The report lists several easy changes that would improve the performance of the Obama campaign website, including:

• Use a larger font size.
• Add a "thank you" message to the donation page instead of a pedantic lecture on campaign finance.
• Clarify the navigation:


• Change the label "Learn" to "About".
• Write "Home" instead of using an obscure icon.
• Move "In the news" under the "Media" label.

Obama's Web team has done none of these things in the month since the Catalyst Group's report was published.

McCain's Web team has done little more, but they appear to have at least read the report. The McCain site borrowed the Obama graphical style for the candidate portrait at the top, in an attempt to convey a better first impression. It also introduced a new splash page with the top tasks front-and-center.

Successful Web teams must walk and chew gum at the same time. Like many Web teams today, Obama's is focused on sexy Web 2.0 features important to power users. But it has failed to continually improve the less glamorous information architecture and design elements that affect site usability for all users. If even 1% of users have trouble reading the font size, Obama may have lost millions of dollars in donations and hundreds of thousands of votes.

In a tight election, neither candidate can afford to make these mistakes.

But what's worse is how the Obama Web team ignores free expertise. If the Obama team were really web-savvy, they would listen to and cultivate usability research along these lines. They would even appoint a director of user experience and recruit volunteer usability professionals to conduct continual "guerilla" testing across the country.

In 2000, usability problems with Florida's "butterfly ballot" changed the outcome of the election between Gore and Bush. Usability may once again decide who will be the President of the United States.