Many website projects fail before the first wireframe is even drawn.

Not because the brief was wrong, or the agency was a bad fit. But because the project was treated as a design problem – when it was actually a strategic one.

It was while pondering this that I came across a 30-year-old change model that still speaks to this exact problem: Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model.

Developed by John Kotter through decades of research at Harvard Business School, the model was built for leading transformation inside complex organisations. But apply it to a website project, and it asks exactly the right questions – the ones most design briefs never get to.

Because, for mission-driven organisations, a website isn’t just a communications tool. It’s an invitation – one that can shift how people see themselves in relation to a cause, move them from bystander to participant, and make real-world change feel possible. Getting that right matters. Here’s how Kotter’s model helps.

1. Create a sense of urgency

If your website isn’t actively enabling the change your organisation exists to create, is it good enough to leave as it is? For most impact organisations, that question never gets asked. The current site is “fine” – it loads, it has an about page, it ticks the box. But most impact websites are built around the wrong objectives, defaulting to the same design logic as commercial sites and optimising for traffic and impressions rather than the participation, advocacy, or behaviour change the organisation actually exists to create. That misalignment isn’t a failure of intent. It’s a systems problem. And it’s the people the organisation exists to serve who feel it most.

2. Build a guiding coalition

Websites designed by a siloed team almost always miss something. The comms manager designs for awareness. The fundraising team wants donation flows. The programmes lead needs a resource hub. Each perspective is valid, but none is sufficient on its own. The people you need in the room also shift depending on what the project is trying to solve – who can speak to the whole organisation? Who represents the communities you’re designing for? The coalition shapes whose needs get built into the site, and getting that right is one of the biggest decisions a website project makes.

3. Form a strategic vision

A vision for a website redesign should be more than “we want something modern and fresh.” It means answering the questions that often get skipped: why does this work matter, who is the site for, and what do you want people to do next? But the deeper question is what role you’re designing for people to play. A site built around what the organisation wants to say is fundamentally different from one built around what its communities need to find, do, and become. That shift – from broadcasting to enabling – is where the most significant design decisions live. And any vision has to reckon with internal realities too: ownership, capacity, governance, content readiness. A strategy that ignores those isn’t really a strategy.

4. Enlist a volunteer army

Kotter originally called this step “communicate the vision.” He later renamed it, deliberately. And the distinction matters – communication gets people informed, enlistment gets people invested. A website that stays alive beyond launch needs people across the organisation who feel genuinely connected to it – not just the person managing the CMS, but everyone who relies on it to do their job. Find those people before you start designing. And when you treat them as participants rather than an audience, you’re not just improving the project process. You’re modelling the kind of relationship the organisation wants to have with its community.

5. Enable action by removing barriers

The barriers that undermine website projects rarely appear in a design brief. A CMS the team can’t confidently use. An approval process that takes weeks. Brand guidelines so rigid that nobody dares publish anything. But it goes deeper than internal friction. If the site makes it easy to donate but hard to get involved, learn, or connect, it’s optimised for income, not impact. The question should always be: what does this site make possible for the people it exists to serve?

6. Generate short-term wins

Short-term wins don’t just happen – they need to be planned for. The metrics most teams reach for, like traffic, page views, and time on site, often say very little about whether a website is actually doing its job. The groundwork happens before a single page is designed: being clear about what the site is there to achieve, and establishing a baseline that makes genuine progress visible. With that in place, early wins become legible and meaningful – evidence that the site is working for the people it was built for.

7. Sustain acceleration

This is where most website projects fall down. The site launches, everyone takes a breath, and six months later the blog has three posts from last year and a broken link in the footer. Kotter’s point isn’t just about maintaining what you’ve built – it’s about building on momentum rather than letting it dissipate. For mission-driven organisations, that means treating the website as a programme rather than a project: a named owner, a review cycle, a realistic content plan. The launch is not the destination – it’s the starting point.

8. Institute change

Kotter’s final step is about making new ways of working permanent – not just doing things differently for a while, but embedding them into how the organisation operates. For a website, that might mean a quarterly review in the annual calendar, website metrics tied to impact reporting, or new staff who understand from day one how the site supports the mission. The website stops being something the organisation has, and starts being something it actively stewards. The measure of that stewardship isn’t traffic or impressions – it’s whether the site is still working towards the real-world change the organisation exists to create.

Where would you start?

Kotter’s model isn’t a checklist. It’s a way of thinking about change – one that keeps bringing you back to the people the website exists for, and the relationships it’s trying to build.

If you’re planning a redesign, or wondering why the last one hasn’t had the impact you hoped for, work through these eight steps before you open a design brief. The answer to at least one of them will tell you where to start.