Ask ten voters in Wake County what a clerk of court does. You will get a lot of polite guessing.
That is the problem a down-ballot campaign has to solve before it can win anything. This guide covers what a website for a clerk of court or down-ballot candidate needs to do, drawn from the campaign site we built for George Jones.
Why does a down-ballot candidate have to explain the job first?
A governor's race arrives with the job already understood. Voters know what a governor is. They just pick a side.
A clerk of court race is different. Voters reach that line on the ballot with little sense of what the office does. If your site opens with "Vote for Jones" and nothing else, you are asking someone to endorse a job they cannot describe.
So the site has a teaching job before it has a selling job. That was the starting point for George Jones for Clerk of Court. The office is down-ballot, so the site had to explain the role before it could argue the candidate was right for it.
Think of the site as the first civics lesson your voter has had in years. Keep it short. Keep it kind. Do not make them feel foolish for not knowing.
Put a plain-language description of the office above the platform
Near the top of the home page, say what the office is in a few sentences. No legal vocabulary. No jargon your own staff would use.
Write it for a neighbor at a cookout. What does this office handle? Who does it serve? Why does it matter on an ordinary Tuesday?
A few notes on doing it well:
- Use your own county's real duties. The specifics vary by state and county. Pull them from the statute and from how your local office actually runs, not from a generic template.
- Lead with what the office does for residents, not with its org chart.
- Keep it above the platform. Order matters. A voter who understands the job can judge your plan. A voter who does not will skim past it.
This section is the spine of the site. Everything else gets easier once it is in place.
Show qualifications as proof of competence, not a resume dump
A judicial-adjacent office is won on perceived competence and trust. That is why we designed the Jones site authority-forward. It should look steady, organized and credible, because that is what voters are hoping to find in the person who runs the records and the process.
Design carries a lot of that. Clean layout. Calm typography. Clear hierarchy. A site that looks scattered quietly argues against a candidate who promises order.
Then there is the content. Do not paste a resume. Pick the experience that maps to the job you just explained, and say why it matters.
A useful test for each credential: does it help a voter believe you can do this specific job? If yes, keep it and connect it to the office. If not, it goes in a short bio further down, or it goes away.
State the platform in short, specific points
Voters are not going to read a manifesto. They will read a short list if it is a good one.
Keep each point to a sentence or two. Name what you will do and, where you can, how a resident would notice. Vague promises like "modernize the office" tell people nothing. A specific commitment tells them what to hold you to.
Some habits that help:
- One idea per point.
- Plain verbs. Say what changes.
- Tie each point back to the description of the office above it.
- Stop while it still feels short.
Do not invent numbers or results to make a point sound stronger. If you have a real figure from real experience, use it. If you do not, plain language is more persuasive than a made-up statistic anyway, and it will survive a skeptical reader.
Make volunteering and support the obvious next step
A campaign site is not a brochure. It exists to move people.
On the Jones site we built prominent grassroots calls to action for volunteering and support. That means a visitor who finishes the explanation never has to hunt for what to do next.
Put the action in three places:
- At the top of the home page, where the most committed supporters land.
- After the platform, where a convinced voter is ready.
- In the footer of every page, so no page is a dead end.
Keep the choices few and the wording concrete. "Volunteer" and "Support the campaign" beat a menu of six vague options. Make the forms short. Every extra field costs you a person.
Down-ballot races run on neighbors. The person who reads your site at lunch and then tells a friend is worth more than any banner.
Why a hard election deadline changes how you plan the build
Most websites have a launch date that can slip. A campaign site has an election day that cannot.
For this kind of project, a late launch is a failed launch. A site that goes live after early voting begins has missed the weeks when voters were forming opinions. That reality shapes how you plan.
Work backward from election day. Decide the must-haves first: the office explanation, the qualifications, the platform, the calls to action. Launch with those. Add the extras after, if there is still time.
It also means choosing a build you can finish. We delivered the Jones site against a hard election deadline, and the discipline was mostly about saying no to things that did not serve the three jobs: establish competence, state the platform, convert supporters.
If you are building with a developer, ask for the launch plan before the design. Our custom web development work starts from the date and works back.
What to leave out of a campaign site
A short site beats a thorough one. Voters are not studying you. They are checking you.
Leave out:
- A long biography. Keep the credentials that match the job. Cut the rest.
- Insider language. If a phrase needs a footnote, rewrite it.
- A news feed you will not update. An abandoned blog reads as an abandoned campaign.
- Slow, heavy pages. Many visitors will arrive on a phone. You can check how your pages load with our speed test.
- Anything that competes with the call to action. Autoplay video, pop-ups and stacked banners all count.
Every element should help a voter understand the office, trust you, or act. If it does none of those, it is clutter.
A one-week checklist to get an existing campaign page ready
Already have a page up and not sure it is doing the work? You can fix the big problems in a week.
- Day 1. Read your home page as a stranger. Can you tell what the office does within ten seconds? If not, write the plain-language description.
- Day 2. Move that description above the platform.
- Day 3. Trim qualifications to the ones that matter for this job. Add one line on why each matters.
- Day 4. Rewrite the platform as short, specific points. Cut anything vague.
- Day 5. Add volunteer and support buttons to the top of the home page, after the platform, and in the footer.
- Day 6. Open the site on your phone. Fix anything slow, cramped or hard to tap.
- Day 7. Hand it to someone who does not follow politics and ask them what the office does. If they can answer, you are done.
For the wider picture on campaign sites, see our guide to political campaign website design.
Your next step this week
Do Day 1 today. Read your home page the way a stranger would, and write down the first question you cannot answer from it.
If that question is "what does this office even do?", you know where to start. And if you want a second set of eyes on the page, get in touch and we will take a look.