By Andy McCue, 25 April 2005 13:35
NEWS The Labour Party has delivered a blow to rival parties in the run up to election polling day next week by topping a study of the best political websites.
The exclusive research conducted for silicon.com by the Usability Company puts Labour first, the Conservatives second, the Liberal Democrats third, closely followed by the Green Party and Robert Kilroy-Silk's Veritas Party.
But although the study - which assessed both usability and accessibility of the campaign websites - credits the Labour Party's slick website, the Usability Company found it was a disappointing case of style over substance across all the party websites.
Jennifer Thomson, usability specialist at the Usability Company, said: "While the display of and use of content is exemplary on the Labour PartyÂ’s site, it feels very basic, shallow and as if there simply isn't a lot to it."
Labour scored well on accessibility too with the only let down being that the manifesto was not offered in HTML or Word format.
The Conservative website takes a more standard format but the study found it "sparse" and often confusing, displaying Tony Blair's image more often than Tory leader Michael Howard's.
"It is all too easy to forget which party's site youÂ’re looking at as Tony Blair's photo is displayed several times throughout the site - including the flash banner on every single page," said Thomson.
The text on the Conservative website also came in for criticism for being too small - 8.5 font - and Thomson said: "This font size is difficult to read, makes it tedious to look at the site and means that nothing really stands out on the pages."
The Liberal Democrats, on first appearance, have a glossy and engaging website but the study found it was let down by "confusing" and "overwhelming" navigation issues. On accessibility the Lib Dem party colours work against it with white text on a yellow background making for a poorly contrasting and difficult-to-read combination.
The Green Party site came in for criticism over lack of content and frustrating navigation while Kilroy-Silk's Veritas Party website had a religious rather than political feel to it.
"The first impression of this site is that it is not actually a political party's site but instead either a religious site recruiting members with its 'Join us, and together we can do it' link; or an infomercial site with its swirling purple background and a glamour pose of Robert Kilroy-Silk," said Thomson.
Comments
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1. kev walton
I have just read with interest the comments on the Veritas website looking more of a religious site than a political site. Can I ask, is this political bias by Thomson to give the impression that Kilroy silk is the second David Ike.
having looked at the website, and the content such as the multi media and document downloads, I honestly cannot see how it remotely resembles a religious theme, it is full of content and useful information.
Sign me up (lib/dems)
Join labour count me in
Join the party (conservative)
Join Veritas and make a difference
how is the veritas website different from the other three I wonder, the lib dems may as well say "beam me up" for all the good it is going to do them.
2. Ken Hall
Robert Kilroy Silk does remind me of David Icke of the early '90's. Not the David Icke of today. David Icke talks some sense these days.
As for the party websites, they are all abysmal by professional industry standards.
3. Stuart Charman
I was interested in going to see the Veritas website until I read that it has 'a glamour pose' of Robert Kilroy-Silk. The very thought has put me right off my lunch.
4. Richard
Hidden Messages?
My screen reader revealed hidden messages in the parties’ navigation bars:
On the Labour site, the separators between links looked like bars but read aloud as “bullets” – rather startling, post Hutton!
On the Lib-Dem site they also read aloud as “bullets.”
My screen reader doesn’t know Latin, so had problems reading “Veritas.” Their two-column layout was also unfriendly. My screen reader then startled me by reading “Support US” (as in USA)!
Accessibility:
The Conservative site offers a choice of font sizes and has good “alt text” in its images and button links. However its fonts are too small and respond badly when increased by the browser.
On the Lib-Dem site, when the font size was increased, the text overflowed from its containers and corrupted the page.
The page structure of the Labour site failed when the font size was enlarged. It also trapped my screen reader in a loop, endlessly repeating: “Tony’s Video Diary” and “Donate Now.”
The file sizes of these sites’ Home Pages were all too large for non-Broadband users. All pages worked well in both Internet Explorer and Firefox with my special adaptive style sheets.