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Top 5 Best Senate Campaign Website Designs

by on Aug 05, 2008 (0) Comments

In putting together the report we released last week, The Use of the Internet by 2008 Senate Campaigns, my co-workers took the time to identify the websites of everyone running for the Senate this year.  Since my co-workers already did the hard part in finding the sites, I figured I’d cruise through the list and pick out my most and least favorites from a design perspective.    Presented below are the best designed homepages of the group, in my opinion.   I’ll write up the worst later in the week.

(5) Mark Warner (D-VA)

There is no shame in coming in 5th place. My father said that to me after a disappointing 11th place finish in the Pinewood Derby.

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Although there is a hint of Obama-borrowing here, I liked this site for its generous use of white space and logical placement of content/actions. The splash page sign-up is of course a real slap in the face but at least the skip through link is not hidden. My eye goes directly from the (only mildly annoying) logo to the contribute option to the actions. Everything on this homepage is easy to instantly recognize and quick to find (and then dismiss in my case).

(4) Rick Noriega  (D-TX)

To come in 4th place is to be a medal winner if one the top three is found to be juicing.

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The Rick Noriega site is a solidly-designed effort that grew on me after I got past the turtle popping his head out of the shell portrait on the right. It’s weird and 3-D but at least he’s not staring at me. My eye (twitched, then) went directly to the 3 boldly displayed actions below his image. They are the most prominent graphics on the homepage and it makes sense to boil down the actions to just these three solicitations. I also like the general style of this site and the Texas star as design element. Goofy? Maybe, but no American flag in the huge horizontal blue field up top wins points.

(3) Gordon Smith (R-OR)

3rd place just feels good, doesn’t it? Comfortable, without the pressure of being considered the best by anyone, really.

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There is a certain confidence in this design that allows it to look more like a Conde Nast magazine cover than a campaign website. Consider that the photography alone appears to have cost more than a lot of the other candidates’ sites entire budget. One latest news item. One Issue. The contribute button had to actually be searched out. No flags. No stars. Images of Oregon are the stars of this show with Senator Gordon Smith as your very understated MC. How the designers got this one past the goalie, I’ll never understand.

(2) Al Franken (D-MN)

2nd Place. Is there really a sadder finish than 2nd place? Yes there is. 3rd, 4th and 5th.

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Al Franken’s site provides nothing new in terms of functionality or grassroots tools as far as I can tell. Why this site rates so highly is the execution and the site’s tone. This site is going for homey and actually pulls it off. The wood panel background? That just shouldn’t work, but because it is so toned down you almost don’t notice it. The palette used is unique for a political site and the layout is a tidy 1200 pixel or so vertical scroll that feels about right. Also of note is the lack of a stop sign red contribute button. It might seem like an insignificant touch, but consider this as an alternative.

(1) Scott Kleeb (D-NE)

Sound the horns. Release the pigeons. Kleeb wins!

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Yes, Kleeb is actually a man’s name. Scott Kleeb, and he’s Nebraska’s Brand of Change! Alright, grammatically, that might be a little awkward, but stay with me and embrace the brilliance of this sepia-toned little beauty. Besides being totally different (at first glance) from all the other offerings, the designers spent a little time and money on image. Considering carefully the audience, this effort seems perfectly stylized to me, from the monotone palette to the spot-on photography. “Be a ranch hand volunteer”. Are you kidding me? That shot of the cowboy guy on the windmill? Come on. The logo is a cattle brand! This entire site design was risky and easily could have gone down the cringy path, but good principles keep it well above the fray. The information that is worth reading is well-placed and mostly above the fold, and the calls to action are bold and easily found. I think the page finishes well with the act | meet | more navigation organization as well. I’m in and out of this page quickly and onto whatever it is people actually do on campaign sites.

Tomorrow: The Losers.

Note: We do some political work, but did not consider sites we worked on in putting together this list.

Do you need a Content Management System?

by on Aug 05, 2008 (0) Comments

Almost all the sites we build at The Bivings Group these days use Content Management Systems (we usually use Drupal or WordPress).  However, we do occasionally build old fashioned static sites when we know a site isn’t going to be updated that often and/or it is design heavy and we’ll be charged with managing it.  SEOMoz has a great chart up showing the decision tree people should use in deciding whether they need a CMS or not.  The chart is embedded below and I think it pretty much nails the questions people should be asking.

do-you-need-a-cms

New Guide Release: The Professional’s Guide to Blogging

by on Aug 05, 2008 (Comments Off) Comments

I’m pleased to announce that after quite a lull in guide publications, we’ve got 5 great guides on their way. Today we’re launching one of them, The Professional’s Guide to Blogging. Available in web and document format, the blogging guide provides an in-depth look at what blogging is and how a new blogger can create, write, and promote his or her own blog. Authored by blogging expert Tamar Weinberg, it covers how to choose an appropriate blogging platform and how to efficiently optimize your blog for search engines, plus it shares content strategies and viral campaign launches, lists blog analytic options, and gives promotion and monetization tips. The guide also includes two invaluable appendices that link out to great blogging resources, software, tools, and plugins.

Stay tuned for more upcoming guides:

  • SEO Tools & Advanced Queries
  • Page Rank Sculpting
  • A New and Improved Link Building Guide
  • The Updated Beginner’s Guide to SEO

Happy reading!

