Date post: | 16-Jul-2015 |
Category: |
Technology |
Upload: | henri-makembe |
View: | 735 times |
Download: | 1 times |
Do's and Don'ts on Your Campaign Website
Henri Makembe, localpolitechs.com
Isaac Salazar, mddems.org
Maureen Higgins, mddems.org
Why your website matters• 24% of Americans learn
about campaigns online
• 55% of American adults get news or information about political candidates online
• 1 in 3 forward political content to friends
1. Design for lowest Common denominator• Most visitors do NOT use current browser
version. Be Backward Compatible
• Design your pages for 1024x768
• Test (connection speed), Test (browsers), Test (user flow).
2. Focus on Content• Be short, sweet and to the point
• Make it easy to scan your website. Use H tags & Bullets, Bold important words
• Good content is good SEO
• Write for the web & Keep it fresh
• Promote your content
3. Have Prominent Action Buttons• Contribute, volunteer,
register to vote, links to social networks ABOVE the fold
• Give user elements interactivity right away
• Established baseline for ladder of engagement
4. Prominent E-mail Capture
• Email signup must be visible and obvious
• Keep the from simple of short -E-mail sign up form is NOT volunteer form
• Use cookie-based splash pages
5. Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) • Creates consistent
formatting across site
• Easier to maintain
• Easier to deal with browsers' quirks
• Increases load speed
1. Flash or Flash Intros• Difficult to maintain
• Not present on all machines & requires download
• Not backwards compatible
• Does NOT work on mobile devices
• Use JQuery instead
2. Long paragraphs/welcome letters• Average time spent on the website is
less than 120 sec.
• Most visitors only read content 'above the fold'
• Long letters take up valuable real estate on your site
• Use short paragraphs, bullets & links
3. Music / Sounds• Increases page size
• Does NOT echo message
• Detracts from User experience
• Lacks professionalism
• When using video, disable auto-play
4. Gimmicks or Overdo widgets• Blink/Scrolling text
• Pops-ups windows
• Automatic window resizing
• page counters
• Distract visitors from Message
5. Leave it to your kid/nephew
• Lack of campaign experience
• Lack of knowledge of affordable solutions
• Design best practices
• Use professionals or freelancers with proven portfolio
Sample Websites
The Good• Kevin Yoder for Congress• Sean Duffy for Congress• Hickenlooper for Governor of Colorado
The Bad & Ugly• Paul Hamann for U.S. Congress• Bill Conner for U.S. Congress• George Hutchins for U.S. Congress
RESOURCES• http://www.w3schools.com
• Web Writing: http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/
• Design: http://www.killersites.com/
• http:// www.localpolitechs.com
• http://www.epolitics.com
• http://freelanceswitch.com OR http://www.elance.com