I’ll be the first to admit my sense of timing is way out of whack. I always tend to overestimate what I can get done in a given period of time. I had planned to have all three of the CA Gov sites done before the primary. Now here we are a month after and I’m just wrapping up Arnold. Micah has been very diligent in hounding me to get this done, so don’t blame him. I just know y’all are eagerly awaiting the next installment of this series (um… yeah… I tell myself that, anyway).

Anyway, sorry it has taken so long, but here is a close look at Arnold "The Governator" Schwarzenegger’s site. If you have suggestions for other sites you’d like me to review, feel free to mail them to me at websitereview@kungfuquip.com

As a reminder, the six scoring criteria are:


• Appearance

• Communication

• Depth of Content

• Mobilization

• Technology

• Usability

Schwarzenegger is running a multi-million dollar race in the largest state in the country, yet his website, beneath the shiny exterior, has very little to offer. It's a fairly weak offering for a really, really strong candidate.

Screenshot:

I really should have put this category last because it really is the most subjective. There are a couple of standard things you can look at – whether the site maximizes the screen real estate, what appears above and below the scroll, etc. – but much of this category falls into a really ambiguous ‘I-know-it-when-I-see-it’ area. This site is especially difficult because I really like what I see above the scroll (the space you see without having to scroll down), but hate it below the scroll.

The large central image, the clear horizontal navigation, and the options to get involved are all very obvious, and very inviting. The few minor points I would make regarding the site above the scroll would be the lack of a message component and the lack of a clear finance appeal. As I’ve mentioned in other reviews, I’m a firm believer that the three components of your campaign – message, money and mobilization - should all appear above the scroll.

In Arnold’s case, it would be easy enough to fix. They could add message by labeling and linking the images in the Flash to specific content areas - though some of the images are a bit awkward and don’t lend themselves to clear explanations at first glance – “Arnold Supports Guys in White Cowboy Hats” may have something to do with Agriculture policy. It should be clear and link to a policy point. “Arnold Needs a Lot of Pens” may have something to do with education, and should drive you to that issue.

The site excels at content in some areas and falls short in others. I debated whether to score this a three or a four.

What impressed me the most is the campaign's full text multi-lingual presentation. My Spanglish is alright, and I speak no Mandarin at all. So the fact that I found very little on one site that I could make out and absolutely nothing on the other pleased me. This is what a site should look like if you're going to do it in other languages.

The Record, Vision and Team sections of the site have a lot of depth on Arnold’s past achievements and future plans. However, the amount of material related to the Governor’s agenda and record is somewhat overshadowed by his omissions in a couple of other areas.

Despite the fact that some of the copy on issues is sort of vague, you can glean a lot about his ideology from it. It’s meant to appeal to most while saying nothing to all (“The Governor Is Committed to Furthering California's Economic Recovery” --honestly, who would be committed to stopping the recovery and bringing on economic hard times?) but that’s politics and I’ll never change it no matter how many times I point it out.

This site needs help. Their navigation and the area of the page below the scroll is a disaster. Their links to some common navigation options like their blog and donation pages are lost in sub-nav hell.

The lower half of the home page is really the biggest problem. It has a tabbed navigation that seems to float in the ether unconnected to anything. When you click on the tabs, everything below them changes, but it’s not obvious from that’s what’s going to happen. They really should break up the space with a different background color or something. Otherwise it just looks odd.

The scripting on the tabs also leaves a huge white space at the bottom of the page if you pick certain tabs. That would be ok if it weren’t for the fact that they buried the search option at the bottom of the page.

They have a lot of really stupid errors on the site. Most are easy to fix, but nobody has apparently taken the time to fix them. For instance, if you click on the “English” language option from their blog, you don’t end up on an English language version of Arnold’s site. You end up on Kintera’s corporate web page. That’s a dumb problem to have.

Kintera has made a name for themselves in the political internet space, but based on Arnold’s offering, I’m not quite sure why. It’s missing even basic functionality that every site should have. For instance, one of the great capabilities of the Internet is the viral nature of content. Things are passed around from person to person instantly via e-mail. This site, however, has none of that. They don’t even have simple “Forward to a Friend” features on their news items. You limit your organic traffic when you don’t allow people to easily pass your content on to others.

Also, their action center is weak. Their idea for building support is to contact 10 friends via e-mail. That should be a basic recruitment goal, but what about reaching unregistered or unaffiliated voters? Where is the online voter contact tool? Where is the voter registration link?

