Learn More About Your Campaign Website Visitors
Website analytics is a tool that provides important data concerning the visitors to a website, how they interact with the site, and even details that can help increase traffic. While most website hosting provides an ‘analytics package’, such as AWStats or Webalizer, the reporting and data provided is fairly crude. Google provides a free, professional-quality analytics package that is easily incorporated into almost any website.
For political campaign websites, it’s definitely worth knowing where your site visitors are coming from and what they are doing on your site.
To set up an account for Google Analytics, visit www.google.com/analytics. You will be asked to sign in to your Google Account or to create a new Account if you don’t have one.
Click the ‘Create Website Profile’ link to add a new website. You’ll be given the choice to add a Profile for a new domain or for an existing domain. You’ll usually start with new domain.
Below that, provide Google with the URL of the site you wish to add. You will also have the option of applying cost data from your Adwords account (if you have one set up under the same account).
Click Finish.
Google will provide you with a block of tracking code. Copy this, as you’ll need to copy and paste this HTML code directly into each page of your site, just above the </body> tag.
For Online Candidate websites, go to the Site Setup page and add the code into the ‘Custom Code Insertion’ section.
That’s it! If everything is set up correctly, you’ll be able to see traffic statistics in your reports within an hour.
While Google Analytics is simple to install, the program can perform very deep analysis of traffic patterns and success metrics. For the less experienced user, there are two basic questions that require answers.
1) Where do your Visitors come from?
This is one of the most important type of data to provide insights into your visitors. The ‘Traffic Sources’ category displays the websites and keywords which send traffic to your website. This can be broken down further into:
Direct Traffic: The number of visitors who came to the website by entering a URL into their web browser.
Referring Sites: Referring websites are sites which send visitors to your campaign website. The visitors get referenced from the source website and land on the target website using the link provided. Referring websites can be used to judge the success of social media marketing techniques.
Search Engines: This contains a list of the search engines which were used to send traffic to the site.
Keywords: These are the terms that were searched by visitors that led to them clicking through to the website.
2) What are your visitors doing on the Website?
Analysis of this data enables you to track visitors actions on the website. You can find out what pages were looked at, for how long, and whether they were the first or last pages a visitor saw. The Content category in the left sidebar of Google Analytics provides this data:
Top Content: This contains a list of the most popular content as viewed by visitors.
Top Landing Pages: These list the pages visitors first land on. You can examine the browsing path for each webpage to determine traffic patterns and whether they engage the visitors well.
Top Exit Pages: This contains a list of pages which led visitors to exit the website. Pages with a high exit rate should be examined for improvements to keep the visitor on the site or do perform a set task (such as an email signup or donation).
Site Overlay: The Site Overlay opens a new web page which contains a progress bar over every link. These bars shows the percentage of the overall number of page clicks on that link.
Note that in these reports, the ‘Bounce Rate‘ listed is the percentage of visitors that landed on a particular page and immediately left the site. A high bounce rate indicates that visitors are not finding that particular content engaging.
More advanced uses might want to track how visitors get to a certain page like a volunteer signup form or a donation page. To do that, you will need to create goals and funnels. The Goals category of Google Analytics helps you to set a goal or goal path. By segmenting traffic, you can find out how many visitors completed or did not complete your goals, the overall value of your goals, and what sources of traffic performed best.
For additional information and user tips, visit the Google Analytics blog.
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5 Tips For Creating Effective Campaign Surveys
Politics lives and breathes on voter polls and surveys. For local candidates with limited budgets, there are online survey tools that can gather feedback in order to perfect a campaign’s message and methods. Campaign surveys can be sent to participants in several ways: through a website link, via your email list, or through off-line contact, such as an invitation through campaign brochures and pamphlets.
Online Candidate websites include a built-in poll feature, but for candidates that want to build out detailed surveys, there are a number of free and paid options out there. These include surveymonkey.com, freeonlinesurveys.com and zoomerang.com. A well-structured survey can provide a useful tool to provide insight into what issues are important to voters.
Below are some basic tips to help make your online survey effective and inviting to participants.
Determine your goals
When creating an online survey, define your objectives. What is it that you are trying to learn? What specific data will the survey yield that can help your political campaign? Don’t set up your survey to be all things to all issues. If you want to know what issues are important to your constituents, ask them. If you want to know the specifics of a particular issue, perhaps those questions should be asked in a separate survey.
