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 Liberal.ca Website Review
By Greg Farries
June 23, 2004
Liberal.ca is a well designed website with many valuable features available
to the interested web surfer. The site contains extensive background information
on Prime Minister Paul Martin, the candidates running for the party, and
the party’s official policy platforms. The site also contains a multimedia
section full of video footage, TV ads, photo galleries and slideshows.
One particularly attractive feature of the multimedia section is the availability
of logos and style guides for those who are interested in the downloading
the logo. The newly designed logo is an improvement from the old one and
it works well with the updated website design.
Liberal.ca is an attractive
and useful website; however, there are a few problems inherent in
the design. The first and possibly the leading problem was that of all
the major political parties involved in the 2004 federal election, it was
the Liberal party of Canada that failed to capitalize initially on the
use of the web in the campaign. It was well over a week into the campaign
before Liberal.ca was updated and redesigned to reflect
the new priorities and direction of the party during an election. And,
unfortunately, even after the redesign and numerous updates,
the website failed to stress that an election was even
taking place. For the most part, the website hardly changed; giving
the impression that the website and anyone who bothers
to visit it were not important enough to warrant attention. Whereas the
Conservative and NDP party both launched redesigned versions
of their official party websites immediately after the
writ dropped, Liberal.ca was only partially redesigned and was late on
the scene.
There also appeared to be a lack of a coherent strategy in presenting
the Liberal party’s important policy/platform positions
in a way that is easy to access and easy to digest. When
the user selects the Platform button, which is
conveniently located on the left navigation bar, the user
is presented with a brief message from Paul Martin and
then a long summary of the current party policy positions.
At first glance the summary appears to be the only content
available on party positions; however, if the user by chance
looks to the sidebar containing a block of image buttons
running down the right-hand side of the site, he or she
will notice that some, but not all, of the image buttons
correspond with certain section of the policy platform
summary. If in fact that user is lucky enough to notice
that the top image button is labeled Contents,
then indeed the user will be able to view a table of contents
for the full policy platform. This convoluted and confusing
method of viewing the party’s
platform will undoubtedly confuse some users and is less
than ideal for those interested in learning more about
the Liberal party’s platform.
Another major problem with the site is the sheer size and overuse
of sidebars. The main sidebar – the sidebar that is located
on the bottom left of each page of the site – seems to
have been thrown together with little thought as to how the user
will actually use the page. Some of the buttons contained within
this sidebar link directly to sections of the site that can be
found through the main navigation bar (Photo Slideshow, Election
Ads), while others buttons link to sections of the site that
are only accessible through the sidebar (Be Heard, Volunteer,
Reality Checks, Join the Party). This creates a situation that
is confusing to the user because he or she must scan the whole
page before finding the appropriate section. This unfortunate
situation is only compounded by the fact that important sections
of the site, such as “Join the Party” and “Volunteer,” have
been relegated only to the sidebar. The only way to access these
important parts of the site is by selecting the corresponding
button in the sidebar as they are not made available through
the main navigation bar. If new party members and volunteers
are important to a campaign (and we can assume they are), one
wonders why these sections are not important enough to be given
a higher profile under the main navigation bar?
The overuse and confusing sidebars along with the late start the website
got placed this otherwise strong campaign website at a distinct disadvantage
when compared to the websites of the other parties.
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