If you’ve visited the Liberal Democrat party website in the last 24 hours, you’ll have noticed quite a dramatic change. Here, David Loxton, the party’s director of marketing, fundraising and members’ services explains the thinking behind the new site, and previews some of the other exciting new changes emerging within the party’s web strategy.
The new Liberal Democrat web strategy has been launched with a redesigned libdems.org.uk as its first stage. The new version is much more focused on setting out what the Liberal Democrats stand for, who we are and what visitors to the site can do to help.
Over the summer the party surveyed users and conducted focus groups to find out opinions on the old site and want people expected to find on the main Liberal Democrat website. The research backed up the view that the party was trying achieve too many different tasks on the old site which made it very busy. The multitude of options distracted some users from finding what they wanted.
The new strategy splits the party’s internet presence across three websites, so that each can deliver a specific need, rather than trying to achieve everything in one place. The new libdems.org.uk has less content than the old version, but it organised in a much more user-driven way than before. The content that has gone is the internal, member-orientated material and this will reappear later on the other two sites.
The site makes use of the Party’s extended colour palette which was rolled out in the Euro-election campaign and at conference. This adds new colours to the existing black and gold.
The next stage to be released will be a new social action network site called ACT (previewed here on Lib Dem Voice) which should be ready in a couple of weeks. It will be open to all Liberal Democrat supporters, members and non-members. Users will be able to join groups, organise events, watch videos, talk politics and join in campaigns. The aim of the site is to mobilize an online community that reaches beyond the boundaries of formal party membership.
The final stage is a completely new members’ site. This will replace the existing members’-only page, and will give members access to party news, resources, training and information about how the party works. It will incorporate the material currently available through the Party’s extranet. The aim is to provide a unified on-line resource centre for members.
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38 Comments
The new site looks great. I’m really looking forward to seeing what Act has to offer as well.
Still too much teal.
Great, a much needed revamp. Compliments to all concerned. I am sure that we can come to love turquoise…
It’s a huge, huge improvement on the old site. Well done!
If I were to cavil I’d say there’s not enough meaningful copy once you start drilling down into the “What we stand for” items. There’s about a paragraph of very broad platitudes for each item and then links to the chunky, indigestible policy papers. Some intermediate text would be good, summarising the key points of current policy. It’s such a common complaint that people “don’t know what we stand for”. I’d really love for people to click on “tax” and see a line which simply says “The Liberal Democrat’s proposal is to raise the personal tax allowance to £10,000. The benefits are blah. See our policy paper for how this could work and how it might be paid for.”
LDV caught me out slightly by putting the above straight up as an article, so I want to add a namecheck to Cat Turner, Sam Lockwood, David Angell and our partners at Being Digital for doing the work to get the new site up and running.
Can we please have the Extranet material back sooner rather than later? Yes, it was confusing and difficult to navigate sometimes so I welcome any improvement but I miss it already!
The extranet is still there – just the link which has gone
Would prefer “Fairness”, “Equality of Opportunity” or “Equity” to just “Equality”. We are not all equal, and any party that celebrates diversity should recognise that.
To Clarify:
eq·ui·ty (kw-t)
n. pl. eq·ui·ties
1. The state, quality, or ideal of being just, impartial, and fair.
2. Something that is just, impartial, and fair.
e·qual (kwl)
adj.
1. Having the same quantity, measure, or value as another.
2. Mathematics Being the same or identical to in value.
3.
a. Having the same privileges, status, or rights: equal before the law.
b. Being the same for all members of a group: gave every player an equal chance to win.
4.
a. Having the requisite qualities, such as strength or ability, for a task or situation: “Elizabeth found herself quite equal to the scene” (Jane Austen).
b. Adequate in extent, amount, or degree.
5. Impartial; just; equitable.
6. Tranquil; equable.
7. Showing or having no variance in proportion, structure, or appearance.
Equality has too many illiberal connotations; equity is more nuanced.
If hte Extranet is still there but the link isn’t, how do I find it? My favourites link doesn’t work any more. (ldextranet.haecceitas.com) .
Kay
The Extranet link is: extranet.libdems.org.uk
Maybe I’m getting old, but I don’t think light grey text on a white background is the easiest thing to read.
