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Politicians’ Web presence benefits entrepreneurs, too

Election season a chance for designers to strut their stuff

Friday, Nov. 3, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Chris Rossi⁄The Gazette ‘‘A Web site can make or break a campaign like [Scott] Rolle’s, which doesn’t have a lot of money,” says Justin Schuck, whose Bethesda company designed a Web site for the Republican attorney general candidate.

An Associated Press⁄AOL News poll showed 36 percent of all registered voters surveyed visited candidate Web sites.

‘‘What’s really amazing and is a change from 2002 is in St. Mary’s County, if you’re running for office, including sheriff or county commissioner, you have to have a Web site,” said Zach P. Messitte, director of the Study of Democracy at St. Mary’s College in St. Mary’s.

Web sites also have to be more than just online advertisements. They feature blogs by the candidates to communicate with supporters, rapid responses to opponents and links to commercials through YouTube or similar video servers, Messitte said. ‘‘[Voters] notice when it hasn’t been updated or it doesn’t look fresh,” he said.

Whether these sites sway voters hasn’t been determined, but they are still seen as a necessity, Messitte said.

‘‘This is how voters get their information,” he said. ‘‘They’re not picking up The Post or, no offense, The Gazette, in the morning to get their information. They’re going to the Web sites. The more interesting these Web sites are, the more chance they have to appeal to young voters.”

Justin Schuck, a photographer and commercial Web designer who runs his own company in Bethesda, looked at many political Web sites before designing one for client Scott L. Rolle, the Republican candidate for attorney general.

Justin Schuck Design Studio’s other Web design work had been for photo studios and publishing houses, he said.

Two young volunteers originally designed Rolle’s site at www.scottrolle.com, but it lacked many features needed by the campaign, Schuck said.

‘‘A Web site can make or break a campaign like Rolle’s, which doesn’t have a lot of money, so we had to think of creative ways to get around that and have a young, flashy, hip and pretty Web site,” he said.

Schuck reviewed other political sites to determine which had the best features. Rolle’s site includes ways for voters to see the commercials that Rolle could afford to produce but could not afford to keep airing on television.

Schuck, a Democrat, said he sat down with the candidate to try to capture his personality on the site.

‘‘My initial response was I wouldn’t help another Republican win statewide office in Maryland,” Schuck said. But after the meeting, ‘‘I felt he was a good enough man that I could help him theoretically get into office.”

What voters don’t see are the Web tools that help the campaign track which parts of the site are being viewed and which campaign messages seem most effective at attracting donors.

While Schuck is being paid for the photography work for the campaign, the Web site design and management is being provided as an in-kind contribution to show what the company can do with a political site, he said.

‘‘The Scott Rolle Web site is not a moneymaker for us,” Schuck said. ‘‘We sent the Scott Rolle campaign an invoice and wrote it as paid as an in-kind contribution.”

In a sense, the Rolle site is being used by his company as a marketing tool for future business, he said.

Already, Democrats and Republicans have spoken with him about designing their campaign sites for the next election cycle, Schuck said. ‘‘This is our coming-out party in terms of political Web sites,” he said. ‘‘I’m willing to bet this could be more of a moneymaker than I originally envisioned.”

While the need for professionally designed Web sites for political campaigns might be growing, the demand still operates on two- or four-year cycles, said Cindy Morgan-Jaffe, director of operations and training for Orchid For Change Inc., a Washington, D.C., company that developed the Web site for the Maryland Democratic Party (www.mddems.org) and about a dozen candidates statewide. The company also developed sites for other state Democratic associations as well as some trade groups.

The company charges about $250 for a Web site for a candidate and $50 a month for Web server hosting and maintenance. It has to keep the prices low enough to compete with candidates who believe their brother-in-law can design a site for them and have it hosted on a server for $9.95 a month, Morgan-Jaffe said.

What candidates don’t get by doing it themselves are the Web development tools to help keep the site constantly updated and to have enough bandwidth to put on the multimedia features that viewers have come to expect, she said.

With campaigns running only a few months every other year, candidate Web sites remain a small segment of Orchid’s business.

‘‘We’re not in it for the money,” Morgan-Jaffe said.