An effective website gets your message across while allowing you to complete transactions such as collecting money, signing up newsletter subscribers, and processing volunteers. Let's compare the Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain websites to see how the two leading presidential contenders are using their online headquarters.

For Sen. Obama, an appealing photo of the Senator surrounded by his family greets visitors on a splash page, which invites everyone to sign up for an email newsletter (and eventual donation solicitations). The Home page then previews videos of Sen. Obama's campaign highlights, such as the speech in Berlin, and provides tools for making donations, volunteering, and getting involved by state.

In the right column, a very effective photo of Sen. Hillary Clinton invites her supporters to become members of the Obama team. Other website features allow visitors to find local events, read news stories, fact-check McCain assertions, purchase campaign items, and participate in election protection activities. Overall, the campaign message of "hope" is well presented on this website.

Although Sen. Obama's current efforts have surpassed all online candidate fundraising records to date, Sen. John McCain's 2000 campaign provided one of the high points in the history of online campaigning, when he raised millions of dollars online in the hours following his surprise victory over George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary.

Sen. McCain's 2008 website features a photo in the banner with the top of his head chopped off. It is a curious image, given that it reduces him in stature and may remind visitors about the frequent factual mistakes that have prompted critics to question his presence of mind.

On the other hand, McCain's contribution, volunteering, and other participation tools are very effective and well displayed. A tool to allow you to choose whether you want a version of the website targeted to a supporter, undecided voter, or unregistered voter is also very innovative and effective (especially when choosing "unregistered voter" brings a "register to vote" graphic into view).

Overall, both sides are represented by top website teams and have excellent fulfillment tools. Obama's site is more effective as a persuasion tool, however, because it is less busy, more like an objective news site, and better at reinforcing his "hope" theme. The McCain campaign's lack of a coherent campaign message is mirrored in the unfocused, shopping mall-type clutter on the home page of their site.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been getting hit in the media lately for his messy divorces, his flip-flops on immigration, and his supposed long hours at Ground Zero after 9-11. Like a strong campaigner, however, he is staying on message and, in fact, has a very strong message indeed.

Rudy's "Twelve Commitments: Vision and Principles for the Road Ahead" is a well-packaged platform that has a quasi-Biblical feel to its title and all the pizzaz of a Madison Avenue marketing blitz. Hear the video, sign the Pledge, read all about it!

Today's tip is a reminder that the best campaigns will have offline-online synergy that makes both efforts stronger. Rudy is shown on his website hawking his 12 Commitments at an offline rally, and his offline materials push people to his website. He knows that he must dig himself out of the negative publicity he has been receiving of late, and this latest marketing strategy is a good way to do it.

Former Republican Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's website has a very strong message on his splash page in the wake of his win in the Iowa GOP Straw Poll last weekend: "Build the Momentum!" A video of the Straw Poll audience and the Romney speech acknowledging his victory play as soon as you come to the site, which definitely helps the momentum to build.

Once inside the site, state-of-the-art tools and features remind us that this is a family man. Magazine articles, YouTube videos and FaceBook links tell us about his wife, his five sons, and the decisive impact they had in galvanizing voters for the straw poll.

The word on the ground in Iowa last weekend was that Romney had money to spend and a disciplined campaign that got the voters out to the polls. His website reflects this, and shows that he will be a strong contender for the GOP nomination.

Go to Sen. Obama's home page, and maps of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada are featured prominently. Click on the New Hampshire page, and you will see that the New Hampshire field office is very busy with activities to promote the Obama candidacy.

Today's tip is to make sure that the real estate on your home page is carefully apportioned so that you can direct people to the things that you think are important. There is a link to "States" on the top nav bar that can also lead you to the New Hampshire page, but someone in the campaign has made a strategic decision that they must show people from the early voting states that Sen. Obama cares about them. Volunteers who want to help out also get an idea that there are lots of good things happening.

New York Senator Hillary Clinton is reaching out to younger voters with her Youth Opportunity Agenda. Read it carefully, however, and you will see that she also is targeting within the youth demographic. While jobs and economic opprtunities are important to all youth, women and racial minorities will be especially impacted by the non-discrimination, child support, and ex-offender proposals that are described here.

The tip that we can distill today from Senator Clinton's site is that, if you have the staff to do proper research, writing and vetting, getting your proposals out there as early as possible is a good way to show that you are a substantive candidate. Hillary must move out of the shadow of her husband, even though she is a second-term United States Senator, so showing substantive proposals on her website are definitely a good campaign tactic

Sam Brownback, conservative Republican senator from Kansas, has a wonderful picture of the White House front and center on his presidential campaign website. Talk about keeping your eye on the prize. When you come to his site, there is no mistaking where he plans to be in 2009.

