Why the Tories Have Made A Right Old Pickle of MyConservatives.com

Aside from the fact that the very first thing you see on the home page is braced-up social media virgin Eric Pickles, there are a number of things that annoy me about the much-vaunted new Conservatives website, MyConservatives.com.

I’ll take them in turn.

• If this is a site intended to encourage donating, why is the donation page so darned hard to find? Not only do you have to register first, but you then have to dig around a couple of pages before finally you’re met with a donate facility, hidden away on a specific campaign page. And where are the signposts pointing you there?
• If you’re going to have a bold, white-on-colour statement on the home page, make it a good one. “THERE ARE LOTS OF THINGS YOU CAN DO. VOTING IS JUST ONE OF THEM.” is not a good one. In fact I can barely get halfway through without suddenly inhabiting the voice of John Major.
• The introductory copywriting manages to say in several paragraphs what should have been said in one or two. “And you can learn more about the site by watching the video on the right” is hardly necessary since the said video takes up most of the home page and includes the headline “Eric Pickles introduces MyConservatives.com”. The copy needed to be punchier, clearer and simply more memorable. Make it seem like a political revolution.
• I’d been on the site about three times before actually discovering the “Register” button in the bottom right-hand corner. As you can’t really do anything before you register – and there is only one other tiny call to action in the top corner – this is decidedly bad practice.
• The Dashboard is a nice idea, but needs work. Upon logging in today I was informed that I’d made 23 telephone calls so far. That was correct in every way apart from the 23 bit.
• Hurray! I can participate! But oh dear, all the activities already seem to have happened. Has nobody been charged with maintaining this thing?
• Parts of the site go a bit haywire in Chrome, my browser.
• Ask Sam. Silly question, but who’s Sam? (You have to delve beyond the registration wall for this one).
• I’m sold! I want to join the Tory Party! OK fine, just follow the ugly long URL here and… it’s that man again. Nice.

I appreciate that the site is in Beta stage, but for such a high-profile launch, it appears to have been handled very sloppily (it crashed straightaway on launch day last Friday).

My.BarackObama it ain’t, and for a leader who had appeared to be sold on the potential of the internet, a worrying disappointment.