Bill Richardson’s website - where’s the beef?
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and there’s much excitement (if not much surprise) that our Governor, Bill Richardson, has announced his bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination.
Being a web designer who’s previously reviewed British and Irish political once or twice before, I quickly dashed over to check out Richardson’s new site - richardsonforpresident.com.
So how does it stack up?
Blog if you’re blogging
Despite the cliched red and blue palette, the front page is otherwise unobjectionable if a little staid, but heading to the blog was a big disappointment.
There’s one entry. This man’s running for president, and as I write, it’s been 4 days since the site went up and there’s still only one post. Where’s the behind-the-scenes info from the staff, the candid photos, the more informal commentary and analysis to go with the more solid news elsewhere on the site?
It’s basic web design practice that you don’t launch with a blank page (or the next worse thing) - you pre-fill the blog with a couple of entries, and make sure you have some more to roll out in the first week. This looks like you knew you had to have a blog, but weren’t sure what to do with it when you got it.
Wearing badges is not enough
The homepage has badged links to the usual Web 2.0 big-name sites: Flickr, YouTube, MySpace and others - so someone earned a bit of consulting money in advising on online community building. But as with the blog, it’s not really backed up with real content.
Richardson’s YouTube page has a couple of campaign ads and his announcement address, and that’s it. What about some vodcasting? Hand a camera to someone in the team, edit the footage on a laptop and stick it up. Show us the campaign headquarters, get a response from Richardson to the State of the Union - anything.
But fix the Flickr link first - it just takes you to your own account homepage.
The PartyBuilder link is even worse - ‘Governor Bill Richardson has 1 Friend(s)’? Only 1 friend? We know he’s described as an underdog, but this is ridiculous.
Do it like you mean it
So there’s a framework in place, but the life and energy that the site should be communicating is completely missing. It’s like they thought just having a site was enough.
I know it’s early days, but we need some new and vibrant content, and fast, if Governor Bill is going to grab anyone’s attention online.