I imagine they’re getting very little financial support online given that their donation link takes you to a page that says, in essence, “No, really! Are you sure you want to donate?” I clicked on a donate link, I know what that word means, why not take me straight to a contribution form and stop jerking me around? Why would you place an intermediary hurdle between you and my money?

Despite having a lot of content, the site, as I mentioned, says a whole lot of nothing. The Flash on the homepage, as I mentioned above, gives no indication of the campaign’s message. It really should reflect the items under the Governor’s vision so you don’t have to go digging around to find it. I gave them a three based on the depth of their issue and record information, but this could have gone lower.

One of the odd points I would make about their messaging is the title of some of the coalitions. They have a Hispanic families coalition, but that says to me they could care less about single Hispanics. That’s sort of an odd message to carry.

They also have something called the “Remarkable Women for Arnold." Given the allegations that have been made about the Governor’s philandering past, I probably would have stuck to Women for Arnold. Most women I know would take issue with something that labels some as remarkable since it creates a sense that many others are not. That plays into the male-macho ‘dumb broad’ stereotyping that leads to perceptions that you are less than friendly to women.

The site's almost total lack of ways to interact with the campaign is a disappointment. They allow you to sign up, recruit a couple of friends, and maybe host a party at your house. It’s all pretty much driven by the campaign, and doesn’t allow anyone to take initiative on their own. That’s a terrible disappointment for a guy who is known as a maverick.

I would like to see a lot more opportunity to actually help. I’d like to see a way to register my friends to vote, to contact people on my own, outside the campaign structure. I’d also like ways to help fundraise. The GOP really needs to do a much better job of letting our people help us. This site falls seriously short on that front.

As I mentioned, the blog is one area where you can invite interaction without much overhead. They have chosen to deny that interaction in arguably the most tech savvy place on the planet. That's a bad idea.

The site looks nice at first passing, but a closer look reveals a lot of flaws. The Governor's an actor, so let me sum this up with a line stolen from the movie Clueless. "[It's] a full-on Monet... From far away, it's ok. But up close, it's a big old mess."

Tuesday is the big day for candidates in the California gubernatorial primary. The winner gets to take on Arnold in the November general and the campaigns are fighting it out down to the wire. Online, the campaigns are employing varying degrees of sophistication to gather, organize, and mobilize their supporters.

I’m taking a look at the Angelides and Westly campaigns and then will turn to the man they hope to dethrone – Arnold “Kindergarten Cop” Schwarzenegger. As a reminder, the six scoring criteria are:


• Appearance

• Communication

• Depth of Content

• Mobilization

• Technology

• Usability

Angelides is doing some interesting things online with a sophisticated online action center and the ability for volunteers to organize themselves with tools online to call and walk. Unfortunately, his site’s visual appeal is lacking and many visitors may not look past the rough exterior to find the quality within. What does Westly offer? Let’s take a look.

Screenshot:

Of the major candidates for Governor, Westly probably has the best looking site. It’s clean and attractive. The color combination struck me as odd, at first, but it grew on me over time. It’s apparent, especially when compared to the Angelides offering, that the site was created by a good design firm.

The few issues I have with the site’s appearance also relate directly to the usability score. They concern the navigation. I’m a big believer in horizontal navigation, as it frees up space in the well for a lot other content. This site, however, overdoes it a bit. The presence of four separate horizontal navigation bars is distracting. Add to that the use of drop down menus on the lowest of the four, and the navigation quickly becomes a burden rather than an aid to the user.

On the navigation front, there is one other problem as the site stands at the time of this writing. The site currently contains a YouTube video message from Steve Westly. That control, on the page, appears above the navigation layer, so the drop-down menus are hidden from view.

Like Angelides’s offering, Westly’s site contains a good deal of content. It’s one of the first I have seen that makes content available not only in English and Spanish – the minimum these days – but also in Chinese. Unfortunately, that effort actually costs them points on my scale because they do it poorly. Like many campaigns, they do make all of the actual content available, but instead use Chinese characters to link to English language versions of many pages.

If you’re going to provide a multi-lingual website, then go all the way, and make sure that every link on a second language page links to another page in the same language. It’s insulting to the users you’re trying to attract if you lure them into a section of the site supposedly in their preferred language, then keep linking them to English pages.

