Opinion War of the websites

Though this website was extremely informative,including a massive history section and links to all other relevant Congress sites,the design had become stale and,with new links all over the site,the look had become untidy. There was an urgent need to redesign and bring in a clean modern look and to arrange information in a more logical format. This became even more urgent in the run-up to the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. 

While we were in the process of assessing various new designs and formats,the BJP launched the L.K. Advani website (www.lkadvani.in),based on the Obama website,using very similar images and links. It was extremely slick,well-designed,and aesthetically pleasing. It was obvious that a massive budget had been expended in this effort to project Advani as a forward-thinking elder statesman. The entire exercise was personality-driven and aimed at those Advani called the “netizens”.  

The Congress party was faced with two choices,either to put up a me-too site in the same format,or to think completely out of the box. With an extremely limited budget,we created an information-heavy,easily navigable site with light pages enabling quick loading and a very simple interface. Our studies had revealed that connectivity is still very slow in much of India and this kind of site would do better than a bells-and-whistles heavy site. 

We finally launched the revamped Congress website in English on March 18 2009,in Hindi on March 21 2009 and Urdu on March 22 2009.  We found that while the popularity of our website kept increasing,the L K Advani website was far ahead of us. The secret of the Advani website was finally disclosed by the BJP in an interview to India Today — “In the first week after its launch,the website was getting about 5,000 visitors a day but it soon dwindled to 300. This was when Advani’s long-time aide Deepak Chopra,an MBA realised that even the best of products need marketing,thereby resulting in a tie-up with Google”. In other words the Advani site,while attracting an initial curiosity,had stopped attracting visitors or getting hits till they decided to tie up with Google for a massive advertising campaign. This campaign immediately provided an exponential increase in the Advani site’s popularity. The same strategy has been used for the main BJP site. One cannot visit any portal or any major site without coming across online ads for the Advani site and the BJP.  

Whenever the Congress website started to close in on the Advani site’s performance,the BJP would up the frequency of its online advertisements to ensure larger numbers of visitors and hits. The Congress with its limited and practically non-existent online advertising campaign found that its website just could not catch up with the Advani site no matter what strategy we used. 

A special election section had been created on the frontpage complete with all our documents as well as campaign videos. New information was added practically everyday. We found that the two most downloaded documents are the manifesto and the election schedules which,while based upon the Election Commission document,provide state-wise and phase-wise maps of individual states and lists the Congress candidates. 

While the site’s popularity was gradually growing and stabilising at higher levels each passing week,we discovered that a new pattern was emerging. Every time we got closer to a polling date,the interest in the Congress website would go up and the interest in the Advani and the BJP website would go down and one day before the date of polling,the Congress website would overtake the Advani and the BJP websites by huge margins. 

This pattern was seen on the 15th ,22nd and 29th (one day before each poll phase). It is obvious that the voter is seeking information about the Congress immediately prior to the casting of votes and conversely loses interest in Advani and the BJP on the eve of the casting of the votes.

The international website monitoring site Alexa ranks websites with the best being at number 1,in other words the lower the figure the higher the ranking. The Alexa chart attached tells the real picture: 

 Placing multiple advertisements on Internet portals and paying for each click — for each visitor who visits the Advani or the BJP site — can only ensure that a large number of visitors visit the site but cannot ensure their loyalty. When the time for decisions comes they will go where they wish. It is like inviting people for dinner and paying somebody to ensure the presence of your guests. On the other hand the visitors to the Congress party while much fewer in number,suddenly spike each time we are close to the elections.  

There is another aspect to the Advani site which needs to be exposed. If one scrolls all the way to the bottom there are a number of links on it,saying “Visit our presence on Orkut”,“Visit our presence on Facebook” and to a blog (blog.lkadvani.in) created on the website itself. Visiting each of these links is an illuminating experience. The Orkut link shows that the Orkut community was created on October 27 2008 has so far attracted 1587 members. The Facebook links shows 781 supporters. The blog tells the same story of apathy and indifference with the initial posts attracting 187,133,141,102 comments and later posts getting fewer and fewer comments (18,3,15,8). 

