Who do they think they're talking to? – How the political party sites rank globally

This blog post is a supporting post in a series examining the effectiveness of British political party websites – for a summary of the short study, and my conclusions, click here.

Generally, my preferred measure of global website popularity comes from compete.com, who in this case only record traffic for the BNP and the Conservatives.

According to compete.com, the Conservative Party saw 4,698 unique visitors in June 2009 to the BNP’s 3,343. Unfortunately, in this  case Compete is not the best site to use – Compete’s figures massively under-report the actual traffic, probably because the majority of their data is gathered in the US.

Alexa

Without access to the likes of Hitwise, this forces me into the rather unpredictable world of Alexa. I don’t normally assign a great deal of weight to Alexa figures, and will avoid rehashing the arguments for and against their data here. However, I wasn’t prepared to use Alexa ranking as part of the scores, so they don’t have any bearing on the end result.

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Who do they think they're talking to? The political party websites reviewed

In the 2005 General Election the minor parties scored 6% of the vote in the Norwich North consistuency. After a febrile summer in Westminster politics their share of the vote rose to 28% in the recent by-election, and they could be ready to steal a march online too.

Over the past few weeks I have been studying the websites of the big British political parties. Generally ignoring their presence on social networking sites, or any microsites, I have examined the effectiveness of their core website – I wanted to know how serious each of the parties is about using their home on the ‘net to reach out to their key audiences. Political party websites receive relatively low levels of traffic, which is one of the reasons why the parties find it important to get out there on to the wider ‘net – if during your lunchbreak you quickly surf Facebook, perhaps a news website, or your email, you would probably never dream of including a political party in that list.

So the parties need to get out there and grab your attention wherever you are. Back at home however, the party’s own sites may get low traffic, but the visitors are generally high value. They include:

• The media
• Party activists / PPCs / staff / potential members of staff
• Existing and potential voters (including members and supporters)
• Political stakeholders (eg Electoral Commission)

These audiences are served through the provision of:

• Excellent content. Party narrative / messages (including rich media, eg video)
• Media releases and statements
• Means to join / support the party financially or through email
• A database of candidates (and local / regional parties, outside of election time)
• Policy information
• Means to contact / interact with the party

I used nine tests to examine how well the parties are serving their audiences, and these are the results…

The best political party website in Britain

Relative to the rest of the field, the Conservatives come out as the clear winner, nearly 20% ahead of their nearest competitor.  This is well deserved and no surprise, as it is by far the most fully resourced of the sites. Perhaps more surprising is that the nearest competitor is the BNP – and that the Labour party come bottom of the pile. The Liberal Democrats are beaten by both the BNP and UKIP.

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Who do they think they're talking to? How the results were calculated

Each site was scored 1 to 5 against nine different measures. The scoring and the choice of tests is subjective, but informed by my time running national web projects for the Liberal Democrats. I have tried to leave aside my personal political background, and approach the scoring as objectively as possible.

Not all of the measures were equal. After the scores had been weighted, the final score for each party was multiplied to give an overall percentage score for the party. The full results are available here.

The criteria for inclusion used the most recent election to inform the choice – any British political party which elected one or more MEPs to the European Parliament in June was included. In order to keep the scope of the project manageable, I have looked in each case at the ‘main’ cross-Britain party website, and not Welsh/English national sites.

The nine measures were:

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Why I support the Liberal Democrats

I’ve had a busy afternoon working on various projects for the Lib Dems. As is so often the case, when a Sunday has disappeared full of Lib Demmery, the question “why do I bother?” flashed (oh so briefly, for I am a sworn loyal footsoldier of the yellow peril) across my mind.

Supporting a third party in a country without proportional representation can sometimes be difficult – we don’t tend to  have the motivation of the prospect of imminent government to call on.

So for anyone else who finds themselves wondering tonight whether their Sunday would’ve been better spent in support of some other cause, I thought I’d share with you the answer I refer back to whenever the “why bother?” question comes up. It comes from the closing sentences of Simon Hughes‘ final speech as President of the party, in September of 2008.

Over the last four years I’ve been humbled by huge support, and love and kindness by many of you, and I thank you for so many good times.

Four years ago, members of my family were sitting in those seats as I became Party President, my good mother among them. Last year I had to dash from the platform of conference to the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham, where she was fighting for her life.

On that day a combination of fantastic NHS care, and bluntly the miraculous, pulled her through.

Sadly, in November, she died.

But from conference when we were by the bedside in Birmingham, we heard a round of applause in solidarity for our family. For my younger brother, who is one of our councillors, and for me.

That warmth of gesture shows to me that we’re more than just a group of people who carry the same card in our handbags or our wallets. We’re more than just a group of people with personal ambitions. We have a collective vision, and we have a collective hope. Our vision is far bigger than the aspiration of any one of us as individuals, and our hope is to honour our mothers and fathers by building in this country a fairer, more compassionate and more prosperous future.

That’s why we are Liberal Democrats, and that’s why we don’t just deserve to succeed, we will succeed. Don’t ever give up on that cause – it’s the most wonderful thing you can do.

You can’t argue with that, eh?