Like Angelides, Westly has a expansive issues section, but unlike Angelides, any individual issue has minimal material behind it. Westly’s health care section, for instance, contains only four paragraphs on an issue that generally ranks as exceptionally important to Democratic voters. In this primary fight, that could cost him votes with comparison shoppers.

The site is really sort of a mixed bag of usability. As mentioned above, it gets low marks on navigation because of the multiple bars and the hidden drop downs. A lot of sites are using multiple navigation items in the banner space, but this site goes a bit overboard because all of them are quite large. Rather than being smaller icons, they’re fairly obtrusive making the banner look cluttered.

Another thing that stands out on the site is the lack of “alt” tags on any of the images. It’s clear that Westly isn’t very concerned about visitors using screen readers. Alt tags are a minimal addition to make a site more accessible, but the Westly site left them behind.

Further, there are links to find out what great things Steve did for California, but clicking on them takes you to the website for the California franchise Tax Board. Rather than telling the Westly story on his own website, he drives traffic to the site for the state bureaucracy he heads up. It’s confusing to get dumped off to a state website, and raises a couple of questions about the appropriateness of such linking. Is Westly using the state site to promote his campaign agenda? He’d be better off recreating some of that content locally and citing it rather than making his official office look like an extension of his election effort.

Other than extensive use of Flash, there really isn’t a lot of technical innovation in the Westly offering. The options offered to activists looking to get involved are fairly limited and stick mostly to the “forward-to-a-friend” and eCard variety. There isn’t much behind the curtain on this site and most of the options for interacting are limited to the blog and e-mailing friends. The action center lists an option for helping to get out the vote, but once clicked, that option leads to a volunteer form and survey of what you’d like to do. Unlike Angelides, Westly offers no self-service options for those looking to call or walk on their own schedule.

The one semi-shining example of good use of technology is their leaderboard, but even that gets it only half right. The campaign has created Rally Alley to award points for action, but most points are earned for commenting on the blog or signing up a friend. Simply signing up put me just outside the top 20, and with as little as three e-mails I would move into 14th on their overall standings. Even the “leader” hasn’t broken into the second tier of activism (a “Rally Organizer”) and the point system actually encourages people to hang out online (quick points for blog comments) instead of driving them to offline action (calling, walking, writing, and so on).

Like Angelides’s site, there doesn’t seem to be a coherent message on the site.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the site is the list of the “Top 8 Reasons to Vote for Steve Westly.” Given they are the best reasons to support the candidate, I would expect them to be more prominently located, but instead, they are buried at the bottom of the home page. If I were an uninitiated visitor to the site, I would guess that Westly was a teacher, not the state controller. His issues seem to focus on education, the environment and healthcare, but I’m only guessing that because they’re the top three options under his issue pages. As mentioned above on the content scoring, the issues information is fairly limited as well, so even a long read of his positions doesn’t tell you much that’s useful.

This is where the site really falls down. If I had to take a guess, I’d bet that Westly’s web guy/team reports to the communications staff and doesn’t interact with their political shop very much. The site is mostly message driven, despite not having a clear message. It offers very little from a volunteer perspective.

The Internet is a powerful medium because it lets you interact based on your schedule. It’s your life on your terms, not based on the limited hours that the campaign is open for business. Having to fill out a volunteer form and then sitting around waiting to be contacted (if ever) is a waste of the time I am willing to give you. You have me when I sign up. I have registered with your system and want to be involved, but you’re going to make me wait on you. That’s really a poor customer service system. Would Amazon be where it is today if once you registered the site made you wait until a customer service rep called you back to actually take your order? It’s a poor way to do business online.

If Angelides’ site is all substance, and little style, then Westly seems to be all style with little behind it. Westly’s site is the polar opposite of Angelides’s online effort. Angelides provides the opportunity to engage and interact, but wraps it all in an aesthetically-challenged package. Westly provides a traditional campaign offering – a limited message and ways to regurgitate it to friends, but not much that excites.

Based on nothing but their online offerings, I would hope that Angelides would win. His site offers a lot more, even if it’s hard to look at. Westly appears to be a typical top-down candidate. He’s offering the same sound bites and tired methods that used to win elections. Whether that sort of empty-suit approach will carry him to victory is unclear. What’s certain, however, is that his web presence came up lacking.

Next up, I’ll dissect the Governator’s effort and see if the big man has the goods under the hood for his re-election bid.

