Website Review: Greenway-Beaves

This is the third and final post in a series of guest posts by Brandon Neil, assistant manager of digital design and multimedia production at UNI's Production House where he builds and maintains websites for the university. Neil previously served as NISG's Director of Public Relations and has done multimedia work for two Presidential tickets.

Address: www.rhondaandadam.com

Disclosure: Adam Beaves was an NISG Senator while Brandon was the Director of Public Relations during the Cezar-Lobdell administration.

Design/Layout/Organization
Greenway-Beaves went with a futuristic tone on their website to stick with the theme of their campaign.

It has a traditional campaign website organization (about, platform, staff, media, and contact) with the main navigation across the top of the website.

The website does not include a dedicated news area which may have been intentional since they've been very active on Twitter and Facebook. In fact, Greenway-Beaves has a Twitter feed on what I'm calling the homepage, but unfortunately there's no "home" button to get back to it from any other page.

@Rhonda_Adam I wish there was a link to return to your home page on your site...less than a minute ago via TweetDeckLiz Mastalio
mathstalio

Just like the other campaigns, there's no persistent logo or site name in the top left corner of every page - a good convention in web design. However, they do use their "The Future is UNI" logo around the site in various ways to tie in their other marketing materials.

A nice touch is the “Free Stuff” form which will allow them to selectively give out swag to interested students in light of spending limitations. The campaign also gets an email address out of the deal - useful for spreading the word about campaign events and Get Out The Vote.

There are some issues with the choice of fonts on the website. First, the futuristic heading font can be hard to read at times, especially in the platform menu. Second, using a Comic Sans inspired font is usually reserved for comics and children's books. It does not lend the image of credibility or trust, which is important in any a campaign website. Unfortunately, most of the same body text (including the platform) is in all caps, which is a frustrating readability issue.

However, they have been very responsive to changes to their website since the campaign began. They’ve changed the video on the landing page so it no longer starts automatically. This was a great change since it loaded every time a visitor came to the website, which can be frustrating.

They also fixed an issue with their free stuff form.

Hey @Rhonda_Adam and @dannylockard. I tried to use the form on your website to get free stuff and it doesn't work! FYI!less than a minute ago via webAdam Haselhuhn
Adam_NI

And they already have the requested pdf version of their platform up on the site.

hey candidates! I want to be able to download a pdf of your platform off of your website. Make it happen #nisgelectionsless than a minute ago via webAdam Haselhuhn
Adam_NI

Note: Although the blog posts from this series came out at different times, I originally checked for the addition on each website at approximately 8:00 PM, February 1.

Technology
The website is built with wix.com, a Flash-based site builder. The website has animation between pieces of content- the candidate profiles "flip" for instance when you click to go to the candidate activities page. But this added animation comes at a cost: Flash as a complete solution to website building is not very accessible. When we built Trevor’s campaign website in Flash we realized it was impossible to link to pages within the website. There's also the whole "no Flash on Apple devices" thing, which I'll get to in a moment.

Social/communication features
The website includes a contact form for thoughts and questions. There is also the Free Stuff form which was also mentioned above.

Mobile experience
iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad all display Flash update notifications and cannot access the site. As with my other posts, I was unable to test the site with other devices, although Android powered devices that are Flash-capable should display the website.

Overall thoughts
Greenway-Beaves have been receptive to changes to make www.rhondaandadam.com more user-friendly. Their "Free Stuff" form is a great way to get their swag out to hardcore supporters. If they fixed the font readability issues, the website would be even better.