Any idiot can build a web site these days. The problem, according to a professional survey done by Los Angeles Downtown News, is that four of them are running for mayor of Los Angeles.
Echoing LAVoice's Mayoral Site Checks, Los Angeles Downtown News hired a pair of online consultants to scrutinize the candidates' sites and come up with the same general conclusions I've been pointing out for several months now: Bob Hertzberg gets it, Jim Hahn's ignoring the web at his peril and Alarcon, Parks and Villaraigosa's sites languish in between those poles - mediocrity incarnate.
What the Downtown News piece does not delve into is the brains behind the bytes, which account more than anything for Hertzberg's kick-out-the-jams approach to engaging his site's visitors while offering important information on his positions, his past and his need for support:
Howard Dean's architect, Joe Trippi and colleague John Shallman have front-loaded the home page with feast of interactivity that grabs visitors with multiple attractors:
The Hertzberg Daily Digest collects top news and political stories from the day's newspaper sites and blogs;
You can sign up for a regular newsletter;
One click translates the entire site into Spanish
Hertzberg planks like breaking up the LAUSD are right out front, linked to a position statement and a petition form;
and Hertz-blog - albeit guest-written 90% of the time, gives the impression with fresh content that Something Is Happening Every Single Day.
As the Downtown News' consultant Allen Estrock, of Virtual Corral rightly points out of the Spanish button, "It's an enormous thing that at this point should be a no-brainer for every candidate."
At the other end of the spectrum, the incumbent who's supposedly fighting to keep his job, offers just a .gif and two phone numbers. I still haven't a clue what Hahn strategist and longtime Democratic campaign consultant Bill Carrick is thinking, but the fact that the guy has no Web site of his own should tell you why he's not thinking Web.
And in between, the other three sites clumsily ape interactive communication tactics they've seen elsewhere, and try (not too hard) to look busy. Villaraigosa's site has been dead since October. Parks' site offers occasional outbursts against Jim Hahn but won't take donations of less than $10 and offers a fairly dead-looking calendar. And Richard Alarcon's site still revels in flash, Flash and supposed hipness (the laughably empty "AlaBlog"), but beyond a few newspaper clips of Alarcon talking tough, and the standard bio, contact and donate links, it offers no sustenance.
Why is the Web important? The Downtown News consultant, Estrock says: "If a candidate's website doesn't reflect how people can leverage this incredibly powerful medium, I have a difficult time understanding how they're going to proactively plan for L.A.'s future."
On a more practical level: Active voters go to the Web for information. If your information is current, interactive, useful and engaging, you're more likely to get a vote from someone than if your information has all the appeal of a stale, nicely packaged loaf of bread or, worse, it's invisible.
Final grades from the Downtown News consultants:
Hertzberg: B+ (less than perfect due to unflattering pictures, it would appear)
