In politics, your website has five main goals:
1. Create visibility and preference for your campaign or organization.
2. Inspire website visitors to contribute money.
3. Inspire website visitors to volunteer.
4. Inspire visitors to tell their friends.
5. Inspire visitors to sign up for your email list.
That's it. Your website needs to do these five things and do them well. So, anything on your website that doesn't contribute to these goals has to go.
If you're planning to build a new website for your campaign or organization, be clear about your goals before visually dazzling effects and extraneous features distract you. Good design, attractive graphics and succinct writing will contribute towards an effective website, but in the quest for a "cool" website, it's surprising how many people forget the basics.
Top distractions include:
uContinually flashing graphics or looped videos. A slowly rotating slide show or short introductory video is usually fine, but anything more is usually a distraction. Don't believe me? I don't know about you, but those online ads that have the dancing silhouettes are so annoying to me that I try to get off that web page as quickly as possible - and I bet you do, too.
uSound. Let the website visitor decide if they want to listen to anything on your website, don't impose it on them.
uToo much text on a page. Provide some white space so there is a place for the eye to rest. Too much text is the equivalent of no text, because people will not wade through it to read it!
uLinks to external websites. Why do you want to send people away from your website? Again, remember the five goals for your website. The longer you keep visitors on your website, the more likely that you are achieving your goals. If you want to provide a link to something like a voter registration page or an article about your campaign, be sure to have the link open in a new browser window so that when it is closed, the visitor is back on your website.
All of the content and functionality of your website should contribute towards at least one of the five goals. Anything included in your website that does not work towards one of these goals, distracts from them. Keep your goals in mind when you are considering any content for your website!