He also understands what it takes to win the primary in his party. Three words are bolded and right in your face as you come to his home page: "Principled. Conservative. Republican." If none of the other better-known but less-conservative candidates catches on with GOP voters, Brownback may win the Republican primary.

While some Republicans have been slow to slice and dice the electorate based on racial and ethnic backgrounds, Sen. Brownback takes a clue from the Democrats and not only mentions his ethnic-based coalitions, but also invites them to sign up for Team Brownback. The groups you can join if you go to this site include: African Americans, Asian Americans, Catholics, Family Faith Values, Farmers and Agriculture, Hispanics, Jewish Americans, Sportsmen and Gun Owners, Taxpayers, and Veterans.

Joe Biden, Delaware's Democratic Senator, chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has the credentials and look of a presidential contender. His website conveys these facts very well, with photos and headlines that reinforce the impression that this man has the gravitas to run our ship of state.

Understanding full well that the left side of his party will have the strongest voice in the primaries, the Biden site features policy initiaitives such as "Will You Take A Stand on Iraq," "Stop the Escalation," and "Joe Biden's Energy Security Plan."

Each of these policy initiatives is fleshed out on a page with a few paragraphs of detail and then an invitation to give your name, email address and zip code to receive more information from the campaign. This is excellent use of placement techniques so that when your impulse is to support this man, the tools to sign up are right at hand.

YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, and FaceBook links are also right there on the issue pages, allowing younger voters who agree with Biden to jump right off the issue page to tell their youthful colleagues that Biden is their man.

Former Republican Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's website has an effective quote from the candidate front and center. Highlighting the fact that he married and stayed married to his childhood sweetheart while all of his Republican rivals have had multiple marriages and messy divorces, Romney's site says, "America cannot continue to lead the family of nations around the world if we suffer the collapse of the family here at home."

Right under the quote is a tribute to Ann Romney, the candidate's wife. In a beautifully-worded essay accompanied by well-optimized photos, Romney describes how they met in elementary school, dated in high school, waited for each other as he did his college and missionary work, and then married as soon as he came home. Truly an inspirational, storybook romance, especially in a pool of candidates where scandal is the norm.

Moving beyond strong messaging, Romney's site has state-of-the-art tools and features. YouTube and FaceBook links are easy to find. Videos, recruitment tools, and donation tools are easy to use and not overpowering. The overall message is of a candidate who is on top of his campaign and his life.

Illinois Senator Barack Obama's website is well worth a long look. Lots of good features here, including his online tools, ability to personalize the site, and strong message development.

Today's tip, however, can be summarized this way: make sure your logo is developed by someone who understands both online and offline messaging. The Obama logo, a blue "O" with red lines across it that conjures up a rising sun, is perfectly conceived and executed. It captures the best of Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" and the usual "time for a change" concepts, but does so with a futuristic flourish that is breathtaking in its simplicity and artistry.

Another benefit of the logo is that it is simple enough to work well both online, at 72 dots per inch, and offline on a piece of campaign literature at 300 or 600 dpi. Many logos designed by offline designers look like crushed spiders when they go online. Too much detail and too many words cannot be reduced easily to 72 dpi.

Sen. Obama could be our first African American president. The first impression from his website gives him a good start.

The Exploratory Committee website of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has a lot of good features. It is great on messaging. The key message is "Help Rudy start strong." and a big red Contribute button is right in front. Tools to help you sign up for his newsletter are also hard to miss.

The biggest tip we can get from the Giuliani website, however, is related to its name: JoinRudy2008.com. If you have a name that is hard to spell, be sure to get a URL (website address) that is memorable. A few years back we worked with Colorado State Senator Stan Matsunaka. We got him the URL "Stan2002." When we worked for Rep. Dick Gephardt, we purchased extra URLs so that if you misspelled his last name in his presidential website URL, you still would be re-directed to the right place.

Don't expect anyone to be able to spell your name right. And if there are common misspellings of your name, purchase those as well, and have them re-directed to the right place.

New York Senator Hillary Clinton is in full online campaign mode already, and the general election in 2008 is 21 months away. Her site is chock full of video, press releases, pictures, and things candidates don't usually put online until much later in the campaign. The reason for this is that, as a female candidate who, despite her own immense achievements, must run in the shadow of a spouse who was a two-term president, Senator Clinton has a big job to define herself and make the case for why she deserves the job.

