Toolkit: How to Build a Better Website

• By Scott Smith
• September 14, 2026

A website project is rarely just a website project. As a communications or marketing leader, you’re trying to make an investment in something that can give your organization a stronger presence and longer-term flexibility while balancing competing needs and opinions, technical complexity, limited hours, and short timelines.

This toolkit brings together practical lessons from years of helping organizations navigate that work. We’ve organized it around six questions and challenges that come up most often. Along the way, you’ll find examples from real projects, exercises to use with your team, and guidance for making better decisions before, during, and after the project. There’s no required order, so jump around to what will help the most right now.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to:

• Lead your team through the process. Clarify roles, manage feedback, build trust, and create a decision-making process that keeps the project moving.
• Build around the people you serve. Organize your website around what audiences actually need instead of mirroring your internal structure.
• Plan for change from the start. Use flexible components and thoughtful content systems to create a site your team can manage and your organization can grow into.
• Help people find and engage with your work. Make your content more interactive, easier to understand and navigate, and more discoverable through search and AI.
• Protect your investment. Learn the most-useful questions to ask your web partner about accessibility, security, and content management. You shouldn’t have to be a tech expert to do this project.

You’ll also get a quick self-assessment to help you identify where your current site is working, where it may be getting in the way, and what conversations to start next. Download the toolkit to lead your next website project with greater clarity, ask better questions, and make decisions that will serve your organization beyond launch.