Political Parties Fail to Deliver Online
A timely review of the major Irish political parties' websites in the run-up to the European Elections finds that none of them delivers real value to the electorate
— Posted May 31st, 2004 | by Colm McBarron
Conducted by internet consultants iQ Content, the survey found the Labour site to be best of a poor lot, receiving 47 marks out of a possible 85. The Progressive Democrats site was second with 40 points, and Fianna Fail and Fine Gael were tied for third with 38 points.
'None of the sites performed that well,' said Morgan McKeagney, MD of iQ Content. 'There were a lot of basic errors, such as material that was not up to date, or a lack of consistent navigation or search features to help people find the material they're looking for.'
Other problems highlighted included a lack of testing - some sites worked poorly on certain browsers - and poor use of Adobe Acrobat files (.pdfs).
In some respects it seems the sites reflected their organisations. The review finds the Sinn Fein site 'a little bit scary but with some slick implementation', while 'The Progressive Democrats site looks OK at first, but lacks depth and has some outdated ideas.'
A lighter version of the detailed audits iQ Content perform for their clients, the reviews evaluated the sites against 17 criteria around content value, functionality and site design.