I've come to appreciate Obama's web team's success. The website design is clean, navigation simple and intuitive, and pages are balanced with white space and info. Even more, the tech team mirrors the proactive attention to detail that the more public campaign seeks to promote.
As if to mirror McCain's technical confounditude, the McCain tech team has shown it too can be behind the times, demonstrating the lack of attention to detail which causes the McCain campaign to appear inept, confused, deprecated, and not very user-friendly. I found a cannonical example of this a few hours ago.
As a bit of intro, a partner and I maintain an AOL Instant Messenger bot called ObamaBuddy (he's online 24/7, also in the AOL AIM Bot Gallery). Our way of helping elect Senator Obama in November, the unofficial bot has bits of information on the issues, polls, and a few links, and 'talks' to dozens of potential volunteers every day.
Anyway, while working on some of the ObamaBuddy text, I wanted to add a link to Barack's volunteer page, and just blindly pecked in barackobama.com/volunteer (here). I wasn't certain what the link might be, but it's just good practice to catch these sorts of typed-in URLs, so I just assumed it worked. People type in simple terms after the domain frequently when they are searching for something on a site, and it is a very common bugaboo that has lost many visitor eyeballs and numerous feet on the ground for campaigns.
So I checked Obama's site to be sure, and of course, it forwarded to the exact page I was after. Right to the well-crafted Volunteer greeting, and a form I can fill in.
It cost me no clicks, no scouring search lists, no dead ends. Simple enough, and well done. Most people will never notice this single solution, but it has undoubtedly caught significant volunteers for the campaign that might otherwise have not even bothered. People who may not be very tech saavy. Folks who don't always know how to consult tehgoogle. People who, unlike John McCain, can at least find the address bar.
Would McCain's tech team show itself an anomoly in the McCain campaign? Obama's team handled this one perfectly, and it's a fairly simple solution that takes moments to implement. Surely the McCain tech team could anticipate and solve common problems like the .com/volunteer URL issue, right? Take a look for yourself at johnmccain.com/volunteer.
Not only is it a 404, it's a generic web server error. You've lost all site navigation. Dead End. Get off my cyberlawn.
This folks is but one very simple example of the stark contrast we have between Barack Obama and John McCain. Did either man personally administer or develop their websites? Of course not. But these men are executives. Through them all power, responsibility, and direction flow.
Obama's campaign anticipated a common problem and has a solution in place. McCain's crew didn't even notice it was a problem.
Many cheers to the often overlooked tech team of the Obama Campaign. They have done a tremendous job at the difficult task of creating and successfully maintaining the cyberface of an amazing campaign.