My day job has kept me swamped the last few weeks, so I apologize for the delay in getting the next website review done. Micah and I were kicking around some concepts for the review and settled on taking a close look at all the candidates in one race. I wanted to look at a statewide race and that led me to the inevitable conclusion that I’d need to do this twice – once in a state where statewide races mean big bucks, and once in a state where that’s just not the case.

I know I said I’d look at races with less dough this time around, but I hope you’ll forgive a diversion. Since the big game this year is shaping up for a showdown in just a few weeks, I decided to look at California and, in rapid succession, tackle the two leading Democrats (Steve “Go Westly Young Man” Westly and Phil “the Angel” Angelides) and the guy they hope to face in November – the Terminator himself – Arnold “I hope I can spell this right” Schwarzenegger. The OC Register recently ran an interesting article on the candidates for governor and their sophisticated online operations. I thought I’d take a look.

Screenshot:

The first thing that caught my eye about Angelides site was the images at the top. Whenever I look at a new site, I always start by hitting refresh a few times to see if they have dynamic content that rotates based on the page load. Phil does. It mostly involves pictures of him “in action” and “down home.” It’s a good idea to have the images on your site reflect the theme of your campaign.

The images here tell me three things, but none of them are what the campaign is about (more on that later). First, the images say he’s a family man. The picture with the family is a nice touch when you’re facing off against a guy who has been accused of womanizing. Second, he’s a fun guy. All the pictures show him in various stages of smiling or laughing. Third, he’s kind of a goofy looking guy. The pictures feature him with more attractive people and young kids so you won’t focus on his appearance. That’s not a dig at Phil, it’s actually a compliment on how well the images do their job. I originally started with two things, but noticed the third later.

The Issue section alone earns high marks on content. There is a lot to dive into if you’re so inclined. Want to know where Phil stands on anything from education to health care, from the environment to ballot initiatives, you’re in luck.

The site also includes the video from Phil’s ads. The images on the page are all grainy, and the use of YouTube as a multimedia center is kind of odd. Again, it’s awfully low budget for a campaign at this level. Those, however, are style points and are already included above. As a source of content for the site, it’s good to see the video included.

The Angelides campaign also picked up on the coalition concept that was championed in 2004 and includes likes to “Community Pages.” These pages are an odd name for specific coalition groups (Environmentalists, Students and Democrats, for instance.) The only one that threw me off was the Democrats for Angelides. You’re a Democrat, running in a Democratic primary. Does that really need its own page?

The site is easy enough to navigate, but when you start getting into the Volunteer Center (canvass and phone programs) it gets a little heavy for the novice user. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see they’re providing some robust opportunities for helping the campaign, but the system they’re using (see references to Viva Democracy below) is really clunky. The sign up process tries to rely on the old belief that people are unwilling to give you a physical address, so they never ask for one. Instead, they display about 15 different screens that let you self select (down to the zip code, precinct and even street) that you want to walk.

They could have, instead, simply asked for your starting address and the number of voters you’d like to reach, and use the geography of your start point, and the voter addresses to give you the best match. The inherent limitations imposed by not using some sort of GIS system to match your volunteer to your voters results in a canvass system that feels like an old 1998-era software program.

Get Active powers the site, but I don’t see it highlighted on their client page, so I assume they’re not in a hurry to associate with its looks. I’m not a huge fan of “out of the box” solutions for campaigns. The trouble is they are mediocre solutions to many common issues, but excel at nothing. You’re much better off determining the campaign's goals for its site (which hopefully reflect its strategic goals) and then finding a vendor who does that well.

That brings me to Viva Democracy. I give the Angelides team high marks for some of the stuff they’re doing online. They have found a vendor that learned a good deal from the 2004 campaign and have developed some powerful tools. As mentioned above, though, I think the Viva Democracy tools are flawed in their approach. That affects how useful they are to the uninitiated volunteer, but their concept is sound.

If all politics is local, and you know that the majority of potential (not existing) volunteers couldn’t pick their precinct number out of a line up, why build a tool that requires you to select your walk list using a number they probably don’t know? The technology’s limitations in that regard cost them a half point. I wrestled with a full point, but it also cost them in usability, so I didn’t want to ding them twice.