Perhaps there is a message in all this — in 2004,the BJP campaign was India Shining and the Congress campaign was for the Aam Aadmi. In 2009 the BJP campaign seems to be Advani and the BJP Shining while the Congress campaign is for Aam Aadmi Ke Badhte Kadam. This is exactly replicated in the websites.

From the Congress war-room,via Jairam Ramesh

BJP: On every possible count,our IT strategy beats the Congress hollow

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) takes great pride in the fact that way back in 1996 it became the first Indian political party to have its own website: http://www.bjp.org. In 2008,L.K. Advani became the first prime ministerial candidate to have his own personal website: http://www.lkadvani.in. Compare this with the fact that the Congress website was launched eight years later in 2004,and the fact that the top 3 Congress leaders do not have their personal websites,and you can clearly see why there is a generational gap in the appreciation of technology between the BJP and the Congress.

On 14 March 2009,BJP released an IT Vision document that promised a comprehensive and sustainable transformation of the country using the power of information technology. We thought that the Congress might try to better us — or at least match us point-to-point —- by coming up with an alternate document. Instead what they came up with in response to our 40-page document — a small paragraph in their election manifesto — is,for lack of a better word,laughable.

Coming back to the debate on the respective parties’ websites,the Congress thinks that its website is ‘massive’. I do not know if their figures justify the use of this adjective,but let me give some statistics regarding the Advani and BJP websites.

The L.K. Advani website has over 1000 pages of textual content,more than 600 pictures and over 350 videos,in two languages: English and Hindi. The website,extremely interactive in nature,also provides facilities such as volunteer sign-up and discussion forum. So far,more than 16000 people have signed up as volunteers for Advani; about 9000 people have made more than 15000 postings on the forum,which is divided into 29 topics such as agriculture,economy,education,infrastructure,health,housing,security,etc; and another 30000 people have signed up to receive email and SMS alerts.

The BJP website,on the other hand,is a repository of some 10 years of content. For instance,it has about 1820 press releases,and close to 200 important speeches,with the oldest ones dating back to January 2000.And we still do not claim to be ‘massive’.

I have been told that a senior Congress leader,tasked with peering into the future and coming up with some babalog gems,is going around town passing on the calumny that (a) the BJP and LK Advani websites were created at massive costs,and (b) the Congress website drew more traffic closer to the polls. Let me refute these claims one by one.

First the question of cost: Contrary to the Congress’ claims,we have set up both the websites at very low prices. First of all,it was built using a free content management system (CMS) called Joomla. Secondly,it has been maintained by a team of volunteers,all highly qualified professionals who have left their jobs to work on the campaign. Thirdly,it has been advertised online using a pay-for-performance model called cost-per-click. This means that only when a person clicks on a BJP or Advani advertisement would the party pay for it.

The overall Congress’ spend on publicity (television,radio,print,outdoors,etc) is many times that of the BJP. Forced to optimise our limited budget and derive the maximum bang-for-the-buck,we have allocated a minuscule percentage of our monies to the online medium. We feel we have used it most creatively and effectively. If the Congress has failed to do an encore,why are they cribbing?

The second: claims about traffic. The BJP has recently issued an official press release that in the month of April the LK Advani website had received close to half a million visitors and more than a million pageviews. Now this is not based on some fanciful estimates dished out by sites like Alexa,but hard auditable figures given out by Google Analytics. Questioning these figures is questioning the integrity of Google.

The Congress website http://www.aicc.org.in also uses Google Analytics. I publicly challenge the Congress seer to publish their Google Analytics figures. Just the other day,the Tech Toyz show of CNN-IBN ranked the BJP website over the Congress website. Referring to the Congress website,the reviewer said: “”It is not the best,because BJP’s website simply bowled me over. Superbly dynamic and simplest to navigate through. I don’t know about the elections,but BJP definitely wins the internet rally.”

One last thought: a popular theory on the net holds that online ‘search’ is a reflection of real-live concerns. Therefore if times are tough,people look for jobs; if times are good,people look for luxury goods. Google has a tool called Google Insights that show what people are searching for,and therefore what their real concerns are. I ran a query for Advani vs Sonia Gandhi vs Manmohan Singh vs Rahul Gandhi on Google Insights,and found that the search volume on Advani has been the higher than all the others. There is a message in this. I hope the seer is seeing.

From the BJP war-room,via Pradyut Bora