How to set up a government campaign website

Introduction

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 build a distinct, co-branded site featuring:

Multiple pages: Create tailored structured hierarchies (such as Ready to Pass, Prepare or Tax Help for Hustles)
Flexible design components: Choose from a range of design elements and colour themes
User analytics: Access built-in metrics to monitor visitors behaviours and tracking performance

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 Communications OASIS (Objective, Audience and insights, Strategy and ideas, Implementation, Scoring and evaluation) framework.
Evaluated in line with the Government Communications 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), such as 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 website. This should be evidenced in your campaign OASIS plan. 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 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 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 and Strategy Team, this may include their exemption route.

How to apply

To apply for a campaign website you must complete an application form 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 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.

Once submitted your application will be sent to the Government Communication Service (GCS) to review. 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.

Allow a minimum of 6 to 7 weeks from 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 your team’s capacity and the complexity of your design (for example, number of pages and language translations needed).
Follow the campaign platform user guide to set up the pages and content of your website, as well as analytics, and privacy and cookie options.
Make sure your website meets accessibility standards. Follow our guidance on creating inclusive and accessible communications for people with a diverse range of hearing, movement, sight or cognitive abilities.

If you require a shortened marketing URL for your website such as gov.uk/readytopass you must contact GDS.

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 to 2 days for testing before issuing an announcement or sharing no-cost campaigns links 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 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, privacy features and analytics

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.

To manage the data collection preferences on your campaign platform, navigate to the WordPress left side navigation menu and select the ‘analytics options’ tab.

You must choose one of two distinct methods to deploy your website analytics, marketing tracking scripts (such as pixels), and privacy features:

Option 1: Built-in platform tracking (Recommended) – This option utilises the platform’s native analytics engine and automatically deploys pre-configured, compliant cookie consent banner to manage user privacy seamlessly.
Option 2: Custom external tracking (Advanced) – This option allows you to integrate Google Tag Manager (GTM) to inject custom analytics scripts alongside an approved third-party cookie consent banner tool.

Read the following campaign website user guides on GOV.UK for more information:

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 ‘Recommended’ and ‘Advanced’analytics and marketing tracking

	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		✓
Auto-generated GOV.UK cookie consent banner	✓
Auto-generated GOV.UK Cookie Notice and Cookie Setting pages	✓
Auto-generated GOV.UK Privacy Policy page	✓