Keep your survey short
If asking for general feedback, keep your survey short and to the point. Nobody likes getting suckered into a ‘short’ survey only to find after the first five questions they are only one tenth of the way through!
Keep the questions short and tight, so there is no ambiguity on the part of the reader. For example, don’t ask “What do you think of the commercial building moratorium?” Rather, make the question more specific, such as “Do you approve of the commercial building moratorium?”
For somewhat longer surveys or where you are looking for answers from only a particular subset of respondents, consider adding skip logic. This means that you can direct a respondent to a tailored set of questions and prevent readers from answering irrelevant questions. So if you ask on the first question, “Are you a homeowner?”, the answer provided may or may not lead to additional follow-up questions for that respondent.
Make it private
With any survey, it’s important for respondents to know how their replies are handled. Participation and honesty of answers generally increases if responses are completely anonymous. If you do collect personalized information, let the respondents know how their data will be kept and what privacy you provide.
Randomize answers
Some survey systems allow for answer choices to be randomized for each respondent. This method helps reduce bias. The answers also tend to become more statistically relevant. However, do not randomize answers for states or number ranges that are to be listed alphabetically or numerically.
Test, test, test!
Before launching your survey, be sure to thoroughly test. You may want to have a few outsiders take the survey and provide feedback on how clear the questions and answers were. One common problem is in answers where the participant is asked to choose more than one selection. If the answer structure is not set up right, such as using radio buttons rather than check boxes, then users will not be able to answer the questions properly. Be sure to check all permutations of the answers.
Numbers can be skewed
Online survey that are open to all visitors are prone to manipulation. Simply by deleting cookies, a user can answer the same survey over and over. Because of this, online surveys should not take the place of professional polling. It’s best not to publish the final results if you suspect that a poll has been manipulated. Unless you’re running a very simple survey, it’s probably a good idea not to allow results before the participant has taken the survey themselves.
Finally at the completion of a survey, always invite the participants to join your mail list or follow or fan you on Facebook or Twitter, so they can keep following your campaign.
Campaign Website Widgets That Really Add Value
For those who missed them, here are some posts related to cool widgets, gadgets and updates that can be easily added to any political campaign website.
Add a Custom District Map to Your Campaign Website
Here are the steps to take in order to add a nice, interactive political district map to your campaign website.
Generating an Online Signature
Many candidates use the home page of their campaign website to personally address voters or constituents. What kills the illusion of an online ‘letter’ is the lack of a handwritten signature. Here are a few ways to generate a realistic-looking signature for your web pages.
Effectively Using Video for a Local Campaign
Learn a few ways to get the most out of online video for your campaign.
PDF Your Campaign Materials
Save money by having your supporters print their own campaign materials. Make your entire media kit available online for download.
Fundraising with Widgets
Candidates can use widgets in a variety of ways to help get out the word and raise money.
Sell Fundraising Tickets in Advance – Online
In addition to using online donation buttons to accept campaign donation online, create specific buttons to sell tickets to fundraisers or other political campaign events.
Add-ons that create real value for your site should only be used. Weather and date widgets are so 1999, and local news feeds that are not related to your campaign are only distractions that send visitors away from your site.
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Why Local Political Candidates Need Thick Skins
The more public the figure, the bigger the target for attack. And if you are a candidate running for office, then, like it or not, you are considered a public figure.
This means that legally, a candidate can do little against unflattering letters to the editor, misquoted articles, and underhanded brochures containing vicious rumors. What is said can be completely false.
A lie, even.
A candidate can sue for libel, but unless they can prove the statement was both false and malicious, they won’t have a case. Proving malice or a level of carelessness that amounted to maliciousness is a burden of proof that is tough to meet. This is established law based on the United States Supreme Court ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan.
Unflattering or untrue statements can make it hard for a candidate to keep his or her cool. That’s why a thick skin is important, because lashing out will either justify the attacks or just make the candidate look bad. Legitimate issues should be confronted, but a candidate should not feel the need to address every crank out there. The same holds true for online activities.
It seems like the smaller the district, the more personal and nastier the politics. If a candidate can avoid the sleaze, they will not only hold the moral high ground, but they will also be better able to focus on the real objective: winning the election.
And what if it’s legitimate criticism that you get called out for? Take constructive criticism and use it as an opportunity for growth.
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Do Candidate Endorsements Matter?
