Website Review: Walrath-Goldsmith

This is the second 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: http://www.spencer-ian.com/

Disclosure: Spencer Walrath was a resident of Campbell Hall when Brandon was a Resident Assistant there.

Design/layout/organization
Walrath-Goldsmith went with a clean layout and design that includes a large banner featuring a fun photo of the ticket that is different for each page. It has a traditional campaign website organization (home, platform, candidate bios, media, show support/get involved, and contact) with the main navigation across the top of the website. The website lacks a persistent logo or site name, usually located in the upper left corner of the site, to establish branding and identification. The "spencer. ian. YOU." branding appears on homepage banner photo, but that's it. A big usability improvement would be to add that logo (or a site name) to the top left of every page.

The homepage features a news blog where updates can be published. It also features links to the platform and Facebook page.

The website is easy to navigate and does not get in the way of their campaign message. However, I’m not sure if separate pages for photos and videos are necessary since it creates a pretty empty main media page and a possible extra click for visitors.

Walrath-Goldsmith have been quick to update their website. They’ve already posted one new blog post and have added a requested pdf version of their platform.

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

Technology
The website is built using Weebly, an online site builder. This will definitely be a benefit for the ticket throughout the campaign, allowing them to quickly post important information.

At first I was concerned that the “drop down” menus used on the site would not render on certain mobile devices but was pleased to see that they worked just fine on the iPad (see below for testing on iPhone and iPod touch).

They are also using Google Analytics which will give the campaign some insight on website activity.

Social/communication features
The website features comments on blog posts which is a good way to get some interaction on the site. Why not enable commenting on platform planks as well? The website also features a standard contact form.

The campaign also took it one step beyond the other campaigns with a dedicated RSS feed for their news blog. Visitors can subscribe to this feed and the campaign could also use this feed for automatic publishing out to Twitter and Facebook.

Mobile experience
For iPhone/iPod Touch and Android devices, Walrath-Goldsmith has a full-fledged mobile theme. It’s nice, except on iPhone/iPod Touch the embedded YouTube videos have a tendency to extend off the screen and create a usability issue by covering up the menus. On the iPad, the full website is shown.

As with my first post, I was unable to test with other devices, although those that are Android-powered shouldn’t have a problem with the full version of the website should see the mobile version. Edit: Correction based on Morgan's (spencer-ian.com Webmaster) comment. Let me know in the comments if you've visited the website with any other device.

Overall thoughts
Walrath-Goldsmith’s spencer-ian.com is well organized, aside from my comment about their media pages.

If they can get the YouTube videos to display properly, their best feature is definitely the mobile site. As far as I know, a mobile campaign website is a first in NISG history.