Whenever we work with a charity to develop an online strategy or redesign their website, we always explore sites relevant to their audiences and you can guarantee that the BBC website will be in that list. Indeed when Baigent celebrated its 10th anniversary as a digital agency last year, we held a poll of staff and clients as to their top 10 great websites and sure enough the BBC website topped the list!

So why is the BBC website so often in people's top ten? Well one big factor is that an awful lot of us use the site every month - a staggering 17 million regular users in the UK and 30 million outside the UK! When I ask people what they like about the site, often people can't put their finger on it - they just like it and for many people that is the sign of a well designed website.

Whilst it's tempting to look at the £153 million a year budget and dismiss the site as in a different league from our own, I believe there are many areas we can take inspiration from as charities and for starters I'd like to suggest the following three:

The power of brands
A big element to the success of the BBC website is that we are already familiar with their brands. Those millions of pounds spent on Idents between programmes means that we know the BBC do news, sport, have eight TV channels and twelve national radio channels. That means despite typical pages on the BBC website having up to 100 links to click on, we know our way around the site intuitively because we already know the brands.

This same concept can be applied to our own websites. Does your website reflect your brand? Do you think about the different ways your audience sees and interacts with your organisation? If you think what the equivalent of your TV and Radio channels would be, it might take you in a very different direction with your website.

Integrated communications across different media
I love the fact that the BBC joins together its different media. If I watch television or listen to the radio, chances are I can then go to the website or use my mobile and find the same information there and hence choose the medium which suits me best. This is a major achievement for an organisation the size of the BBC!

Now clearly it would be unrealistic for most charities to provide the same degree of choice to their audiences. However the technology is often easier than you think and in my experience, it is the strategy behind your charity which limits the choices you give your audiences. As the BBC shows, the benefits of the integrated approach are huge and if you look at what some charities are now doing (for example Word Live from Scripture Union) then you will see that charities can make this work.

The importance of good headlines
My last point concerns headlines. If you look at the BBC homepage and news pages, you will see that each story has a maximum of six words in the headline, yet in those six words, you know exactly what that page is about. That's not easy to do!

Contrast this with many charity websites where words abound and yet it's still not clear what the page is about! Good copy writing skills are always top of my list for web editors!

So next time you visit the BBC website, why not take a moment to think what it is you like or dislike about it and what can inspire you to communicate in new and exciting ways through your website.

Jim Raymond is Commercial Director of Baigent Ltd, a digital agency specialising in websites, online fundraising and online strategies for charities.