Red Bricks Media’s News Blog

by Jacob Morgan, Search Strategist

The Commander-in-Chief we elect in November 2008 has some giant shoes to fill. We demand someone with vision, values, ideas, charisma and drive. We need someone who is part economist, part diplomat, part statesperson and part CEO…and a little SEM expertise won’t hurt either.

We analyzed several of the Democratic and Republican candidate sites, and determined that the front-runners (based on SEM and conversion practices) were Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Ron Paul.

Ron Paul’s site is aesthetically pleasing in its choice of colors and use of new media. The call-to-action, “Donate!” is highly visible and recent donors’ names are listed beneath the donation total. Contributors are not only rewarded by having their name displayed but the donation total changes once the donation has been made. This sort of interactivity connects the donor to the campaign.

Other pluses include easy-to-use navigation, access to Ron Paul’s YouTube video assets and a block of CTAs (calls to action) that are easy to understand: “Sign up for emails,” “Get involved,” “Spread the word,” “Register to vote.” The only problem is they, and other key messages are buried below the fold.

Hillary Clinton’s site is well-executed, as nearly all the important copy can be read without scrolling. Key content appears above the fold, easy-to-read CTAs like “Make Calls,” “Build Our Base,” and “Join Team Hillary” have little icons that just beg to be clicked. Video and Blog links are prominent and the main navigation is clean and easy to use. Overall, her site is optimized to increase conversion (obtain contributions). On the home page alone, there are three “Contribute” CTAs.

On the semantic front, consider the difference between the words “Donate” and “Contribute.” The latter requires a greater commitment and involvement than the former. We’re pretty sure that a team of staffers sat in a room for at least an hour debating this very topic.

The Clinton site also takes advantage of online user communities (MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc.) by providing links on the main site, and listings on the community sites. In the last election, many candidates were ill-equipped to answer to the blogs and forums that shaped the perceptions of younger voters. However, this crop of candidates has been savvy enough to add that type of expertise to their ranks.

We have to say that when we were deciding which Democratic candidate to select, we assumed that we would prefer Obama’s site. After all, he is the “voice of the American youth.” However, his landing page asks for an email address and zip code right off the bat. Depending on how sensitive the audience is, this can be perceived as “rude.” You do have the option of skipping the sign-in in order to go directly to the site. But once there, we only found one CTA to “donate.” Where the Obama site really excels is in its connection to new media: Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, BlackPlanet, Flickr, LinkedIn, and Obama Mobile, but even so these links were well below the fold.

As we move on to the John McCain website, you’ll note that there’s an uncanny resemblance to Hillary Clinton’s site. The home page is “short and sweet” with much of the content above-the-fold—strong CTAs, rich media and a high degree of interactivity make this a successful conversion site.

All of the candidates would benefit from some heuristics testing. On the McCain home page, CHARLIE CRIST jumps out at you, when the candidate would be better served by having one or more CTAs take the spotlight.

Extra points go to Team McCain for creating a blog and McCainspace, where you can create your own website dedicated to John McCain. However, his web team has not leveraged web 2.0 assets—there are no links to all of his online communities.

We’re glad to see that the presidential candidates are starting to make good use of the participation architecture of web 2.0 and interactive media to help market themselves. Now, we’ll see whose internet strategy bears fruit come November 2008!

By KC Swenson, Search Strategist

The proliferation of free web-based email services has provided Internet users with a ubiquitous communications platform; we can stay connected anywhere in the world. Gmail and Yahoo Mail are two of the most popular, each with millions of active users, and each regularly adding new services or expanding existing ones.  Every day, huge numbers of users of these free services log into their accounts and stay logged in all day, periodically checking email, stock quotes, and news feeds.

These millions of logged-in users are incredibly valuable to search engines.  When logged into their free services, both Google and Yahoo actively track your searches and store not only your search queries but the results served up to you, as well as any links you clicked.  This information is used to more accurately tailor the ads you see to your specific interests.  Many people using these services are unaware of this tracking, although the sites’ Terms of Service (TOS) or privacy statements clearly state that they collect user data.  From Yahoo’s privacy statement:

Yahoo! automatically receives and records information from your computer and browser, including your IP address, Yahoo! cookie information, software and hardware attributes, and the page you request.  Yahoo! uses information for the following general purposes: to customize the advertising and content you see, fulfill your requests for products and services, improve our services, contact you, conduct research, and provide anonymous reporting for internal and external clients.     http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/details.html

By signing up for an account, users automatically consent to this data collection, though it is likely that many who do so don’t bother to read the lengthy TOS statements to ascertain this. 

There is another way search engines utilize your search history, one with potentially significant ramifications for searchers.  It builds on the promise of personalization – a customized set of search results based on your search and click history.  In particular, Google tailors the results you see according to your prior actions, so if you are logged into your Gmail account, you stand to see a different data set than you would if you were logged out.  This is not implicitly stated anywhere and it isn’t possible to opt out.

Instead of a natural, unfiltered set of search results you may end up with results skewed by your history. This means different searchers performing the same search can unwittingly end up with different results, and it will not be clear why this is happening or what can be done about it. 

As searchers learn more about this new data collection trend and clickpath tracking, some will find it useful. Others, expecting an unbiased results page, may find it problematic and invasive.  What bothers many privacy advocates is what “other” uses Google and Yahoo may find for this data.  Over time, vast dossiers are being built on millions of Internet users - often without their knowledge and mostly without recourse.  This is the dark side of free and convenient email, and a good reason to stay logged out of these services between email checks if you’re concerned about your privacy.