A festival website has an unusual life: it sits nearly idle for months, then gets hammered by thousands of people on phones, standing in a field, trying to find the bathrooms. Festival website design is mostly about that one weekend, and about the lodging tax report that follows it.
This guide covers what a festival site actually needs, in the order your visitors need it, and what to build in now so you can prove results to the people who fund you. It is written for volunteer committees, chambers and small-town organizers, so it names cheap options as often as custom ones.
Already know what you need? Request an estimate and we will reply with scope and a price range for a sensible first phase.
Design for three visitors, in this order
Your site serves three very different people, and they arrive at different times:
- The planner (weeks out): wants dates, location, what it costs, where to stay, whether it suits kids or dogs.
- The buyer (days out): wants tickets or registration to work in under a minute.
- The attendee (on site): wants the schedule, the map, parking, and a phone number. Often on weak cell signal.
Many festival sites are designed for the first visitor (big photos from last year) and fail the third. Test your site on a phone, on mobile data, standing outside. If the schedule takes more than a few seconds to appear, fix that before anything decorative.
The pages and features that matter
- Home page that answers four questions at once: what, when, where, and the one button to press (tickets, register, or “get the schedule”).
- Schedule. Plain text on the page, not a downloadable flyer or an image of a schedule. It should be searchable, readable on a phone, filterable by day or stage if you have more than one, and updatable by a volunteer in two minutes when a band cancels.
- Map and getting there. An embedded map plus a simple site plan: stages, food, restrooms, first aid, accessible parking, shuttle stops. Put parking and road closures on their own page that you can link from social posts.
- Tickets or registration. If you sell anything, the buying step should not feel like leaving your site. Whichever platform you use, the design rule is the same: keep checkout short and keep a link to it visible on every page.
- Vendor and volunteer pages. Separate, clear paths for each, with deadlines on the page and not buried in a PDF.
- Sponsors. Covered below.
- FAQ. Dogs, strollers, rain, cash, ATMs, lost kids. This is where a one-line answer saves a volunteer a phone call.
Make the event findable
Visitors often find events through search, not through your link. Google documents an event structured data format that makes events eligible for an event experience in Google Search and other Google products. It requires a name, a start date and a location with an address. This is a few lines of code that your site builder or developer can add per event or per day. It does not guarantee placement, but without it you are leaving a free option unused.
Beyond that: use one stable URL for the festival and update it each year rather than starting a new site, keep the previous year’s photos and recap on the page, and list the dates in the page title. These are not tricks. They are what makes a returning visitor, and a search engine, trust the page.
Accessibility: a courtesy for everyone, a requirement for some
Festivals draw older visitors, families with strollers, and people with disabilities, and those visitors need the website to tell them about accessible parking and seating. Build the site to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the international standard from the W3C; the current version is WCAG 2.2. In practice: sufficient color contrast, text alternatives for images, keyboard operation, captions or transcripts for video, and a schedule that is real text and not a picture.
For some organizers it is also a legal matter. The U.S. Department of Justice’s rule for state and local governments requires WCAG 2.1 Level AA. After an April 2026 extension, the compliance dates are April 26, 2027 for entities serving populations of 50,000 or more and April 26, 2028 for smaller ones and special districts. The same page notes that using a vendor does not shift responsibility away from the public entity. If your city or county owns or hosts the festival site, ask who is responsible. If you are an independent nonprofit, the rule may not apply to you directly, but city contracts and grants may ask for it, and it is good practice anyway. List accessibility details on the site itself: accessible parking, seating, restrooms, ASL interpretation if offered, and a contact for requests.
Sponsor visibility, honestly
Sponsors want to be seen, and a site is one place you can deliver and show it. A sponsors page with logos is the minimum. What persuades a sponsor to renew is evidence: how many people viewed the sponsor page, how many clicked through to their site, and where your visitors came from. Set up tracked outbound links for each sponsor and send a one-page summary after the event. Do not promise numbers you cannot measure. A modest, true report beats an inflated one, and it gives the sponsor a concrete reason to renew.
Visitor data for lodging tax reporting
If your festival is funded by Washington lodging tax, the site and registration flow are your measurement tools. RCW 67.28.1816 allows lodging tax revenue to be spent on the marketing and operations of special events and festivals designed to attract tourists. Applicants estimate how funds will increase travel (overnight stays in paid lodging, trips of 50 or more miles one way, and trips from another state or country). Recipients then report actual numbers, and municipalities provide the reports to the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) and the local advisory committee. JLARC’s lodging tax page describes the online reporting system and notes that reports are completed per funded activity.
Build for that report from day one:
- Ask home ZIP code and nights in paid lodging on the registration form (optional fields, one sentence explaining why).
- Keep a lodging page with partner links, and track clicks so you can show how many visitors you sent to hotels and rentals.
- Keep your raw data in files you can export, not locked in a vendor dashboard.
- Record the answer to “how did you hear about us?” so you can show what the money bought.
Be honest in the report about what you measured and what you estimated. Our tourism website design guide goes deeper on the measurement problem.
Build options: what is enough
A festival can be well served by a hosted website builder, a WordPress site with an events plugin, or a small custom build. Our website evaluation criteria list the checks to apply to any of them, and our website design packages page shows what we offer for organizations like yours. A few rules apply whatever you pick: make sure you own the domain and hosting account, make sure a volunteer can update the schedule without a developer, and avoid builders that lock your content in.
The honest verdict
Use a template or hosted builder if you run a one-day or two-day event, your schedule is simple, ticketing is handled by a third-party platform, and you have one person who can update the site. A good template, real text, a clear map and Google event markup get you most of the value.
Hire a developer if the festival is a funded program with reporting obligations, multiple event types, vendors and volunteers to manage, sponsors who expect data, or accessibility requirements from your city. The site then becomes part of the system that proves your results, and that is where custom software connected to your website starts to pay. We will tell you plainly if a template is all you need.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should a festival website include?
Dates, location and a clear call to action on the home page; a schedule written as real text; a map with parking, restrooms and accessible routes; tickets or registration; separate vendor and volunteer pages; a sponsors page; and an FAQ for common questions like rain, pets and strollers. Test on a phone with weak signal, because many visitors will use the site on location.
Does a festival website have to be ADA accessible?
The Justice Department’s web rule requires state and local governments to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA, with compliance dates in 2027 or 2028 depending on population. An independent nonprofit may not be covered directly, but a city or county that owns the site is. Grants and contracts may also ask for accessibility, and it is good practice regardless. Ask your city who is responsible.
How does a festival website help with lodging tax reporting?
Washington lodging tax recipients report actual travelers: overnight stays in paid lodging, trips of 50 or more miles one way, and trips from another state or country. Optional registration questions for ZIP code and nights in paid lodging, tracked clicks to lodging partners and exportable raw data give you evidence for that report. Be clear about what you measured and what you estimated.
Can a volunteer committee manage its own festival website?
Yes, if the platform lets a non-developer update the schedule, add announcements and swap sponsors in a few minutes. Make sure the organization owns the domain and hosting account, keep logins in a shared place, and write a one-page handoff note for the next volunteer. Reserve developer time for the structural work, such as registration, reporting and accessibility fixes, so volunteers can focus on content and announcements.