Alix – The pocket guide to policies has copy that is neither too vague or too long. I think it would be good to use the material from that on different sections of the site, rather than expect people to open it as a PDF.
Hmm, I still can’t find specific policy motions easily. I’m told that we had one on software patents in 2005. Since that’s not mainstream enough to be covered in one of the vague overviews, I have no idea what it said or what the votes on it were. A search box on the policy motions page would be ideal.
I also can’t find whether a Liberal Democrat government would hold a referendum on whether or not the UK would be in the EU. It was in our European manifesto in June, but all I can find on the site now is that we’ve “argued for it” in the past, and that if there is a referendum it should be on membership of the EU and not the Lisbon Treaty.
Finally, the links to news stories still look bloody awful, with those UUID things on the end. It’s embarrassing to e-mail links like that around – perhaps we could have an automatic short link thing like libdems.org.uk/news/298 which redirects? Would probably be good for the Twits too.
In terms of layout, the site doesn’t play well with different sized browser windows or font sizes, which is bad for accessibility. The layout’s pretty poor in a text browser / screen reader, and the front page is too cluttered.
I’m not convinced that the new site is an improvement on the old.
The grey text on white is quite hard to read. I have good eyesight for colour, but a friend commented to me that they found it hard to spot what was blue and what was grey, so perhaps making the grey bits black would help with distinguishing what’s what?
Layout is more modern. There’s a bit too much teal, but at least the ghastly neon yellow is gone. I can now read the site without going blind.
Overall, an improvement, and it looks reasonable. But, I echo Dave’s point about browser compatibility, text sizes, etc–I’m using Firefox on Ubuntu, which is a standards compliant browser, and the ‘News’ link is hidden as a second line behind the banner, I only realised it was there when I moved my mouse. It does show on Opera in Ubuntu, and in Fx on Windows, but it needs to be able to cope with non-standard screen sizes and different font preferences; many of the side boxes also have text flowing out from them on my screen.
However, my biggest hate is partially linked to Alix’s point about platitudes followed by policy docs, and the main point about that is that they’re .DOCs.
Microsoft’s proprietary Word Doc format is non-standard, and is harder for many people to read and download. In addition, it is a non-web native format that will trigger varying behaviour depending on user settings and software installed (I’ve never had a copy of Word on a PC I myself owned for example), and crucially, is not labelled as such. If a link goes to something other than another web page, it must clearly state this.
Given that, the file names are also problematic (spaces don’t always parse well and links can’t be easily copied if you want to email it to someone).
Can we please amend the initial copy to reflect the style of the Pocket Guide, and ensure that there’s an intermediate summary as part of the webpage, with a full downloadable copy in a proper format. .PDFs would be ideal for this (it’s what Portable Document Format was designed for)–for presentation reasons, having downloadable documents with party branding in a very easily edited form isn’t a good plan anyway, regardless of the other criticisms.
Like I said, overall impressive, but the faults I’ve found are important, for a large variety of reasons, especially usability, accessibility and search presence.
David, I don’t have your email address anymore, mine is matbowles[at]gmail[dot]com, if you want screenshots or a more detailed analysis of specific problems I’m very happy to help, most of the problems are fairly easy to fix but will make a significant difference.
@ Dave Page
It’s an improvement FULLSTOP. But of course, more can be done!
But you liked the old one?
Ooo-kay. But do all users look and think like you?
rantersparadise, I’m not sure how you go from to assuming I liked the old one.
I’m sure not all users think like me. But one of the claimed improvements of the new site is to make it easier for people to learn what the Lib Dems stand for – I’ve given a couple of examples where it’s no easier on the new site than on the old, based on Lib Dem policy I’ve actually been asked about by voters.
Herbert Brown:
Like me, you probably are getting old, but that’s no excuse for low-contrast web typography. Darker text, please, Mr Loxton.
Dave Page:
OT: I can’t find anything relevant in 2005, but Spring Conference 2003 debated Policy Paper 54 “Making IT Work” which included only a passing reference to software patents. The accompanying policy motion was even more oblique: “Conference in particular welcomes the Paper’s proposals to … reconcile the interests of the digital producer and the digital consumer while maintaining a commitment to a well-regulated free market by … supporting continued widespread innovation by resisting the wider application of patents in this area.”
