Author’s Note: Standard Web Standards will be starting a “blog mini-series” on the notable websites of Philippine candidates (For everyone’s information, Filipinos will be voting for national and local officials this coming May).
Unaffectionally dubbed as “Mr. Noted,” re-electionist senator Kiko Pangilinan presents nothing noteworthy with his campaign website. Perhaps his website is a reflection of his tumultuous campaign so far? On to the review:
- He hates Firefox – If you look at the screenshot above, you will notice that there is a huge amount of whitespace wasted. The thing to take note of is that the screenshot was taken on a Firefox browser. What makes it worse is that the space at the bottom as text– and the font color is white! The inside pages as well are wrecked in a non-IE browser.
- Again, accessibility – Similar to Manny Villar‘s website (which was also reviewed), Pangilinan’s site does not have an alternate navigation menu that does not use Flash.
- Usability issues – His homepage is really a piece of work– it’s enough to give a usability professional fits. The problematic area here is that the images on the left and right outer columns are actually links, and all have no labels where they are going.
- Hodge-podge – Browsing the other contents of the site, you will be brought to a section called Kilos Ko, which looks like a totally different site. No consistency means confusion.
- Strong design – For a campaign site, his design and art direction is good (except for the inconsistent sections, see #4).
- “Mega” pixels – Pangilinan does know how to play his strengths– particularly his family and popularity. He highlights pictures of his beautiful wife (none other thean the Philippine’s Mega Star, Sharon Cuneta) and kids on the home page, although they have little to do with the campaign trail.
- Decisions, decisions – Does the site answer the voter’s questions about his platform, agenda and plans for his new term as a senator? To a certain degree, yes. The site has enough content to hopefully sway the vote, but they are not too obvious.
Should you give 100% support for Kiko Pangilinan this coming May for his Senate bid? Given his website, i’m inclined to say 50%.