This is another area where the Angelides site falls flat. The site has a huge amount of content, but no clear message. There are headlines, video and endorsements, but they have no coherent theme. I believe that any visitor coming to your site should see, above the scroll, the three Ms of your campaign – message, money and mobilization. I see money and mobilization, but have no idea what the message is. That usually means trouble for the campaign. If I had to guess, looking at the site, I would assume that their internet shop is run through their political director. It has a lot to offer for volunteers, but doesn’t effectively convey a campaign point of view.

For anyone reading this that is a) not an internet guru and b) putting together a campaign and looking for ideas, let me offer one. Make your internet guy a senior staff position and make sure he sits in on strategy meetings with political, communications, and finance. He has ideas that will make all three successful online, but sticking him under one shop or another guarantees you’ll do one thing (perhaps two) effectively and the other(s) poorly.

Again, the Angelides guys are doing a good job using technology to drive their volunteer programs. Providing online canvass and phone programs is the way of the future. Allowing a volunteer to get their call sheets, make calls, walk their neighborhood and be a significant contributor to the campaign is great.

On the contributor side is the one area where their mobilization seemed to suffer. It’s a common deficiency in campaigns, but one that could easily be remedied. While the campaign asks for contributions, there is little opportunity for the volunteer to become a fundraiser. The campaign should encourage viral fundraising by providing, through their toolkit, a way to solicit and track contributions to the campaign by those you have asked.

Like I said, that’s a common deficiency, so I’m not taking off a full point, but the Angelides folks have gone this far, why not take the extra step?

This is a strong presentation in an unattractive wrapping with no coherent theme. The depth of content is good if you dig for it, but the things you stand for should be front and center and I didn’t get any of that from their presentation. There is a lot of wasted real estate on the home page that could be better used to tell the campaign story.

They’re doing some really good things with some powerful technology, and some tools that put volunteers back into the process, but they’re missing the opportunity to bring new people into the fold by not using the site to recruit casual visitors through a compelling vision, an attractive presentation, or clear navigation.

We’re going from the highest profile candidate on the left to the highest profile candidate on the right. I kicked off the Campaign Website Review looking at Hillary Clinton’s online campaign vehicle. I’ve received some really positive feedback and heard some folks within Hillary’s camp took it to heart. I started this as a way to offer constructive criticism without a partisan tilt, so I’m glad they enjoyed it (assuming the rumors are true).

The last review also pointed out a hole in my own armor. Some determined readers tracked me down to point out the link to my contact form on my personal blog was broken. It’s all fixed now, though, so fire away. To give you some fodder, I’m tackling my first GOP candidate this time around. Again, the scoring is based on six criteria. Each component will get a separate score and the average will yield the sites overall score. The six criteria are:

• Appearance

• Communication

• Depth of Content

• Mobilization

• Technology

• Usability

Screenshot:

This is probably the hardest place to start. It really is the site’s weakest component. Assessing a web site’s appearance is a lot like judging art – different things appeal to different people. I like the works of Lichtenstein, but my wife hates him. She’s more of a Monet person. This site appeals to some, but I’m not a huge fan. It’s for that reason I have usability broken out separately. There is a difference between visually appealing and useful. I may not be a fan of Rick’s site, but I did find it fairly easy to navigate (with the exceptions noted below).

There are a lot of components on the site that I really like – the widgets for instance. I’m glad the widgets don’t extend to the back pages, though. I especially like the running mates widget. I think it’s great that they have included a running tally of their internal goals on the home page. I also like the countdown clock – it adds a sense of urgency.

I’m not excited about the GPS looking thing in the lower right, and the placement of the navigation. I’m not a guy that likes to scroll, so I prefer my navigation horizontal and right at the top. Drop downs are fine, but please don’t make me look for the navigation (more on that later).

I’m really impressed by the content. Rick’s agenda features a nice issue by issue breakdown of what he stands for. I also like the record of accomplishment that can be viewed by issue or by locality. Having the ability to see what Rick means to your county really brings home the message that a candidate is working for everyone. While the libertarian in me isn’t too excited about seeing all the tax dollars he brought back home, that sort of thing does play well with folks at home. They like to know they’re Senator is taking care of their neighborhood.

To that end, the site allows you to drill down into county level information in a number of places. It’s a nice touch.

Unlike Hillary, Santorum employs a blog. Though he follows the RNC model and makes you sign up before you can comment, the blog does allow interaction, and I’m pleased to see more GOPers following that model. I’m a big fan of open discussion when it serves a campaign’s strategic goal. One of the knocks on Rick has been his ties to lobbyists. Allowing discussion opens the site to the guy on the street. That decision, while not likely to make or break the campaign, sends a subtle message that can help in small part to blunt the lobbyist attack.