Political candidates can increase name recognition and establish credibility and by winning endorsements. While the value of candidate endorsements in gaining votes is debatable, some endorsements can bring particular benefits.
For example, local unions, community groups, or political parties that have not put up a candidate may choose endorse someone else who is running. Sometimes an organization will approach a candidate, but often a candidate will need to seek out endorsements.
Most organizations will have a specific process to follow. A candidate may need to write out a questionnaire about the issues related to the organization in order to be considered for an election endorsement.
Take the initiative to contact these organizations early in the race. A candidate should start with a letter explaining who they are, along with reasons why their positions on the relevant issues make them someone the organization should endorse. Why should an organization endorse you? Make sure they know the reasons why supporting you is in their best interest. Be prepared to follow up with personal phone calls.
Some organization endorsements can be very valuable, as they can carry with them additional campaign support, including contributions, phone banks, volunteers, GOTV efforts and more.
Even individuals can make endorsements. For state or national campaigns, celebrities sometimes go public with whom they support.
For judicial candidates, in particular, the backing from professional organizations can be helpful.
On a local level, personal endorsements often come in the form of letters to the local newspaper. It’s likely an endorsement from well-known local citizens can carry more weight with local voters than the backing by some big-name, out-of-town celebrity.
Endorsements from local newspapers can also be influential to voters. If an Editorial Board invites local candidates for an interview, they should be aware of issues that the board might choose to cover. A candidate should be ready to clearly and succinctly state their positions. Even if a candidate does not win a newspaper’s endorsement in one election cycle, he or she may get that endorsement the next time around.
Of course, an election can be won without a single endorsement. Political endorsements are not considered a sure sign of success. But in a tight race, the financial and organizational help that comes with one can make all the difference.
How to ask for a political endorsement
If you’re looking to secure your own political endorsements, start by pinpointing the groups or people who could really give your campaign a boost. Think about who should support you, considering your vision and your positions on the issues. Then, work on a message for each of them. You’ll need to show exactly why you deserve their endorsement. Tell them what you plan to do when elected. But when asking for an endorsement, make sure to drive home how backing your candidacy aligns with their beliefs and goals.
Don’t just sit back and wait for endorsements to roll in. Once you know who to contact, don’t be shy about reaching out. A letter, a call, or even a face-to-face chat can show that you’re serious. Make a connection and show that together you can work towards something bigger.
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Is Your Campaign Website Domain Really Yours?
One of the most important questions to ask when having any website created is ‘Will my website have a stand-alone domain?’ Note that the question refers to the website domain’s hosting, not the domain name itself. Anyone can have domain name – it’s where that name points to that counts and makes a difference in how much traffic can be generated.
Many people assume that when someone creates a website for them, that website is a stand-alone web presence. Unfortunately, many cut-rate web developers and bargain site builders provide a ‘website’, but the site itself might not be a stand-alone domain. Instead, your site is actually just a shared part of another, larger site.
So instead of joecandidate.com, you end up being hosted on a big, tacky URL or subdomain like sitehosting.com/joecandidate or joecandidate.sitehosting.com. These URLs are hard to type, look bad on campaign literature and can be impossible to fit on campaign signage.
One way to get around the tacky URL is to have your campaign domain name (joecandidate.com) point directly to that specific page (sitehosting.com/joecandidate). That way, when someone types ‘joecandidate.com’, they automatically go to the ‘sitehosting.com/joecandidate’ page. Sometimes this method is combined with page framing, so a visitor never sees real URL. In this case, when someone types in the URL, it goes to a page that looks like a right domain (joecandidate.com), but it’s really just a framed-in page for www.sitehosting.com/joecandidate.
How can you tell if a web page is framed? One way is that the URL link in the browser will never change as you navigate through the site.
Framed in websites are harder for search engines to index. Because these pages are essentially buried within the larger domain, they may also have a harder time ranking for relevant searches.
Another problem with framed domains is that is very hard for the average visitor to bookmark anything other than an original framed page. When bookmarking a page on a framed site, visitors end up bookmarking the entire frameset. When they return later using the bookmark, they are simply returned to the original frameset. Then they have to find the page they really wanted all over again…
This article is a little more technical than usual, but the issue of political domains and hosting comes up once in a while. It’s important to know what you’re getting when you pay for a web service.
Related: 5 Things To Know About Your Campaign’s Domain Name
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