WordPress | Tim McNabb

Ed Martin for Congress is website for a political campaign. The client had a wide variety of potential needs for their website as the campaign unfolds. The challenge was to develop a site that was highly flexible and extensible to adapt to new online opportunities.

The site is the hub of a larger online effort that includes a comprehensive social media strategy including Facebook, YouTube, Email, Blogging and Twitter. Goals include voter and constituent outreach, name recognition and communicating the candidate’s policy positions. I have been monitoring activity and both suggesting and making adjustments to the frequency and timing of communication efforts.

There is steady, organic growth in Twitter followers, Facebook fans and unique visitors to the site, surpassing in many cases incumbent and challenger statistics. Running in a district historically held by the opposing party, these efforts have been recognized as an early indicator of the competitiveness of the candidate.

Key Features

Featured Content Navigation – From the home page users are presented with a dynamic slide show & navigation tool that features content on which the campaign wants to focus.

Online Video – The candidate posts video of himself as well as interesting videos from other sources that serve top make points of benefit to the campaign message.

Social Media – The campaign makes very effective use of social media tools, including email, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to drive traffic to the website and increase the width of the net being cast for the campaign message. It is further used to accept feedback and questions to engage constituents.

Content Managed – The site is running on a content management system that allows the quick posting of routine updates as well as the safe deployment of new features.

RSS SEO – I have deployed Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds to the site to provide state and local news relevant to the campaign. The added benefit is that search crawlers find a large volume of relevant keywords that update regularly.

Endodontics South LTD is a dental practice in Jefferson County Missouri specializing in performing root canal therapy. As you can imagine, promoting root canal therapy is a unique challenge.

The majority of Endodontics South’s clientele are women, either as patients or making appointments for their family. I also learned that fellow dentists would likely use the website as part of a vetting process before referring a patient to the practice. These two market segmentation realities would inform the design decisions.

For fellow professionals, we determined that membership in professional organizations would be an important promotional matter.

We reviewed the websites of other endodontic practices as part of our development process. This look at professional colleagues around the country provided ideas and direction. I helped develop an information architecture that separated information offered to professionals and patients, giving each a particular path to follow from the home page.

During the selection of a design the client consulted with women who were either family or colleagues at work. The client provided some very attractive images that were used in the featured content scroller on the home page. These images serve to soften the website and lend visual interest to the site. Clicking on these images will lead the user to specific content providing an additional navigational path to content the client deems most important.

Within the site are links, biographies and curriculum vitae for the doctors of the practice as well as images and short bios for staff members. I spent a few hours at their office taking shots that are used on the site. An RSS feed from a prominent journal in the endodontics is providing periodic keyword-specific updates on the site providing search engine optimization.

Finally, the site is running on a WordPress content management system. This empowers the doctors or their delegates to maintain and update their own site on their own terms.

Please visit the site EndoSouthLTD.com, and see your dentist.

Tim McNabb – Webmaster

Tag Archives: WordPress

Endodontics South LTD