This score would be higher if the navigation on the home page was located higher up. It would eliminate the scrolling that’s required to get to the nav options. Once you’re off the home page, the navigation returns to a standard left side list with expanded dropouts for subsections - which saved a point. Unfortunately, the vast majority of a site’s traffic may never move beyond the home page, so their impression of the site’s utility may be based largely on their ability to find the hidden navigation – if they don’t scroll, they’re not likely to dig deeper.

On a positive note, just about every page allows for a printer friendly version as well as a “Send to Friends” function. I’m a big believer in viral marketing and the more options you have to spread the message the better. In addition, there are a lot of “friendly” touches that stand out. For instance, the search functions on the news room allow you to filter results to specific document types; many of the sites functions allow you to narrow by county, and several of the key pages allow you to download a pdf for easy distribution.

Do enough business with GOP vendors and you can pick their work out of a line up. The site has the unmistakable marks of New Media Communications. What that means is a .Net framework capable of doing quite a lot. The guys at New Media are also big believers in the power of geography, so it’s not a surprise that so much of the site is coded by county. I don’t have a PA address, but I suspect their e-mail is targeted by county and capable of delivering some very carefully targeted messages.

The Santorum camp does some interesting things that take the standard fare for NMC clients and kick them up a notch (to quote Emeril). As an example, most NMC sites now feature the action center, and many allow you to see the number of actions you’ve taken. Santorum goes one better with their running mate widget. Running Mates have the ability to toggle between the overall progress and their personal contribution. It really highlights your involvement in the campaign’s goals.

Communication is usually the hallmark of well run (read: heavily managed) GOP campaigns. Santorum is no exception. His site is vigorously on message. He and Hillary both get points for their ability to stay on message and keep their site fresh, but Rick gets the extra point for having a blog and updating it frequently. They may miss a day occasionally, but generally update 4 or 5 times per day. It’s a campaign blog, so the content is “all campaign, all the time”, but that’s to be expected.

Some may view the rigid control of message as a bad thing and urge more openness. I disagree. Campaigns are about winning; and winning candidates stay on message.

Santorum’s action center is really good. The opportunities for volunteer action are featured prominently, and as I mentioned above, the ability to track your progress within the overall progress is great. A lot of campaigns are afraid to let volunteers see their internal benchmarks, so it’s good to see Santorum being bold. He’ll need that kind of thinking in this tough race.

I did deduct a half-point (next thing you know I’ll be like an Olympic judge screwing around with tenths of a point for artistic merit). Elections are ultimately decided by votes, not the number of volunteers recruited or the dollars raised (though dollars certainly help with the other two). The Action Center lists voter registration, and it’s in the left nav, but it’s below the fold on both and loses its place in the “gauges” to the election clock. I’d really like to see it given more prominence. Having it below the fold and tucked away with “Shopping the Santorum Store” trivializes the registration of new voters at a time in the cycle when that is most important.

Santorum does a good job online. There are a couple of weak spots in an otherwise really solid presentation. I’m not crazy about the unusual structure, what I’ll call “misplaced” navigation, and some of the action center priorities. However, the site communicates really well, allows for a lot of targeting to the individual, and runs on a very robust platform.

Competing at this level, a website needs to do a lot more than it would if you were running for local office. Santorum and Clinton, as the two candidates most watched during this cycle, have both done a good job with their sites. They’ve invested significant resources in their online efforts because the world is watching.

Next time out, we’ll look at some less visible sites to see how the other half live.

Micah Sifry and I talked recently about a project I was considering – a campaign website review. This would be an honest assessment, without partisan positioning, of the state of candidate websites. Since 2004 was viewed as the watershed year for politics and the Internet, has anyone really learned the lessons of last year? How are campaigns using technology to help themselves organize and communicate online?

I want to approach this critically, but honestly, so I’ve broken down the scoring and will judge sites based on six criteria. Each component will get a separate score and the average will yield the sites overall score. The six criteria are:

• Appearance

• Communication

• Depth of Content

• Mobilization

• Technology

• Usability

These six aspects of a site are critical to your success. You can have the best technology, and the greatest message, but if it’s all buried in a hard to use site, it does you no good. Similarly, you can have a great looking site, with no substance, and no thought put into the campaign’s strategy or the mechanics of online activism. Campaign websites are a balance, and the scoring should reflect that.

