A survey of the California AG candidate websites

At B2G we try to stay on top of what everyone’s doing out there, and here in California we expect to see some of the best campaign websites emerge for the 2010 cycle. Most of the field has their developers and designers already tweaking stylesheets and enhancing their flash movies.

As new candidates enter they will have to at least meet the standards set by the other opponents. So far in the Attorney General race, the competition is stiff. In this post we analyze Chris Kelly (kelly2010.com), Kamala Harris (kamalaharris.org), and Ted Lieu (tedlieu.com).

1.  Chris Kelly

• URL: www.kelly2010.com
• CMS: Drupal
• Donations: ActBlue

There are a couple of interesting things to point about off the bat here. This Chris Kelly, for all of his tech-savvy-ness, being a Facebook exec and all, wasn’t able to grab chriskelly.com back in 2000 before another Chris Kelly of Chapel Hill, NC did. And going off the Facebook theme again, there is a clear influence in color and font from his current employer. Not to mention, Kelly is the only AG candidate to show his Facebook widget on each internal page.

Kelly’s home page is simple and effective. The design is smooth and familiar. The flash box is nicely placed and not too active. We also like that the top third of the bottom content row is visible. This way it’s above the fold so we know it’s there, but we don’t have to scroll down if we don’t want to. For most first-time visitors that’s a plus.

2.  Ted Lieu

• URL: www.tedlieu.com
• CMS: Drupal
• Donations: Durkee and Associates E tribute

Lieu takes a less sophisticated, more playful approach to his home page. On first glance it might appear like a Web 2.0 startup: rounded corners, pastel colors, light gradients. The interactive image rotator is nice but doesn’t sit well in the center of the site. The menus on top, left, and bottom are redundant. Common practice says if you give people too many choice they do nothing. It is no surprise, then, that Lieu has the lowest traffic (based on Alexa rating) of all three candidates. In my opinion, it also has the poorest design.

3.  Kamala Harris

• URL: www.kamalaharris.org
• CMS: Drupal
• Donations: NGP

Kamala has my favorite website of the three. My only complaint is that the home page never paginates its content. I’m not sure why the web team would allow for the content to go on and on. There may be some SEO intention here, but it is not user-friendly. There are, however, plenty of other things Harris and her team got right.

I love the splash you see when you first get to her page. Better yet, I love that it won’t take me back to it after I clicked skip. The splash itself is boldly designed with a terrific picture of Kamala Harris against a blue starry background. It asks for email and cell phone numbers for text messaging. Another good sign.

The rest of the site is bloggy, but I’m willing to forgive. The interior pages have roughly the same layout and feel and I quickly lose interest. However, this is an Attorney General’s candidate website; you don’t need more than 30 seconds. And she got it right. What you need is the email addresses of as many visitors as possible. So her splash and landing pages, which is all 99 and 98% of her traffic, respectively, will see, must be the best. And they are.

Conclusion

It is interesting to note that all three candidates are on Drupal instead of one of a closed CMS (kamalaharris.org is still rocking the Drupal favicon). I will be curious to see which service they go through for email and newsletter management as well. Time to sign up!