Website Review: Reed-Simonson

This is the first 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.reedsimonson.com

Design/layout/organization
Reed-Simonson went with a design resembling something that looks like the wall of a residence hall. Maybe it’s reflective of their campaign as the dark horses - closer to a regular student than a NISG insider.

The website is organized around their platform, biographies, news, panther federalist, and guestbook areas.

The news page is a bit confusing to me. At first I assumed it was going to be news about the Reed-Simonson ticket, but it's really a listing of news stories from the Des Moines Register about Iowa politics and posts from the Northern Iowan and NISGElections.com. The campaign may want to consider the value of this page and identify it's purpose. Then make its purpose more apparent to site visitors. The website does not include a dedicated news blog which may be helpful throughout the campaign season.

The campaign has yet to provide a pdf version of their platform in response to Adam's request.

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

A big usability improvement for the website would be the addition of a logo and site name at the top of each page identifying the campaign. Also, the platform is a bit hard to read with everything in bold.

Technology
From what I can tell, the website is built using WebSite Tonight, an online site builder that companies like GoDaddy.com resell for small websites. It’s using the “Collegey” theme.

Social/communication features
A guestbook for providing public feedback. A good addition would be a private contact form, a feature provided by the other two campaigns.

Mobile experience
I tested the website on an iPad and iPhone. Both devices rendered the website with no issues. I was unable to test with other devices.

Overall thoughts
Reed-Simonson's www.reedsimonson.com is simple but effective. They have a few web usability and branding issues that they could take care of to make the site better.