Screenshot:

The appearance of this site has a solid track record. It’s nearly identical to the layout of the both Bush’s and Kerry’s sites in 2004. All featured the same main image prominent in the well space, with the action center to the right. Hillary borrows further from GeorgeWBush.com with the issue navigation above the well. Having a lot of experience with this layout, I know it works. We did a lot of click tracking on our home page during the campaign and know the central image gets a lot more traction than a smaller image with headlines.

I’d give the appearance 5 out of 5, but due to the duplication of two existing sites, I have to deduct a point for originality.

This is a site meant to carry the message of a Presidential candidate. That’s apparent from the extensive issue section. Her robust media center also highlights news, speeches, and video (including a video show called HillaryTV). That’s more content than most senate candidates will typically employ. It appears this site will be used more as a showcase for Hillary than to counter the minimal opposition she’s expected to face in November.

The glaring omission from the site is a blog. The Washington Note recently reported that Hillary will not do blog conference calls. Her site makes it appear she may have opposition to blogs and bloggers in general. She is, arguably, the Democrats’ presumptive nominee. To have no campaign blog, while representing a party that owes much of its momentum over the last two years to blogs, may be a disturbing signal to the party’s online activists.

The site employs a belt and suspenders navigation that allows the user a horizontal navigation for issues and a vertical navigation for content buckets. It’s easy to find information and pretty usable.

The one quibble I have is the lack of action options on actual news items. The Media Center features action items to write a letter or call talk radio, but as an activist, I’d prefer to have those options within the template for individual stories. I’m more likely to get fired up to take action while reading items. Making me back up to the main page is a barrier to activity.

I’d also like to have a Forward-to-A-Friend function on news items so I can pass on stuff I find interesting.

The site does a lot, but it could do much more. Making the site available in English and Spanish is another indicator there may be bigger things in store for this architecture. The use of video is good. I’m not sure when the existing video was produced (it’s not dated), but I would hope to see more. Nothing sells a story like video. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a moving image, at 24 frames per second, is worth 1.4 million words per minute. You can’t argue with that.

There are a few glaring omissions on the technology side. I’m surprised that Hillary isn’t doing podcasting. With her prominence, I would suspect that she has a lot to say. Why say it with an occasional speech or press release when you could have a popular podcast?

As I said, I’m also surprised by the lack of a blog. This is a technology that she really should have – if for no other reason than to begin developing a well organized online activist base. This site can be the home for a lot of activity, but only if you give people a frequently refreshed reason to come back.

The site communicates well. Issue information, news releases, etc are easily found. The navigation is clear. The main message is presented in the form of the large visual element on the front page and the headlines supporting it. The use of video allows you to convey your message in a more engaging way and it appears they plan to use it.

On the other hand, and I keep coming back to this, I can’t understand the decision not to have a blog. That gives you a real-time communication medium that simple press releases don’t allow. When people are on your site and commenting on the news of the day, breaking news gets disseminated faster. If your “current” news is 8 days old, and people aren’t there to see new information that’s posted, you’ve lost valuable response time.

Options to get active are clearly communicated on the home and second tier pages. As I mentioned, I’d like to see more action options within the deep content. I think you’d get more use of these tools if they extended to the roots of your message.

The action center for registered users is a bit light. I’d like to see more options. I’d like to see a make a contribution action. I’d like to see a recruit 5 donors option, I’d like to see an option to call talk radio. It’s a good start, and I imagine it will get better, but for now it’s workable.

The site overall is strong. It should be! It’s a near duplicate of 2004’s presidential contenders. It has a lot of functionality, and a good depth of content. What it really lacks is anything that creates a sense of interest.

Online communities develop around three things – interaction, competition, or personality. To be really successful, you really need at least two of the three. Interaction often takes the form of interactive content or interaction with other visitors. Competition often develops communities around game sites or (in cases like the RNC team leader or Bush volunteer programs) where your activity is measured against others. Blogs are a great example of both interactivity and personality.

Because it’s Hillary, it has personality. That comes naturally to a site for a high-profile candidate. But it’s lacking in the other two. The options of interaction are somewhat limited, and there is no competition. Adding a blog to this site would greatly increase its effectiveness. More people would visit, it would communicate better, and create a sense of a dynamic, people-driven campaign.