The tip that we can distill from Senator Clinton's site is that, while most websites will evolve (see our January 12 discussion of the McCain website), if your campaign's strategy calls for something else, then by all means do it. Sen. Clinton was successful in launching a "listening tour" when she first ran for New York's Senate seat in 2000, so she has decided to do it again as she starts her campaigning around the nation. There are so many Republicans (and even some Democrats) attacking her already, so she has had to vaccinate herself with a powerful biography section, a website that looks like it is being run by a winner, and a layout that reminds voters of what they saw the last time they were voting for a president.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has written a book, appeared on major media outlets such as "The Daily Show With John Stewart," and done his best to mainstream himself and overcome a name recognition deficit. His website helps him out in this regard, because there is a jaunty, easy-going feel to the pictures and layout. While he himself is a seminarian who will probably have an easier time appealing to the right wing of the GOP than some more liberal candidates such as Rudy Giuliani, Huckabee's website also helps him keep his options open if he should have to appeal to Democrats after winning the GOP primary.

While the "Meet Mike Huckabee" and "Quick Notes About Mike Huckabee" features on the Home page are great for generating interest about the candidate, this week's tip focuses on a feature that is all too prevalent on websites all over the internet: the inability to change font size on the site. Industry research has proven that many website visitors, including younger visitors, have problems reading small text. While many of us have gotten use to this, why make us suffer? Including fonts that can be changed in size and making sure to follow the standards of Section 508 and other website accessibility rules will show you to be a candidate who cares about the public.

Not every website needs a splash page. In fact, we usually recommend against them. But when you have a family as compelling as the Edwards family, you can create a warm feeling for the candidate with just one image. As the campaign progresses, the splash page will probably come down, but at this stage of the campaign, when people are still trying to get to know the former Senator from North Carolina and Vice Presidential candidate, the splash page works well.

As for the website itself, it is definitely worth a few minutes just to peruse its many features. The strong message of support for universal healthcare, anti-war petition, links to many internet-based resources, and online town hall events are all worthy of emulation. But the tip for the week is based on the photo of a supporter named Sonia from Tucson, Arizona, whose testimonial graces the lower left column.

Every candidate starts out with a credibility problem. Who are you, and why do you deserve my vote? When Sen. Edwards introduces ordinary folks who say good things about him, I am more convinced that he is worth a second look. The credibility of Sonia and the other testimonial-makers makes Edwards himself more credible.

It takes time and effort to get testimonials and good pictures of the testimonial-giver, but every one is worth its weight in gold. Get started on finding testimonial-givers as soon as your campaign gets underway.

Senator McCain is an old pro on the web. In fact, his pathbreaking online campaign in 2000 raised so much money after his New Hampshire primary victory that his "McCain Moment" put online fundraising on the political map.

This time around, the Arizona Senator has a stark black-and-white exploratory committee website that is somber but striking. Well-optimized photos of the Senator in a variety of moods rotate so that you see a new one each time you come to the Home page.

The tip for this week is to remember that any campaign website must evolve during the course of a campaign. McCain's current site is optimized for collecting information and money, sharing his bio, and making him look like he is a serious candidate. The intended audience is the press, political power brokers, potential donors, and the other presidential candidates. Later, his site will evolve to feature news and issues for the public, and then, as the primary approaches, comparisons with his GOP rivals will be front and center.

If he gets into the general election, the process will repeat, with his issues scrubbed to fit a more middle of the road audience and his news releases aimed all across the political spectrum. By October 2008, he will be focusing on comparisons with his Democratic rival.

Even though you have one website address, the website you put there has differing audiences. As your audience changes, your website should as well.

We'll start with a Democrat and alternate with Republicans, candidates from other parties, and party or cause websites. This week we start with a man who has a natural advantage in Iowa, because he is the state's current governor.

Tom Vilsack's website is red, white and blue, and makes a strong statement with its "V." We are supposed to equate Vilsack and Victory, I suppose. The online campaigning tools are easy to find, and a very strong message is front and center on the Home page: "It is our moral responsibility to end the war now."

The one thing I would change on the Home page would be to make three of the four photos of the Governor more compelling. The one on the lower right where he discusses his internet strategy shows him to be a handsome, since-looking man. The profile on the top center is not particularly flattering, and is almost off-putting. The picture where he discusses Iraq is too dark, and the Meet Tom Vilsack picture has him in profile and squinting (and the bio page itself has no pictures of him).

The number one tip we can derive from this site, and many others we have analyzed over the years, is that photos indeed do indeed make or break your online campaign. Make sure you look credible, accessible, trustworthy, and ready to take on the job you are campaigning for. Governor Vilsack clearly has a lot to offer as a future president. He just needs to help us see it more clearly on his website.