The Ten Mistakes Local Campaign Websites Keep Making

We have reviewed hundreds of local campaign sites. The same ten failures repeat, and every one is avoidable.

The list

1. No signup form above the fold. The list is the asset. Senate campaigns put capture in the hero; locals bury it in a footer.
2. Dead or hidden donate paths. Two clicks maximum from any page. Test it on a phone, with a real card, before launch.
3. Missing or illegible disclaimers. The fastest way to hand an opponent a free news cycle.
4. The stale newsroom. Last post dated the primary announces the campaign quit updating.
5. Seven-issue sprawl. More than six issues reads as unfocused. Three strong positions beat nine mushy ones.
6. Resume-first About pages. Voters hire neighbors. Local ties first, credentials second.
7. Tiny team photos stretched huge. Blurry images read as amateur everywhere they appear.
8. Desktop-only design. Most traffic arrives from social links on phones. Design for the thumb.
9. The one-person bottleneck. If only your web guy can post an endorsement, your response time is his schedule.
10. No analytics at all. Without even basic visitor data, the campaign cannot tell if anything is working.

The pattern behind the mistakes

Nearly all ten come from treating the website as a one-time project instead of a living tool. The fix is structural: pick infrastructure where updating is trivial, capture is default, and compliance is built in, then feed it weekly. That is the entire design brief behind Ballot Page.