Among the pages of the Reform Party visited by non-repeat users (i.e. pages other than the chat rooms), the issues section, titled "Principles of Reform" was far and away the most popular feature of the site. For every four hits on the front page of the site, there was one hit on the index of the Principles of Reform section. Within that section users found nine links to platform statements comprising the Principles of Reform. Of the over 300 pages that comprise the Reform Party site, each of these pages was among the top 25. This indicates that a great number of the visitors to the Reform Party site were seeking information about the party, what it was all about, what it stands for, and how it would govern. While six of the nine position statements concerned cleaning up government, ethics and restricting lobbying -- the major goals of the Reform Party -- the most popular issue pages concerned a balanced budget, the tax system, and Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The average user of the principles section visited three of the nine pages in one visit.
The popularity of this section of the site indicates that voters are going beyond the traditional media and using Internet resources to seek out first-hand, unfiltered information about candidates and issues. This means that candidate and party web sites have the potential to be a very potent medium of conveying information to voters, free of the filtering effect of the media, and in a manner which to many appears more credible than television advertising. Because the information in the Principles of Reform section remained static throughout the campaign, it is likely that most users only looked at the information once or twice during the election season. Thus, the fact that the Principles of Reform section received a consistently greater amount of traffic than a frequently updated sections such as In the News deserves serious notice. Principles of Reform was not only more popular, but it relied on first-time users to gain such popularity. This is where voters seeking to learn more about the Reform Party turned, in greater numbers than to any other section.
In many ways the Reform Party failed to take full advantage of the great popularity of this section of the site. While the Principles section provided a good overview of the party's key issues, its bulleted list format failed to provide the depth of information that the web is designed to convey, and which many users have come to expect. Because this section was the primary draw on the site for those seeking more information about the party, it seems a natural place to include position papers of the candidates, the party platform and detailed information about issues high on the party's agenda. By failing to include a more thorough introduction to its core beliefs and initiatives in this section of its web site, the Reform Party robbed itself of valuable exposure, because such information is not often provided by the traditional media, yet many voters were searching for it on-line.
While many viewers may have tuned out Ross Perot's half-hour infomercials, his style of presentation seems to be perfectly adapted for the web: charts, graphs and a steady stream of statistics and plans. Unfortunately, these data were not made available on the Reform Party site. This is surprising because the web provides the perfect medium for visual displays of detailed information. Voters who are actually interested in this information would benefit greatly from having it on-line, to browse and fully analyze at their own convenience, rather than crammed into a half-hour of over-priced television.
The web can also act as a powerful feedback mechanism for the Reform Party. In its presentation of the Principles of Reform, the party listed "High Ethical Standards for the White House and Congress" as its top priority. However, voters were more interested in other issues (see Figure 6). The most visited of the Principles of Reform was the initiative to balance the budget, followed closely by the plan for a new tax system and information about the party's stand on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The remaining six Principles, focusing on the Reform Party's core issues of ethics, term limits, campaign finance and lobbying, did not garner as much attention. The section outlining the party's idea for lobbying restrictions received only 59 percent of the number of hits as the page about balancing the budget. This pattern indicates that voters, or at least those coming on-line for political information, remain more concerned with monetary issues than they do with political reform in Washington, which bodes poorly for the current focus of the Reform Party.
The party could have utilized this information to better focus its on-line campaign strategy, adding depth of content to the site and honing its presentation toward the known tendencies of the voters who visited its web site. Because the Principles of Reform section was the most visited section of the site, and users were clearly looking for more information on the party's position on key issues, a more concerted effort to fully explain the party's positions could have furthered its goals and its ability to inform and influence through this medium in ways that the party is not able to through the filter of the traditional media.