RH’s Opinion Sought By National Post

Our own David Saraiva’s opinion was sought in Wednesday, October 14th’s National Post for an article discussing the impact of the web on politicians:

“David Saraiva, a Brantford, Ontario based Web site designer, has studied each party’s official site and is surprised by their lack of sophistication.

Citing a 2007 study that considered how people used the Internet, Mr. Saraiva said the parties are likely to lose voters voters each time they must click to a separate page for the information they seek.

‘Statistically, every time you add a click between a process that you want a Web user to go through you’re going to lose a percentage of the people who you’re trying to get to do it,” he said.

‘On the NDP site, you have to click through four different items to get through to a page deep on their site where you can finally request a sign.’”

As far fetched as it may sound, this issue potentially cost the NDP votes this election. Since users had to click through 4 different pages to request a sign for their yard, some visitors who would have requested a sign, had it been on the homepage of their site like the Liberal and Conservative homepages, likely did not.  This directly resulted in fewer signs on yards and less exposure. Less exposure can result in fewer votes.

Click on the picture above or here to view the whole article.