live, you should allow time for testing before driving traffic to it. We advise allowing 1-2 days for testing before an announcement or no-cost campaigns link to the website, and at least one week before including the website in paid advertising campaigns.

Ongoing quality assurance

Every six months you will be required to provide GCS with evaluation metrics for your website based on the digital KPIs you set out in your OASIS plan.

As a result, GCS may suggest refreshing content on your site if it is not performing effectively, or closure of the campaign site if it is no longer needed.

Managing Cookies and Privacy features on the campaign platform

You should think about how you will manage the Cookies and Privacy features of your website early in the build process, this is because the way they are managed on the campaign platform is unique and different to a custom website. You will therefore need to plan for how much work and the type of work (and resourcing) that will be required.

There have been recent changes to how cookies are handled on the campaign platform, which you will see in the ‘Analytics Options’ tab in WordPress. There are two methods for setting up website analytics and marketing tracking on your campaign site.

These are:

(Recommended) Using platform’s built-in tracking and cookie consent banner facility
(Advanced) Using Google Tag Manager and third party cookie consent banner

You may find the following campaign website user guides useful:

You should also discuss your needs with your organisation’s analytics administrator and data protection team. They will advise you on the best method and approach for your campaign website. If you are working with a marketing agency, we recommend utilising their expertise as well.

Comparison of tracking features in Recommended or Advanced

	Built-in Tracking (Recommended)	Google Tag Manager (Advanced)
Ease of Setup	✓
Fully customisable		✓
Supports GA4 website analytics	✓	✓
Supports Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Snap, TikTok and tracking	✓	✓
Supports Google Floodlight		✓

Privacy and compliance features

	Built-in Tracking (Recommended)	Google Tag Manager (Advanced)
Auto-generated GOV.UK cookie consent banner	✓
Auto-generated GOV.UK Cookie Notice and Cookie Setting pages	✓
Auto-generated GOV.UK Privacy Policy page	✓