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A campaign page has one job: say one thing, and get one action taken

A campaign page carries one message and one action, with a fixed end date and a plan for what happens once that date passes.

One message, one action, one end date

A campaign page exists to get one group of people to do one thing by a fixed date, whether that's booking a place at a fun run, donating to an appeal, or registering for a product launch. A permanent site answers a range of questions a visitor might arrive with. A campaign page answers one, and everything on it either supports that answer or gets in the way.

One message

Every sentence on the page should point at the same outcome. A community choir raising money for new sheet music does not need a page covering its history, its rehearsal schedule and the Christmas concert alongside the appeal itself; that belongs on the choir's main site, if it has one. The campaign page states what the appeal is for, what it costs to help, and where the money goes.

One action

The page should ask the visitor to do exactly one thing: buy a ticket, sign up, donate, register. A page offering three routes at once, donate, volunteer, sponsor, forces the visitor to work out which one you actually want from them, and most will pick none. Where a campaign genuinely has different audiences needing different actions, that is usually a sign the job needs more than one page, not one page trying to do more.

A hard end date

A campaign page has a date after which it stops being true: the event has happened, the tickets have sold out, the appeal has closed. That date belongs in the plan from the start, not decided afterwards, because a page still asking for donations three months after the concert has already happened looks worse than no page at all.

What happens after

Deciding what happens to the page once its job is done is part of building it, not an afterthought. Leave it live with outdated information, redirect the address somewhere useful, or take it down so the address returns a proper "page not found" result. Each choice has consequences for anyone who still has the link bookmarked or finds it through a search engine, and that is covered in full further down this page. For the broader question of whether a single page is the right shape at all, see What a mini-site is, and when one page is enough.

How it works

The stages a campaign page goes through, and what decides the next one

A campaign page moves through five stages, from working out the single message it needs to carry through to taking the page down once the campaign is over. What moves it from one stage to the next is a decision, and knowing what triggers each move is what stops a page being taken down too soon or left live long after it stopped earning its place.

  1. Plan the message and the action

    Before any building starts, work out the one thing the page needs to say and the one thing you want the visitor to do about it, whether that is booking a ticket, signing a petition or ordering before a deadline. Set the end date at the same time, because a campaign without one tends to keep running long after anyone is checking it.

    If you find yourself listing two separate questions a visitor might arrive with, you are probably planning two pages.

    One clear message

    Move on to building a single page around it.

    More than one message

    Split it into separate pages, each answering one question.

  2. Build the page around that one action

    The page gets built around the action, so the layout, the copy and the button all point the same way. Anything that does not help the visitor take that action, background history, unrelated services, a full navigation menu, either gets cut or moved somewhere else.

    A campaign page carries far less than a normal site page, and that's by design, not by omission.

  3. Launch and check the action actually works

    Publishing the page is only half of launching it. The other half is checking that the one action on it actually completes: the form submits, the ticket link goes through, the download starts, and it works on a phone as well as a desktop.

  4. Monitor whether the action is happening

    Once live, the page is watched for whether visitors are taking the action, not for how many visit it. A page with plenty of traffic and no sign-ups or orders needs a different message or a different button, not more promotion.

    Action rate holding up

    Leave the page as it is and let it run to the end date set at the planning stage.

    Action rate falling away

    Revisit the message or the offer before the end date arrives.

  5. Retire the page at the end date

    When the end date arrives, the page comes down, but what happens to its address depends on whether it earned any search visibility while it was live.

    Page picked up search traffic

    Redirect the URL to a relevant permanent page, so the search ranking it earned is not simply thrown away.

    Page earned no search traffic

    Remove it outright and let it return a proper not-found response.

Retiring a page properly, including how the redirect works and what it protects, is covered on its own further down this guide.

Retiring the page without breaking the link

A campaign page has a fixed life, but the address it lived at doesn't disappear when the campaign does unless someone makes that happen on purpose. Anyone who bookmarked it, shared it, or linked to it from a poster, an email or another website will still try that address after the campaign has ended, so what they find there is worth deciding in advance.

What happens if the page is simply taken down

If the page is deleted and nothing is put in its place, a visitor's browser returns a "page not found" response (a 404 error). Search engines that had indexed the page treat it the same way, and any search value it had built up, from other sites linking to it and from people finding it through search results, is lost.

A redirect keeps the address doing something

The alternative is a redirect: a rule, set at the host or through the domain's DNS records (the settings that tell the internet where traffic for a domain should go), that sends anyone visiting the old address straight to a new one. Set up as a permanent redirect, it tells search engines the page has moved, which is how most of its accumulated search value gets carried across. Details on how DNS records and hosting fit together are covered in Domains, DNS and Hosting, Explained Once.

For a static site (pages built as fixed files), the redirect is usually a line added to a configuration file on the host. For a site built through a CMS (content management system, the software a site is edited through after launch), it's normally a setting in the admin area. Either way, it needs setting up before the page comes down.

Where to point it, and for how long

Three destinations cover most cases, roughly in order of how often they're the right one:

  • the organisation's main site or homepage, where the campaign was a one-off with no ongoing equivalent
  • a permanent page covering the same ground, where one exists, so a seasonal offer redirects to the main product or booking page
  • a short page confirming the event has passed, where people will keep searching for it, such as a festival page redirecting to a "see you next year" note

There's no fixed rule for how long to leave a redirect running, but a year is a reasonable minimum, since search engines and old links elsewhere on the web take time to catch up. Retiring the page properly is one part of the wider job of keeping a small site in good order, covered in Keeping a Small Site Alive.

A campaign page still has to show what UK law requires, even if it's only live for a fortnight.

The checker lists what a UK site has to show and flags what's missing, whatever the page's lifespan.