This morning, the Heritage Foundation revealed a new website design. The goal - to make the site more user friendly for its 600,000+ members.

Take a moment to watch this video about their new design and read through these 6 points that showcase Heritage's methodology. I'm sure you'll find a nugget or two to implement for an upcoming project of your own.

1.  Simplified navigation that allows users to quickly access the content they are seeking. We now have tabs for both Issues and Research in the navigation, giving you the option to browse by public policy issues or, for the more familiar Heritage.org user, by the type of content.

2. The visual design showcases the strength, credibility and stature of The Heritage Foundation, our people and our work, while also encouraging users to explore our site. This is reflected in the multi-tonal Heritage blue color palette, uniform bands of content throughout the site and the introduction of visual icons which work in tandem with the new navigation.

3. An improved search function and new taxonomy should make finding content faster and easier. The biggest complaint about our previous website was its lack of organization. We’ve taken two major steps to improve that by adding a more robust search engine with the option to filter content. In addition, we’ve introduced a comprehensive taxonomy, which expands the number of issue areas from about 100 to nearly 1,000.

4. Our multimedia section features Heritage videos, info graphics and audio in one place. Whether you’re looking for one of our original productions such as “Let Me Rise” or a recent TV appearance of a Heritage analyst, you can now find it easily by clicking on the links above the search on each page.

5. We’ve introduced customized audience pages for the conservative community, government staff, press and media, job seekers and young leaders. By tailoring our content to these groups, we hope to better serve their needs. You can access these pages in the footer of every page.

6. The new footer gives Heritage an opportunity to showcase some of our signature research papers and communications products on the bottom of every page. Given the large amount of traffic Heritage.org received from search engines, we realize that not everyone entering the site is coming through the homepage.

Questions? Send the Heritage Foundation web team a note at redesign@heritage.org.

The Republican National Committee will unveil a new website early Tuesday morning that promises to increase grassroots participation and offers improved navigability and smarter marketing and fundraising tools for the GOP, according to party officials.

Upon reaching the new GOP.com, RNC Chairman Michael Steele takes a virtual step onto the computer screen and leads users on a tour of the site’s new features.

“Notice anything different?” asks Steele. “It’s the new GOP.com. It’s a forward-looking, open-platform for the party of new ideas. If you’re a Republican activist, this is your space.”

The developers of the new website hope to capitalize on the organic activism that gave way to Tea Parties across the nation by “creating a larger, more informed, more organized, and more energized Republican community.”

Conscious of the propensity for online social networking to mobilize activists, the new website was designed with an unmistakable attentiveness to social media, having devoted a significant portion of the landing page’s real estate to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.

At first glance, the RNC’s new digital threads look nothing like a typical political website. From the dynamic logo featuring user-submitted pictures of supporters to the refreshingly simple navigation menu, the revamped and reorganized GOP web presence represents a commonly-preached but rarely-practiced belief on Capitol Hill: that the best ideas come from outside the Beltway.

Said one RNC official familiar with the project: “We tried to break the mold here. None of the firms we hired have ever worked in politics.”

In addition to seamlessly incorporating prominent social networks like Facebook and Twitter into their new platform, the RNC also revised their now-defunct in-house social network, myGOP. Renamed to represent Steele’s embrace of organic activism and community engagement, their new social network, dubbed “OurGOP,” allows users to organize by location, issue, or candidate slate.

And as a supplement to the new “you-centric” social network, RNC officials note an additional innovative feature: users can securely login with third-party credentials, including OpenID and Facebook rather than creating a new account.

The new website is the latest aspect of Steele’s comprehensive rebranding campaign for the GOP, who weathered two consecutive election-year losses in 2006 and 2008. The 2010 midterm elections, Steele hopes, will be different. And that difference will be fostered by surging online conservative activism.

“At GOP.com something new is happening. And that something is you,” said Steele in his video introduction.

Crossposted from Redstate.

Things to Ask Before You Redo Your Website

I don't do any consulting, but that doesn't stop people from asking me questions. The most common question people ask me when they want a new website is, "If you were in charge of this, who are the 2 or 3 people you’d want to be sure to talk to – to help think through the issues, help us figure out who should do the work, etc.?"

The second most common question people ask me,  "In addition to Apple’s site, are there 2 or 3 that you think are really appealing and work well for their business?"

I think these are perhaps the tenth and eleventh questions you should ask, not the first two. Here's my list of difficult and important questions you have to answer before you spend a nickel...

And finally, a newsflash: 

Politicians' Tweets Are Mostly Self-Promotional, Researchers Say

A team of researchers from the University of Maryland plodded through more than 6,000 Twitter postings by members of Congress to study whether the social networking site promoted transparency in politics and dialogue between elected leaders and the public.

They found -- surprise! -- that politicians spend most of their time on Twitter promoting themselves.