Please add your comments, suggestions and critique to this thread. I will be taking care of the TeaParty07.com website after the 16th
This is a fantastic idea. Thank you Nathaniel for taking the lead on this. And thank you very much for bringing this up on the forum. The site looks pretty good as is and I think it would be adequate once some of the suggestions already mentioned here are implemented.
That said, I'm gonna get picky and play devil's advocate....
When I look at the web page with a cynical and critical eye, my first impression is that it's about a really expensive tea party. You may laugh at me for saying this, but the two biggest things I see are "Tea Party '07" and "$12,345,678.90." I scan the rest of the page, see something about a Presidential campaign, then something about the American Revolution and that's about it.
If I'm not particularly political or if I don't have a lot of time on my hands, I stop right there because: I didn't learn why Ron Paul is awesome and fantastic. I still don't know why $12,345,678.90 is such a big deal (especially compared to those other candidates I hear about all the time on CNN). And even if I knew why Ron Paul is awesome and fantastic, I certainly don't feel the urgency to rush out and do anything because the 2008 Presidential election is almost a year away.
Even though it's a given that many people accessing the page will already have a general idea of what's going on and why it's important because they heard it on the news, the page doesn't scream "
New one-day fund raising record! Lots of ordinary, everyday Americans gave their hard-earned cash to Ron Paul because they think that he is the best Republican Presidential candidate, and you can help, too!" and when you get right down to it, that's the message that this page should be sending.
In my mind, this page should be aimed at people who heard a sound bite about the fund raiser or saw a small news segment about it on TV. Like lots of Americans, they're probably politically jaded and/or politically inexperienced and might assume that Ron Paul is just another politician. Even if they were curious enough to find the website, they may be in a hurry or have a short attention span, and once they access the site, they probably have three big questions and they want them answered quickly:
1)
Why is $12,345,678.90 such a big deal? How does that compare to the amount of money raised by Rudy McHuckneyson?
If possible, I think a graphical representation of Ron Paul's 4th quarter fund raising compared to that of the other candidates would be great, maybe just a simple bar graph. It would be a high-impact graphic and catch people's attention quickly.
2)
Who is Ron Paul? What does he believe in? Is he any different from other Presidential candidates?
Try to find a succinct way of explaining his most important policy positions and make them highly visible above the fold. I'm thinking something like "Fiscal conservative, anti-war, pro-defense Presidential candidate with a Congressional voting record that adheres to Constitutional principles." Have a link to his official campaign website with obvious text like "Ron Paul's positions on other important issues." I skipped right over the "sound ideas & principles" link the first time I saw the page, and I didn't even realize that it linked to the official campaign website.
3)
Why does this matter right now? Sure, Ron Paul sounds like a good guy. But the 2008 Presidential election is almost a year away.
Many of us on this forum know that this matters so much right now that we might not remember that the vast majority of people aren't even thinking about Presidential politics yet. This is especially true of people who haven't previously been involved in politics and will be viewing the website out of plain old curiosity. I think the message needs to be something along the lines of "
The Presidential primaries start in XX days - Find out how to register to vote for Ron Paul in the primaries" and give a link to state-specific information about registering for primaries. Again, this should be above the fold. I like the information on the page linked by the "What can you do? Click Here" link but it just doesn't grab my attention. It isn't above the fold and doesn't tell me that the primaries are coming up soon, so I might not even be interested enough to click it.
Of course I'm being ultra-critical here, but we need to keep in mind that people are busy with their lives and may not have time to read the website word-for-word and figure out exactly what's going on. If they don't see a good reason to keep reading within 10 or 20 seconds of staring at the page, they'll probably move on.
I know that my suggestions may require a fundamental overhaul of the page, which may or may not be worth it depending on what else you have on your plate over the next five or six days. It's just my two cents...
