Site lines

Michael Geist's column on the continued dominance of largely obsolete web strategies in the federal election is worth a look. And it's worth looking in more detail at how the NDP started to break the mould - as well as how the New Democrats can improve their online presence in the future.

On the up side, there were two extremely positive developments from the NDP worth keeping in mind. First, there was the Web ad buy which helped to ensure that anybody interested enough in the election to be searching party leaders' names would be presented with the NDP's site as the featured ad - showing some substantial creativity at least in the party's effort to attract more eyes to its message.

More importantly, there was the unveiling of the Orange Room, which put the NDP far ahead of the pack as the first national party to allow for user-generated content. (And I for one will be starting to include my NDP-related posts in the content there.)

Of course, there's plenty of room to build on the current Orange Room structure. To start with, I'd hope to see a reduction in inconveniences such as number of clicks needed to get to any news article. But more importantly the current site would seem to have loads of room for expansion through features ranging from something as simple as comments within the existing structure, to hopefully a full range of networking tools comparable to that put in place by the Obama campaign.

All in all, there's plenty to be satisfied with in the NDP's steps so far. On the down side, though, one choice by the NDP for this election campaign looks to me to have been a mistake.

For the bulk of the campaign, any visitor to ndp.ca (at least from the routes which I took to reach the site) was confronted with a splash page seeking donations before reaching the main site. Which would be strange enough if the party was merely expecting most of the traffic to consist of people who were looking to NDP material. After all, it's at least a somewhat counterproductive strategy to interfere with visitors' access to the party's core message in the medium likely used by the most interested observers in the interest of raising money to broadcast its message in commercials which would be ignored by most viewers.

But the move strikes me as particularly odd in light of the Google ad buy. After all, anybody taking the time to check out the NDP site after searching another party's leader's name would almost certainly be looking for information about their options, rather than already being sold enough on the party to want to contribute money. And based on the cost of directing traffic to the website (which I believe was estimated at up to $12 per click), the combination may actually have made for a money-losing proposition - in addition to a barrier to presenting the NDP positively to interested visitors.

Now, we'll see whether the NDP's donation numbers for the last two quarters of 2008 offer reason to think that the money-first focus of the website during the campaign at least helped the party out financially. But I'd still prefer to see a more balanced approach which helps to get information into the hands of site visitors to build support later on, rather starting with a request for money and treating the NDP's message as secondary.

All of which is to say that the New Democrats still have a ways to go in converting the party's website to a means of connecting NDP-friendly Canadians rather than a top-down messaging platform. But the first steps taken this year look to be a great start - and I'll be looking forward to seeing how much more progress is made in the future.