|
Number
60: July 7, 2004
If you think your friends and colleagues would enjoy this newsletter
feel free to forward it to them. If someone
sent this to you,
today. Outlook 2003 and AOL 9 users, please add us to your trusted or buddy lists, so you won't miss an issue.
This week in Katydid:
Candidates
Learn to Use the Web
In the U.S. Presidential elections, we're moving into the middle of the
campaign season. With the party conventions beginning this month, and
the recent announcement of Sen.
John Edwards as Sen. John Kerry's Vice-presidential nominee, the
marketing for both parties becomes more focused.
Governor Howard
Dean's bid for the Democratic nomination surged early on the
strength of an integrated marketing campaign that heavily emphasized
fund raising through his web site. I thought I'd look at the current
sites to see which candidate does the best job of marketing through the
web.
As for any biases, I consider myself independent politically. I vote
for the candidate whose narrow self-interests most closely match my own.
I'm looking at these sites purely for the effectiveness of marketing,
usability, and information architecture (IA).
Both the Republican candidate, Pres.
George W. Bush, and the presumed Democratic candidate, Sen.
John F. Kerry, do a great job of directing people to their web
sites. They include the URL on signage and mention the site in their
speeches. It's easy to find the URLs for each candidate by simply typing
the candidate's name in a browser.
Also, candidates and their supporters have been able to use the web
to counteract and support talking points. In modern campaigns, there is
very little time devoted to actually debating policy. Instead, most
politicians have to stick to specific talking points and sound bites in
order to deliver consistent messaging to potential voters. Knowing that
they can drive voters to their web sites for a more complete discussion
ensures first, that they can make a complete case, and second, that they
will not have to deal with the opposition's point of view. (For good or
ill is another discussion.)
The Nielson//NetRating
AdRelevance report for April 2004 showed John Kerry's site
attracting 1.6 million unique visitors for April while the Bush site
drew 1.5 million. Additionally, Kerry has driven more ad impressions: 51
million in April versus five thousand for Bush. However, the Republican
National Committee (RNC) seems to be taking charge of web marketing
for Bush as they had 112.9 million ad impressions for April and have
performed at that level consistently for the first four months of this
year. The Democratic
National Committee (DNC) had barely begun to focus on online
advertising with no performance for January through March and only 63
thousand impressions for April.
Based on this data, one can infer that the Republicans are making
more of an effort to market their candidate online, but that the Kerry
campaign is doing a more efficient job of driving visitors to their web
site. Of course, one has to take into account that potential voters are
familiar with the policies and performance of the Bush/Cheney ticket,
and are less familiar with the Kerry/Edwards ticket. Therefore, voters
would be more likely to educate themselves by visiting the Kerry web
site regardless of their likely vote.
Once at the web site, I assume the candidate wants to convert the
visitor to vote for them. The audience can be potential voters, donors,
members of the press, analysts, or members of the opposition party. With
that end in mind, the site should move the visitor toward a relationship
with the candidate. Though they do not explicitly have to ask for a vote
or a donation, content and calls to action should encourage that
opportunity.
Kerry's web site has an opening splash page that requests an e-mail
address, which you can easily bypass. Sign up is quick and requests a
minimum of information. The site includes the sign up as part of the
left-hand navigation throughout the site.
The Bush site does not include an opening request, but consistently
includes a form in their header. However, what looks like a simple
e-mail sign-up form takes the visitor to a much more lengthy form. The
form requires full contact information.
Demanding this much information to continue the relationship is a
major obstacle to conversions. An independent or undecided voter
(presumably the prime target audience) would be much less likely to sign
up, which would really restrict the ability of the candidate to drive
the visitor back to the site in the future.
In terms of layout, both Bush and Kerry have adopted a three-column
presentation. The sites have a portal layout with many banners and
cross-promotion opportunities. This is the best architecture for a site
with so broad an audience. A visitor to any site usually has one
question at the top of his or her mind. They want to find the answer to
that question and you need to provide many methods for them to find it.
The drawback to this layout is that the visitor has to scroll down to
see everything.
The Kerry site has a much cleaner presentation in terms of design
than the Bush site. The consistent white background unifies the Kerry
site and makes the navigation elements more visible. The Bush site uses
more drop-shadow graphics and several dark blue or gray background
colors that make it more difficult to scan the page and don't help to
move the eye around the layout. Additionally, the drop-shadow graphics
and other design elements increase page load size (and time), as well as
crowding the page visually.
