BlueBroward.org

…outdated. The same could be said for most Websites, political or not. But when I do a campaign Web site, I want people to come away with the impression that there’s a lot going on with the campaign, momentum is building, this is a campaign worth getting involved with or supporting financially.

Conversely, if you’re not careful, you can present the impression that there’s not much going on with this campaign and it’s not worth paying attention to. If a visitor to your Web site clicks on a link that says “News” and sees only a few press releases that are several months old, what kind of message are you sending? Better not to have a News page if you can’t commit to keeping it current.

That’s why I always include a feature for listing current campaign events, and I have the events automatically expire off the Web site when the event date is past. I don’t want people coming to the Web site and seeing an invitation for a fundraiser from two months ago. I want them to see something new.

Often, Web sites become outdated because it’s too difficult to get new information posted. Typically, the bottleneck is a webmaster who maintains the site manually and is the only one who has access to the software and the password to make updates. But it shouldn’t be that hard!

A good Webmaster ought to be able to provide a way for other members of the campaign to post routine updates, such as press releases and event notices themselves. And they shouldn’t have to be technical geniuses to do it — anyone with the right password should be able to update the campaign Web site, and doing it should be no harder than sending an email.

So make sure it’s easy to update your Web site, and then keep it up to date.