How to do Negative Keyword Research (Part 2)

by on Aug 05, 2008 (0) Comments

After having explained why negative keywords are so important to a campaign, and how to do negative keyword research, this post will review how to add and optimize your negative keywords to be as precise as possible with your targeting. There are more advanced things you can do with negatives, and some ways you can research them not only based on the keyword tools’ estimations (ie average search volumes) but through the clicks you actually get on your ads:

Researching negatives through reports

The search query report was recently voted the favorite report on the PPC blog PPC Hero. The main reason for this, is that it shows you exactly what was typed into Google to trigger your broad and phrase matched keywords, but this works both ways: If you see a keyword that isn’t relevant to your campaign in this search query report, then add it to your negatives. This is a great way to cut costs as well as filter out irrelevant traffic.

Now combine this with:

Using different match types for your negatives.

This is only currently available on Google, but watch out for MSN. It is unlikely Yahoo will roll out this feature due to their archaic keyword matching system.

Say you want your ad to appear when someone searches for anything related to cars. You add “car” to your campaign as a broad match keyword, and bid accordingly. But being a car manufacturer, you don’t want your ad to appear when someone types “car theft” – for branding reasons (although in my opinion, you should have an ad saying “the most secure car 4 years in a row” for adverse branding). Simply add “car theft” as an exact-match negative keyword to your campaign, and you will appear for “safe cars” but not for “car theft”.

10 Ways to Save Time While Building a Website

by on Aug 05, 2008 (0) Comments

As a freelance web developer, time is money. I use many different tricks to increase my productivity and these are my top selections for saving time. Please make you own suggestions for other time savers in the comments.

Drop Down Menus :: All Web Menus (http://www.likno.com/allwebmenusinfo.html )
Whenever I need to add a complex drop-down menu to a site, I turn to All Web Menus. This program styles a complex multi level menu in less time then it takes to type the text. All websites need menus and for detailed menus, you should try All Web Menus.

Time saved: 1 Hour per menu.

Image Capture :: Gadwin Printscreen (http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/)
Gadwin Printscreen utility replaces windows standard printscreen keyboard button with more options and flexibility. It loads on windows startup and runs silently in the background without consuming system resources but it’s always there when you need it. Instead of just capturing the entire screen view, Gadwin allows you to select a rectangular area very precisely with the help of a built in magnifying window. This tool is invaluable to my work. I often use it to grab different pieces to mock up a design.

Time saved: 2 Minutes per screen capture.

What Happens When Search Engines Update the Indexing Process?

by on Aug 05, 2008 (0) Comments

Just wanted to pose an interesting question? What happens when search engines change their relevance model?, (change happens). When you consider SEO and search engine relevance, what matters most is getting in the search index and maintaining an upward trajectory. So, before you hit the panic button when your sites rankings take on a new persona (or lose position) for your main and subsequent keywords, you may be in for a surprise if you are looking in the wrong place for the cause (the dreaded merry-go-round index).
Do You Hit the Panic Button When Search Engines Change Their Relevance Model?, by SEO Design Solutions.

Just like with SEO, identifying and developing the ideal information architecture, eliminating server configuration errors, building links and promoting your content does not make people purchase your products or services. The fact is, it takes the right action to produce the right results.

Much in the same way, you would think that getting in the Google search engine index would be enough to hit the top 10 and stay there, but with different data centers all crawling your content with their own unique array of algorithms to assess the criteria that comprise your pages, surviving the law of averages, chronology and authority are all part of the new Google dance.

Once upon a time, when there were less data centers and less crawling of sites, results would stay for weeks without being challenged. Now, it is possible to rise or fall 10, 20 positions or more over night, but why? What if your site is crawled and indexed from data center A in the morning, then in the afternoon data center B comes along and takes a new reading to upload to the main index, which one wins and which one yields shapes the way your pages rank in the new and improved index.

Is it merely a means of calibration, the fact that more sites are making a debut each day, or that perhaps Google is starting to shake down any site that distributes unnatural or uncharacteristic behavior (which means more penalties or possible violations)?

Now before answering that, naturally only a real Google engineer could answer that question, but from a standpoint of speculation even though I am no doctor, I would summarize the symptom as (1) a case of the rotating data center itis, known for its “merry go round” like ranking syndrome where all of the criteria being used to assess relevance score is pending the redemption ping to consolidate and rectify the data (2) a slight case of amnesia due to temporal displacement (3) new ranking algorithms being tested for relevance or (4) the elements that create the abacus like ranking factors are being shifted slightly to embrace a new parameter.

In either case, what is certain is change. Sites that held lofty positions sliding off the page and returning again in a few hours (as if nothing happened) or SERPs (search engine result pages) showing distinctly different results depending on what part of the day it is, consistently like clockwork for days on end (the 5 o’clock shadow ranking) where your site hits the top 5 for your main keyword and before you can call your mom, bring in your colleagues or show all of your friends, the ranking simply vanishes.

Nailing the Coffin Shut on the “Don’t Link to External Sites” Philosophy

by on Aug 04, 2008 (0) Comments

Posted by randfish

Rare is the month that goes by when the spectre of the none-too-solid argument for hoarding link PageRank and link juice doesn’t rear its ugly head. And since I’ve just spent the last 5 hours on Q+A duty (as our beloved Q+A manager, Jane, is on vacation), and in need of a short punchy post, I’ll make this brief.

Arguments against linking out to other sites:

  1. If the original PageRank formula holds true, and no other algorithmic elements are in place to benefit sites and pages that link out, you could be costing yourself a small fraction of potential link juice.
  2. Visitors might click those links and never come back to your site.