Additionally, navigation elements for the Bush site are difficult to
find. The Kerry site keeps navigation to the left-hand margin and at the
bottom of the masthead graphic. The Bush site includes more navigation
elements but it places the most convenient shortcuts (donate, blog,
vote, etc.) above the masthead graphic where visitors seldom look.
However, in the center of the page, the Bush site includes a set of
thematic links that do a great job of highlighting central value
propositions for his campaign. This is an edge for the Bush site because
a potential voter interested in a candidate's position on one specific
topic such
as Health Care, will not have to look far on the Bush site. On the
Kerry site, three topic links (vision, courage, and leadership) are not
specific enough. Kerry has a more specific topic list, but you have to
select On
the Issues in the left-hand navigation and then select from the
topic list on the destination page.
One major value to including specific thematic links on the home page
of a site is that they become a central delivery vehicle for messaging.
Even a casual visitor to the Bush site who does not click any deeper
will have an impression of the candidate based on the labels from the
home page. The casual visitor to the Kerry site will not gather a more
specific impression of the candidate from these labels.
[Ed note: Just as I was rechecking these links prior to
publication, I noticed that the Kerry site has corrected the preceding
issue by replacing the Vision, Courage, and Leadership tabs with
Issues, News, Blog, and Calendar, which elevates the thematic elements
and puts an issue such as Health Care just one click from the home page.
This is a decided improvement, but I felt the comments about information
architecture and messaging were still valuable, so I left them alone.]
In terms of content, both candidates are equally strong. Presumably,
they have teams of writers to develop content and the messaging is
carefully screened for consistency and a positive tone. Assuming the
visitor likes what they read and are motivated to take action, both
sites do a fair job in providing opportunities and calls to action.
Calls to volunteer or donate move the visitor toward a deeper
relationship with the candidate. The language on the Bush site is more
imperative (Volunteer Now!) whereas the Kerry site is less demanding,
(Stand with John Kerry). Bush calls visitors to donate and Kerry to
contribute. In this way, Kerry's messaging develops a collaborative
relationship with his audience where Bush's messaging puts his audience
in a more supportive, subordinate relationship.
Both sites offer both one-time and recurring donations. The Kerry
site makes their forms simpler by giving the contributor a choice up
front. The Bush site includes the various options on one form, which
makes the design more complicated. Though both sites use secure
connections for this process, the Bush site opens a new window, which
tends to undermine confidence by breaking the continuity of the site.
Kerry's form is embedded in the page and looks cleaner. The Kerry site
sets a lower suggested minimum one-time donation at $25, which is more
likely to encourage contributions. Bush sets his suggested one-time
minimum at $50. Of course, this could reflect market analysis of their
respective constituencies. Finally, Kerry also makes it easy to mail or
phone contributions, which increases the odds of a conversion.
On the volunteer call to action, Kerry does a better job of defining
the value up front. Bush includes a form with no attempt to define the
values or responsibilities of volunteering. The Kerry site provides a
little more information, and it creates an online resource for
volunteers, which includes a personal page on the Kerry web site. This
gives the volunteer a sense of place in the Kerry community, provides a
way to track the performance of volunteers, and gives them tools to
network and spread the message.
The candidates have embraced the web because they know it makes the
money flow faster. They are quickly coming up to speed on using web
tools to motivate and maintain their relationships with voters. Based on
my analysis, Kerry holds a marginal lead over Bush when it comes to web
marketing, but whether that has any bearing on the election is beyond
me. However, if you'd like to make a difference it couldn't hurt to
visit these sites, get your own questions answered, and vote based on
more than the purely emotion-based messages contained in the traditional
30-second spots. Democracy is too valuable to be an impulse buy.
Top »
Thanks for Reading
This e-mail newsletter spreads mainly by word of
mouth. Please send it on to your colleagues. Also, you can
read other back issues.
If you have suggestions of web sites to review, writing that buzzes,
or a new way of looking at things, let me know. Send your suggestions to
.
If you received this newsletter from a friend, please
today. Our subscriber lists are confidential; we never sell or rent our
lists to third parties. If you want to
from this newsletter,
please let us know.
Kind regards,
Kevin Troy Darling
Top »
|
