Simplicity Works
We’ve designed and developed a lot of sites. Some of them were pretty complicated, but one of my favorites was the absolute simplest – www.scsenategop.com.
When developing a site, you should keep attractive design in mind, but its not the most important. I see a lot of beautiful sites out there, but their functionality is completely useless. They remind me of nothing more than pretty mail pieces.
You probably know by now that I serve as the Political Director and Communications Director for the SC Senate Republican Caucus. A couple months ago I relaunched the Senate Caucus website and I’ve been tweaking it every few days.
I love this site because of its simplicity. During session, our 27 Senators are pumping out a lot of content in every form – written, video, audio, and image based content. We also tweet from committee meetings and the Senate floor and last year we launched a successful weekly web chat called Senate Time. Not to mention a ton of news stories every day.
When developing the site I kept two audiences in mind – the press and the voters. While I imagined we get a small trickily of uber-informed voters visiting our site, I knew that our site would be better used as a resource for the press. If we target the press correctly, they deliver our message to voters on the radio, on television, and in newspapers.
For example, if we post audio mp3 quotes regarding big legislation on the website, radio stations are likely to pick it up and broadcast it. After all, it saves them a ton of time and manpower and I get much more access to the Senators, making it easier to grab the content.
It ain’t the prettiest design in the entire world, but its one of the most informative and constantly updated sites we’ve ever built. Check out www.scsenategop.com when we go back into session in two weeks. We have a few new cool features we’re about to release. I think you’ll love them.