Last time the content was rubbish but the colour was ok now the content and layout is better but the style and colour sucks – no coordination at all
Paul, did you find that information from Spring Conference 2003 by looking on the new site? And if so, how?
Er, no. I found that information because I have:
(a) A copy of every Conference Report and Policy Paper for the past 15 years.
(b) No life.
Well a revamp was overdue, but frankly, this attempt isn’t very good. Try for instance finding the PPC for your area
by scrolling though 4 at a time in alpabetical order. The policy stuff goes from brief to tedious with no middle ground (as others have noted) The volunteering/supporter section is too long winded.
I am beginning to think that the party is incapable of producing a clear, concise explanation of what we stand for, as certain key people don’t seem to know.
Is it just me or are photos misisng for some MEPs ?
I’m not sure that “it’s quite difficult to locate ancient policy papers” is a very good criticism. How many people go to political party websites looking for these things?
People go to political party websites looking for policies on issues, Croslandist. It doesn’t matter how ancient the policy is, but people should be able to find them.
Well, it looks pretty enough but I am deeply disapppointed at the huge snub given once again to councillors.
No-one would think that we are a major player in local government. No mention of the many places where we are actually in government (unlike Westminster). If you click on ‘Get involved’ you can find out how to be a parliamentary candidate but not a council candidate.
Not a single councillor is referred to anywhere (unless they have gone on to become MPs or peers). Even the ‘In your area’ section gives the local MP, if a Lib Dem, but makes no mention of the local council where we control it.
In fact, you would think that government stopped at regional/state level.
Now I thought all that had been talked through with the last revision of the website, and some way had been found to gather and collate the relevant information. WriteToThem already works at council level, so why can’t we?
@ Dave Page
Fair enough. I felt you started with a negative.
So what did you hate about the old? But like about the old? And than felt that there was a middle ground to cater for ‘ALL’?
I
@ Dave Page
“People go to political party websites looking for policies on issues,”
But how do they find that information? How does it look?
How user friendly is it?
Within a couple of weeks after joining the Green Party I found out simply what the main policies were from the website, who the councillors were, who the candidates were…in fact so much info was available quickly I stayed on the site for a couple of hours. Some of the links on the old LD site were dead, I could never find my way to a specific policy (I had no idea Lib Dems had supported academies otherwise would have left ages ago) – in fact it was the most cluttered useless waste of space.
You have gone to the other extreme and created a vacuous nonsense with even less info on it –
with of course pleases me no end 🙂
Aside from my (major) reservations about the colour scheme we also seem to have airbrushed another chunk of policy papers from existence as only 6 show up on the relevant page – as opposed to the greater number actually passed by conference.
The website is changing the image of the party to reflect Britain and that’s a very positive thing. Set next to that, quibbles about the colour scheme seem fairly minor
The docs should all be PDFs and they will be soon. We are taking a look at the body-text contrast issue. I think that the policy content is bound to evolve, particularly as we are now in the run-up period to the general election. There is actually more on-the-page policy content (as opposed to downloads) than there was on the old site. The new site also has more analytical tools, so we can see how users respond to, or find their way around, the various sections.
As I said in my article, this launch is not the end of the process of developing the Liberal Democrat presence on the web.
Thanks for the feedback here and elsewhere, which we do read avidly!
@ Jo
Wow and you think the Green Party has intelligent policies that could really govern the UK? I’m going to have to check that site again as it was as bad as the BNP site when it came to utter unrealistic make believe information.
It looks good, but I suppose a bit too much pale blue (or whatever). Content great and bang up to date, with some info about energy matters e.g. the Councils who have adopted the 10:10 target
Oh dear, just tried submitting some feedback on the website itself at https://www.libdems.org.uk/contact.aspx but the form doesn’t work in either of my browsers (Konqueror and Iceweasel) – both say “This field is required” under the (filled-in) “Enter your Comments” box.
Any idea how to submit feedback without using the feedback form?
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