Just in case you missed it yesterday, the Usability Company revealed the results of the best party political website. The study, which considered usability, accessibility and content of the sites, positioned the Labour website first, followed by the Tory’s, the Liberal Democrats in third, and finally, the Green Party fourth.
The study showed, disappointingly, that all the party websites were a case of ‘style over substance.’ For instance, they found that the Conservative site showed the picture of Tony Blair more often than the one of Michael Howard, which made the site confusing for users. Moreover, the survey found the Liberal Democrat website not well structured and difficult to navigate.
In going to each of these today, I felt that the difference between the sites is actually minimal. They are all simply designed and, with the exemption of Liberal Democrats site, not visually appealing. As regards content all of them practically offer the same information, tend to show the images of rival candidates and feature a similar structure.