Republican & Democratic Convention Website Review
Update: Read the comments below. I totally blew it and reviewed the wrong Democratic Convention website!
Personally, I’m sick and tired of the convention coverage already so I thought I’d put my own twist on it and take a detailed look at the convention’s websites.
Republican Convention
The Republican website is XHTML Transitional and has both invalid CSS and HTML. An even bigger deal in my mind, is the complete lack of alt tags and support for screen readers. For an event of this magnitude, I would expect better. The design is very clean and except for the pastel colors in the main content area, I like the look and feel. It’s very clean and gives off a good visual impression of “power”with the dark blues. The river background is a great touch and really brings the design together. That said, the background’s repeat pattern is pretty noticable. The background is also 3000 pixels tall with most of it being just a dark blue color. It should just be a 1000 pixel tall pattern and use the CSS repeating and BODY background color to set the dark blue color.
I like the fact that the domain name for the website is RepublicanConvention.com in comparison to the Democratic Party’s DenverConvention2008. I think this is good for marketing, SEO and driving repeat traffic both now and in future years. Just much simpler.
From a content standpoint, the site doesn’t focus enough on potential convention visitors. It has information for delegates, but no links to the Minneapolis/St. Paul visitor websites. Most of the content seems focused around trivial “facts” for the media and bloggers, but lacks any real depth to the content to truly engage visitors and create genuine buzz or excitement (sort of sounds like the entire Republican party…but that’s another matter).
On a scale of 1 to 10…I’d give the site a 7.
Democratic Convention
Unlike the Republican site, I was able to quickly identify the designer of the Democratic site as Betsy Kimak, an independent web design consultant. Big kudos to Betsy for getting such a nice and highly-visible project. Betsy only appeared to handle the design of the website though, not the development.
The site is coded XHTML strict with valid HTML! The CSS is very close to validating. The site appears to be much friendlier to screen readers and users with difficulty with low contrast.
Unfortunately, I do not care for the Democractic site design near as much as the Republican site. While I really like the header’s grunge affect, my overall impression is one of weakness and not strength. The site is practically devoid of any dark or bold colors. I’m not saying such colors are necessary for a good design, simply that color theory and impressions matter a lot in political campaigns and this site simply doesn’t measure up to my expectations.  The design is not a bad design, I just don’t think it’s the best fit for this site. The background is also very light and while nice, it doesn’t extend to the entire width of my monitor (20″ widescreen?) and comes off a little strange.
The content of the Democratic site is much stronger though than the Republican’s site. The sole exception is making a rotating sponsor list front and center on the site. Maybe it brings in the bucks, but it just seems really tacky to me. The rest of the site is focused on events, visitors and even how the convention the “greenest” convention in history. The content of the site seems much deeper and includes links and information on visiting Denver. Overall, I believe it does a better job of meeting the needs of the website’s visitors than the Republican site.
On a scale of 1 to 10…It’s just a 6 in the design department, but I have to up it to a 7 for the content and increased usability.
In Conclusion
Both website’s have the appearance of being slightly overlooked in the media campaign. I’d expect a bit more out of both parties. You can tell the difference in focus when you read Dustin Brewer’s comparison of the candidate’s websites. The candidates obviously spent more time and money on their websites and while that’s the be expected, it wouldn’t take that much work to really increase the effectiveness of both of the convention’s websites. I’ve probably missed a lot in the comparison as well so please point out where you disagree with my opinions.
Betsy:
Hi James, thanks for the kudos! I appreciate your comments — great food for thought. One thing — you’re not comparing apples with apples. The official Democratic National Convention Web site is at http://www.demconvention.com. It’s sleek, with interesting content pieces, and even offers live streaming HD video from the Pepsi Center.
The site you reviewed (http://www.denverconvention2008.com) is for the local Host Committee — we’re responsible for funding the convention (hence the prominence of our sponsors), managing a vendor database, and coordinating external events. The fair comparison would be against the Minneapolis Saint Paul Host Committee (http://www.msp2008.com).
Since this is the 100th anniversary of the 1908 Democratic National Convention in Denver, my design challenge was to connect the old with the new. I opted for de-saturated colors because both the campaign and convention sites are using powerful deep blues, and funky grunge elements to balance their smooth, reflective ones.
The site uses a closed-source CMS with some pre-defined XHTML and CSS, so the design was implemented as a CSS skin over the existing structure. But my primary role has been content management and graphics. It’s been a great project and I hope to find time to summarize it in my portfolio in the coming weeks.
James Paden:
Wow, I blew that one, Betsy, lol. I’m not sure what I searched for to find the convention in the first place, but I definitely didn’t do enough research.
In light of your comments on the sites and the goals for the project, I’d say you did a fabulous job with the colors then. The desaturated colors definitely fit and as you said, the actual convention’s website is much bolder and more like what I expected. Great job!
Jin:
I caught this article a bit late. I’ve done a site review of both candidate’s campaign sites, I thought you may be interested in reading.
http://www.8164.org/presidential-design/
nice site. one more to add to my rss.
James Paden:
Wow, great post, Jin. Anyone reading this, please check out Jin’s above linked post. Thanks for the comment!
Alan:
James,
Nice summary of the convention pages, although being a web designer in Denver I noticed the Dem’s page was for the local host committee as well
(nice job, Betsy!)
I did a design critique of the candidates’ twitter pages, and also showed how they compared to the British Prime Minister’s office and White House twitter page designs. Interesting stuff…unfortunately (for comparison terms, anyhow), the Republican contender didn’t have much of a presence…. you can see the post here: http://www.notchcode.com/blog/2008/07/politicos-using-social-media-who-gets.html
Lexa85:
А почему у вас сайт в таких странных тонах? Содержание отличное, а дезайн можно поинтереснее сделать
Vipdictionary:
I love the way you sound so passionate about what you are writing. Keep up the great work!
What Do You Think?