Whether you live in the United States or not, you know the US presidential election is happening on Tuesday. It’s been in the news for a little over a year now, but it feels a lot longer — and that’s because it has been. The US presidential campaign will clock in at 597 days come election day.
With all the commotion going on, I decided to take a look at something a little less controversial — the candidates’ websites. So, is Trump’s website better than Hillary’s? Well, like most things on the Internet, the title of this post follows Betteridge’s law of headlines… kind of. Similar to the current polls for their presidential race — Hillary’s website wins, but just slightly.
The websites very much mirror the candidates themselves, in that there is no clear-cut winner across the board. There are complexities and nuances in both, with a whole lot of personal preferences and opinion thrown into the mix. Each website wins out over their opposition in some aspects but not others, while coming pretty much dead even elsewhere. Not very satisfying, I know, but bear with me.
If you don’t feel like reading an article, here’s a handy little chart I put together showing what areas I looked at and which website won out in each category:
I know, I know — this makes it look like they tied overall. But as I said earlier, Hillary’s website wins by just a little bit. But I’ll get to that in a minute. Let’s first look at what Trump’s team did better.
Voter Information
Trump’s website does a great job of getting constituents the information they need about where and how to vote. It’s front and center on his website, with a very prominent link at the top that takes you to a GOP website with a simple tool that tells you where you can vote.
On top of that, Trump’s site also has a breakdown by state that gives you more detailed information and has links to check if you’re registered.
Hillary’s team on the other hand really missed the mark with this one because I could find virtually no information about how to vote on her site. And this is important — if a supporter doesn’t know where or how to vote, all other things are pretty much useless. Trump’s website wins hands down in this.
Getting People Involved
With the score 1–0 for Trump, let’s look at another area — asking for support. Not surprisingly, this is something both candidates excel at; after all, campaigning for 597 days can get pricey. So as you might expect, pretty much every page on either website asks you for support one way or another — it very much feels like it’s the main goal of both websites.
Whether it’s a nice little widget asking for a donation, or it’s Trump asking you to join his “Donor Wall”, both candidates are really good at trying to get money from you. And if you can’t make a monetary donation? Don’t worry, both candidates have you covered!
You can join a mailing list, receive text alerts, go to rallies, or volunteer. So if you don’t have the money, you can definitely contribute your attention or time. No matter who you are or which state you live in, there’s a way to help. Both Hillary and Trump’s websites do a really good job of this overall, so I’m calling it a tie.
Information Accessibility
Finally, let’s get to what Hillary’s team did better, and why her website won overall (in my opinion at least). A website’s main job is to deliver information, and arguably, the most important information these candidates need to deliver is why you should vote for them.
Neither of the homepages have a ton of information describing why they are the best candidate and, frankly, Hillary’s has a bit more Trump bashing pieces.
However, her homepage still manages to highlight issues that are important to her campaign better than Trump’s, even though this doesn’t seem to be the focus of either of the two websites.
Where Hillary’s website pulls ahead is when you dig a bit deeper and try to learn more about each candidate’s stance. Both websites have a page for all the issues they plan to address, separated in individual cards. Here, Hillary’s team simply did a better job.
Each card has a one sentence summary so you can get an idea of where she stands, whereas Trump’s has nothing. Hillary’s site also has convenient filters, which combined with the better design of the cards makes it much easier to find the information you’re looking for.
And when you take a closer look at each issue, it’s simply easier to understand. There’s a quote or a one sentence summary at the top of each page along with a video addressing the issue, allowing you to quickly understand her stance even if you don’t want to read a bunch of text.
If you want to learn more, you can scroll farther down to get the details. Here, the text is larger and the information is better organized than on Trump’s site, with subheadings summarizing the more detailed paragraph they precede.
They could have gone with a sans-serif font as the one they use is a bit harsh on the eyes but even with that, Hillary’s website does a much better job overall at presenting information in a clear and digestible way.
Conclusion
So, where does that leave things, is Trump’s website better than Hillary’s? As I said in the beginning of the post — no. At least in my opinion.
While it does a better job of telling people how to vote (which frankly seems like a pretty glaring gap for team Clinton), Hillary’s website is more pleasant to read and the information is more accessible. It’s easier to learn things about her campaign by skimming the site and getting information requires less clicks than on Trumps.
Whether this will have any effect on undecided voters, I have no idea. It was a pretty fun thing to look at regardless and I was actually surprised by some of the results. I’d love to hear what you think.
For a more in-depth look at both sites, with specific positives and negatives highlighted, check out the links below:
Hillary: http://gd32-valstay.flowca.st
Trump: http://q6oe-valstay.flowca.st
And what would a blog post be without some kind of plug. The above reviews were done using Flowcast, a website feedback tool I’m building with my team. You can check it out here: https://getflowcast.com.
Disclaimer: This post is not a look into either candidate’s policies or merits — there are plenty of resources online for that and I’ll leave it for you to find them. We wanted to keep our political views out of this and instead just have some fun.
